Nothing much changes
It's great being back in Arizona again. Today was a beautiful sunny 75°, which is a lot higher than anything southern New Mexico had to offer since I've been running around there this winter. With the humidity in the teens, you get that strange desert effect where if you get in the shade, you feel like you should be wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but walk into the sun, and it feels like Summer.
Today, I did what I usually do in Tombstone: I walked around town and took pictures. Being a Sunday, it was pretty crowded, and being a holiday Sunday, with New Year's Eve just around the corner, it was extra special crowded.
Since Tombstone is known for its Cowboys and gunfights, many folks in town were dressed for the occasion wearing cowboy hats and boots. Since I no longer own a Stetson and don't carry around my last pair of cowboy boots, blue jeans are the only cowboy-looking thing about me, and I always wear those.
Tombstone is a typical tourist town, so nothing changes very much. It's mostly rubber Tomahawks and fake guns for tourists and a few restaurants serving expensive food. Just glancing at the menus in the windows, it would cost a family of four about 50 bucks to have a hamburger for lunch. It makes me wonder how families can take a vacation anymore.
Of course, that might explain why there are so many RVs on the road. A family can afford to sleep in the camper and eat in the camper when in tourist areas, which is much easier than sleeping in motels and eating restaurant food. But the campground owners know that, and they keep their nightly rates as high as they can possibly get away with by making sure every campground in the area charges about the same.
Theboondork
When the bull riding was over, and after loading the bulls into three trailers, they parked them right in front of the Lance. I wasn’t going anywhere, so that didn’t bother me, but bulls are incredibly noisy critters; they stomp on the floor, kick the sides, and bellow. And they left them sitting there for an hour… They were worse than being next to a barking dog, and you know how I feel about barking dogs.
I had to take a picture of my neighbor’s RV. This is the real deal. It’s a Prevost, and it’s Built like an actual bus that a bus company would use, except on the inside, it is made into a camper. I don’t think RVs are better built or more expensive than a Prevost, new in the $2 million range.
As I was walking into town this morning, I turned around and took this picture of the campground, which has cleared out considerably since yesterday. I reckon a lot of folks were here to watch the bull riding.