RV Winter Rambling 2006-07

In a Cavern, In a Canyon, Excavating for a Mine…….


Bisbee is one of the quaintest towns that I’ve ever visited and it’s full of odd characters, from the young guy in dreadlocks to the old fellow in a high and battered top hat. There were whiskery faces that had never seen a razor and women in colourful cottons, black stockings and purple and pink toques pulled down tightly on their heads. Beat up bicycles were often the vehicle of choice and I wondered how they managed the steep hills.

It’s an old copper mining town in the hills wedged along the curving Tombstone Canyon. The old shops are full of pottery, paintings and quaint artefacts. Houses hang off the sides of cliffs precariously and long steep staircases run up between the narrow home lots up to the top of town. The mine is still producing and is the backbone of the community. Multi-coloured slag heaps line the highway out of town and deep pits that look like doorways to hell have ‘scenic viewpoints’ above. We happily found that there were lots of caches around town and used the hunts to climb up and down the steep streets and staircases to discover the nooks and crannies of the hamlet.


About 5 miles northwest of Bisbee, a cache took us to a magnificent rock formation that was in the shape of the head of an ‘Aztec Man’. We’re not sure whether it was sculpted or if it was a natural formation. Near the cache was a dehydrated carcass of a coyote or a fox or some other critter. It was obviously road kill that had been thrown aside but what was strange was it’s vicious expression with fangs bared and claws drawn out and no sign of injury.


The old ‘mule-train’ road still exists – it’s hard to imagine those copper ore carrying mule-trains navigating the steep and rough path through narrow canyons. We walked and climbed along it on a cache hunt while the wind whistled through the narrow chasm making headway difficult.


A long drive up a primitive road took us near the tops of the two highest mountains in the range. The views were spectacular and there were some strange little Hobbitt-like houses built up there – at 7,000 feet. I wondered who lived in them and what they were made of and why they built up there – probably hermits of sorts. We walked the final mile up to the top of the mountain – some good aerobic exercise because the road became almost impassable. There was lots of greenery like scrubby pine trees interspersed with cacti but it was low enough that we could still see of miles and miles across the valleys.



Bisbee’s quirkiness was evident at the Shady Dell RV Park. Ancient trailers rather like the one in the old Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz movie “The Long Long Trailer”, were put in place permanently and rented out by the day. Dot’s Diner was the onsite café and specialized in hamburgers and such.

posted by O'Leary @ 5:02 PM