Tucson etc.
We were mostly in Tucson to see family and friends, but we took some time to be tourists too - going to the Desert Museum and Tombstone and driving down the Sonoita-Patagonia scenic byway and stopping to see Tumacacori Mission.
And I have to say a few things about Tombstone.
Mark bought a few 'special editions' of the Tombstone Epitaph, detailing the life and times of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday - and on the back of one was a picture from 1880 of the exact place we were sitting and having lunch when we looked at the paper: the bar at the Crystal Palace Saloon. We'd have been right in the picture. The bar and mirrors and wallpaper and chandelier all look exactly the same.
Wyatt and Doc make for some interesting reading... no wonder they are legends. (Incidently, Wyatt Earp is burried in another of our favorite haunts - in the cemeteries of Colma, CA where all the folks from San Francisco are interred. He actually died in Los Angeles. And did you know he spent time in Alaska? Small world.)
The only actual historic register sort of place in Tombstone is the Birdcage Theater - a gambling and prostitution joint with a stage and bar and all the artifacts of the era (and a few other eras as well, probably) that could be crammed in for the $10 tour. We loved it. Except at the bottom level, where the gambling tables are still set up and some idiot - local resident maybe? - was trying to talk the 'ghost gamblers' into showing themselves by flipping a card for him or otherwise showing their presence. You'd think there would be some modicum of sheepishness in this endeavor, but evidently not. He wanted us to know, obviously, that he was 'in the know' about such things and 'the know' was definitely that there were gambler ghosts there. Good grief.
Tucson, by the way, is still my favorite place to get a good steak!
posted by Cathy @ 2:00 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I'm your huckleberry. The Crystal Palace figures prominently in the Clanton/Earp feud, a cool place is Tombstone even if every monitor in the place was playing the movie "Tombstoe" and I thought I had all the lines down from the movie I bet nearly everyone with a tv in Tombstone knows all the lines of the movie; they pick it up from their pores
And, in case you missed it yourself, "I'm your huckleberry" is one of those lines...
You, no doubt, drove past the Circle-K on the way into town. One of the clerks at that store once told me the place is haunted...things fall off the shelves in the middle of the night, etc. I don't know if that's proof of a ghost or just sloppy stocking. She said it was built over an old Chinese cemetery.
Another Tombstone legand, I guess
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