arizona adventure fun day.

can you believe that this is what we wake up to here?

the winding story of how we happened upon this magical little place called bisbee starts with aitor hitch hiking though arizona a couple of years ago. he was trying to get to tombstone and ended up here (a far better destination, we would soon discover). he was basically dropped off at the shady dell but ended up staying in a hostel in old bisbee. he called to tell me of the trailer park and we have been scheming coming here together since.

because of this connection to tombstone (twenty miles to the north) and because we are keen on historical relics, we started our adventure day there today.





what a weird place. the whole town is a strange tourist trap (although people do live there). the storefronts are mostly souvenir shops and aitor was like a walking target for the historical reenactors to toss historical jibes at. not to be a total dick, but shouldn't they just have been confused and alarmed by all of our clothes? even aitor's get-ups are from at least forty years in their future. if i were them, i would have gotten scared, gone home and not gotten shot at 2:00pm and then again at 4:00pm. but, as a wise woman once said, "twenty twenty vision is perfect."

on a hot tip from faythe and nathan, we had planned our next stop to be the international wildlife museum on the outskirts of tucson. this is a huge repository of taxidermy animals that is meant to, somehow, promote conservation. okay, i shouldn't be so glib about it - hunters are very active in conservation efforts. i know this. still, this museum did leave me with a "we've killed one of everything" kind of feeling.









again, more tourism based on shootings. in spite of my cynical sideway comments, the displays really did leave me with the (presumably) intended awe of the natural world. i especially liked the displays where the dead animals were fighting. and all my vegetarian gusto aside, there is meticulous craft involved in the sculptural innards of these figures. see:

after our brains were all filled up with images of stuffed elephants and giraffes (they were in corners too dark to photograph), we decided to take a little jaunt through tuscon mountain park. it was incredible. the park houses one of the biggest saguaro cactus forests in the world. the was a storm rolling in over the mountains (which seems to happen every evening) so we stood in a turnout and watched lightning strike the mountains while thunder growled all around.



on the way home, we were treated to a magnificent display of storm and sunset. it's hard to describe (and very hard to photograph) but we were driving towards a huge double rainbow underneath which all the clouds were smoldering pink in the sunset. really, quite spectacular.