Friday 24th February – A busy days touristing!

The alarm went off at 730 am and we braved the cold to hit the road for 830am.  I dropped Simon off at a short queue outside the Pima museum and joined him for the 9am opening.  As hoped, we managed to get two spots on the first ‘boneyard' tour off the day, at 10am.  This only cost $7 each and we didn’t have to pay another day’s admission to the museum - we had well and truly ‘done’ that yesterday!

We had a quick coffee before boarding the bus.  The tour lasted 75 minutes in total and you remain on the bus for the entirety.  The boneyard, otherwise known as AMARG (Aircraft maintenance and regeneration group), consists of 2600 acres of Federal-owned land used as storage for roughly 4000 planes.  Not just US forces’ planes but also planes belonging to allied forces, NASA, and the FBI to name a few.  They are very particular about whose planes they store there and security is very tight, understandably so when they estimate the value of the planes here at about $34 billion! 

Row upon row of disused planes

This is the only location with this function in the entire USA.  It started in 1946, so I’m guessing after the end of WWII they had a lot of excess planes and didn’t know what to do with them!  The desert here in Arizona is the ideal environment for this storage as they don’t have to worry about corrosion with the stable, dry weather conditions.  In fact, the main protection required is two layers of tape, black and then white (below), to reflect the sun and protect the internal markings on cockpit instruments etc. 

F14D tomcat

Not all the planes here are to be scrapped, they estimate that one out of five of the aeroplanes will fly again.  The process to ensure an aeroplane is safe to be used again is rigorous.  We saw a couple of aircraft being washed down following storage and then, after all of the components have been checked, the plane is taken on several ‘hop’ flights before it is ready to be released.  

Those planes which have flown their last sorties are made inoperable and the boneyard generates money from selling parts and materials, mostly aluminium, which is returned to the Department of Defence’s coffers.  There was even one of Simon’s favourites, an F14, there, but just the one.  Because they have been decommissioned by the US and to prevent parts falling into the wrong hands (eg Iran) they ensured that the rest of fleet (that isn’t sitting in a museum we’ve been to!) was destroyed.

This plane was being washed and checked for re-use

The majority of these aren't going anywhere any time soon!

Missing a wheel or two....

It was an incredible sight to see such a volume of aircraft over such an immense area.  This was one of the places that Simon had marked on the road atlas for us to visit months ago, when we started doing that kind of thing.

A place that hadn’t been on our list had been Tombstone, the town too tough to die.  But here we were, only one hour away, so we made a detour today to take it in.  I had read about the town in our AAA Arizona book and discovered that you could get a combined ticket for $10 which included an introductory film providing the history of Tombstone, entry to the OK Corral (including a gunfight re-enactment) and the related museums.  
 

We found a top parking spot on Toughnut Street, next to where an ‘angry mob’ once hung a man (left), grabbed some lunch and had a wander around the town before the 2pm film showing.  The main street past the OK Corral, Allen Street, is closed to motor vehicles and the shop-fronts have been preserved in 1900s style. 

Allen Street, Tombstone

There are cowboys on every corner inviting you to come and witness gunfights! Having seen the film Wyatt Earp earlier in our travels (Kevin Costner, AGAIN!) we recognised some of the names and locations on the historic location notices (above and right).

The introductory film was a good overview. It reminded us that the town was discovered by a prospector called Ed Schieffelin (right – every day he’s Schieffelin) in 1877.  When he told soldiers at a nearby outpost that he was going to find his fortune they laughed and told him that all he would find would be his tombstone, referring to the likelihood that the native Indians would kill him on sight. When Ed found his first silver mine he named it ‘The Tombstone’ and the name stuck for the area after others swarmed there on the promise of silver and gold.  Fire ravaged the town twice causing devastation but each time the residents built it back up, earning the town the nickname ‘The town too tough to die’.

We wandered to the home of the Epitaph newspaper, where we each got a copy of the edition dated the day after the gunfight at the OK Corral.  The founder and first editor of the paper, John Clum, declared that ‘no tombstone is complete without its epitaph’ explaining where the name had come from.

The 'good guys' waiting outside the OK Corral

We wandered back down Allen Street and saw the Earp brothers with Doc Hollywood looking ready for a fight so we went to take our seats in the OK Corral.  I hoped their acting would be better than this group of fakeys (right)! The re-enactment was very panto-esque, which I’m fine with, so mostly booing the cowboys and cheering the good guys.  But it was a bit of fun and the gunshots woke us up!  If you haven’t seen any of the films about the gunfight at the OK Corral, look away now if you don’t want the spoiler – the good guys win.
 
We wandered around the museum exhibits and strolled back to the RV to go to the last stop of the day – the Boot Hill Graveyard.  We were only really looking for the graves of the McLaurys and Clantons but there were some other interesting headstones too.

In conclusion, we found that Tombstone was a livelier version of Dodge.  We’d hit Dodge out of season though, so there were no gunfights when we passed through in November. But there was more of the old-style town preserved here in Tombstone as well so we were glad we had stopped by to take a look.

It was heading towards 5pm by this time.  Over lunch we’d had a planning chat.  It’s Simon’s Birthday on Sunday and it has been hard, no, impossible to try to predict where we are going to be for the big day!  I know he says that as we’re in America he doesn’t really mind where we are but I’d like to think we can be somewhere with some atmosphere, a good restaurant and decent wi-fi for him to contact the folks back home.  Hence, looking at the map and seeing how many hours we are away from California – about 7 hours driving to San Diego.  So, we decided for tonight’s cheap accommodation, instead of staying in Tombstone, we would drive the hour back to Tucson, to our free BLM site from Wednesday night to make tomorrow’s drive less of a slog.  We are still not exactly sure where we’ll be for Saturday and Sunday but that’s part of the adventure…. And I still don’t know when I am going to manage to pick him up a card, a cake and maybe even a present or two - Panic!!

This is how we find ourselves back in exactly the same location, next to our gopher hill, West of Tucson for the night.