The Shady Dell RV Park, Bisbee, Arizona. The coolest place we've stayed so far; for two nights, we traded in the Dutch Star for a vintage Airstream and re-entered the fifties. More later.
Our strategy is still to stay south, so we are skipping Albuquerque and Santa Fe for now and are heading west from New Mexico into southeastern Arizona, land of the Apaches, ghost towns, and Wyatt Earp.
Our first stop was the little town of Willcox, the hometown of Rex Allen,
a movie cowboy star of the thirties and forties. Later, he narrated dozens
of the Disney nature movies; you'd recognize his voice instantly (if you're
over 40, that is).
Isn't this a classic western Main Street? Under the tree on the right is a
statue of Rex Allen (with his guitar) and the grave of KoKo, his horse.
The rail line is just
across the park; there's no more romantic sound than a train whistle passing
a small town in the night.
But the real reason for stopping over in Willcox is that it is near the Chiricahua Mountains National Monument, a spectacular collection of unique rock formations created after a huge (1,000 times the power of Mt. St. Helens) volcanic eruption 27 million years ago. We drove the RV down from Willcox, parked in the visitors'
center, ate a picnic lunch, and spent the rest of the day exploring this amazing place. I've learned that, by and large, the digital camera doesn't do justice to places like this, but here's an idea of what it's like. The Apaches called it "Land of Standing Rocks", and they were right.
But the real reason for stopping over in Willcox is that it is near the Chiricahua Mountains National Monument, a spectacular collection of unique rock formations created after a huge (1,000 times the power of Mt. St. Helens) volcanic eruption 27 million years ago. We drove the RV down from Willcox, parked in the visitors'
center, ate a picnic lunch, and spent the rest of the day exploring this amazing place. I've learned that, by and large, the digital camera doesn't do justice to places like this, but here's an idea of what it's like. The Apaches called it "Land of Standing Rocks", and they were right.
We even climbed a mountain called Sugarloaf, which made everybody
a little homesick for Maine. Here are Molly and me at the top. Ben's mountain
climbing style is to get to the top as fast as possible, turn around, and
bolt down. He doesn't hang around for us to catch up and waste time on
stuff like pictures.
In case you can't make it out, my shirt says Plourde Harley-Davidson, Caribou, Maine. (The northernmost Harley dealer in the lower 48; great people). Hope you like the picture, Bob.
That evening, we drove south through a beautiful desert valley toward the Mexican border and the town of Bisbee, which we'd learned about in one of Mary's dozens of guidebooks, Arizona, Off the Beaten Path. Once the copper mining capitol of the world, Bisbee is now a tourist town with a funky arty-historical-scenic charm. And the crown jewel of Bisbee, at least for us, was the Shady Dell RV Park. Driving in is like returning to the fifties--vintage RVs, Dot's Diner, and an old-fashioned friendly atmosphere. So we parked the Dutch Star and spent a couple of nights in another era.
Here
are some of the units--all for rent and all furnished in authentic fifties
accouterments, right down to paint-by-numbers pictures on the walls, 78 RPM
record players, and 1954 high school yearbooks ("Always stay as sweet and
cute as you are", "Remember the great times in Geometry and Miss Waldron's
drivers' ed") . It was fantastic and the whole thing just swallowed us up
in a warm soup of nostalgia. Take a look--
This is the inside
of a 1952 Crown--12 feet long and perfect for two (the two in this case being
Mom and Molly). The radios are reproductions which disguise a tape player;
the tapes supplied include Fats Domino, Elvis, Bill Haley and the Comets,
Little Anthony and the Imperials (the immortal "Tracks of my Tears"), the
Platters, and the Coasters. I was in heaven; "My Blue Heaven", to be exact.
Notice
the pink china and shiny ceiling; peeking out of the magazine rack is a 1955
copy of LIFE. Was life really simpler then, or is it just the lens of nostalgia?
Will our grandchildren look back on "The Turn of the Century" (i.e., now)
as a simpler and somewhat bucolic time? Heaven help them if they do.
And here's Dot's; the waitresses (yes, that's what they were; this is the fifties, remember?) wore polka dotted dresses, beehive hairdos, hankies pinned to their dress, and stockings with seams. What a great place.
Remember these? Ben had never seen one and insisted on calling the records "CDs"; he couldn't believe the mechanism which dropped the next record ( which happened to be "One-eyed, one-horned flying purple people eaters").
OK, so fifties music wasn't perfect, but have you heard what fourteen-year-olds are listening to these days? Remember the spoof record, "The Flying Saucer" where they used cuts from popular records to tell the silly story? They had it. Unbelievable.
And here's the Dutch Star with it's spiritual ancestor--a minor league baseball team bus. If you're headed to Arizona, forget Phoenix; check out the Shady Dell.
Downtown Bisbee, looking up at the Copper Queen Hotel, where we had a really excellent dinner our first night in town (Dot's was only open for breakfast and lunch). Will Ben pass Mom in height before we return to Maine? He's about a half inch short; my money's on him.
This is a corner of downtown
Bisbee; the town is built on a series of steep hills and over (literally)
3,000 miles of copper mine tunnels. Dead when the mine closed down (2,100
people were laid off in one day in 1976), the town has come back to life
as a haven for artists, artisans, restaurateurs, and, of course, tourists.
