Tombstone

Tombstone, AZ "The Town too Tough to Die."

Dave: Thankfully the Army gave me a three day weekend during Valentine's Day weekend, so Kristine flew out Friday night to see me. Saturday day we took off to find adventure and found ourselves arriving in Tombstone. One of the most visited sites in AZ besides the Grand Canyon, Tombstone, exists as a truly peculiar place. Having once been a city of approximately 30,000 to 40,000, Tombstone now has a population of 1800 or so who live to sell souvenirs to tourists. It's faded glory is that of an era of lawlessness. The clashing of villains amongst themselves or with lawmen have covered the streets in blood. It is really interesting in that Tombstone is supposed to be an embodiment of spirit of the Old West. Pioneers, explorers, and others have all passed that way, but in recollection the only real points of interest for Tombstone are the gunfights and murders. As explained by the re-enactor, Tombstone once had over 100 saloons, over 3000 registered ladies of the night, and a red light district 9 blocks deep. Everyday during the height of it's glory, a man was killed in a gunfight.

Nowadays, whats left of that time period is about 3 blocks of buildings encompassing: 3 gunfight reenactments, the courthouse, the Birdcage theater, and Doc Holliday's house. All along the touristy main drag are tons of shops selling a variety of souvenirs and junk. Also there are two really nice jewelry stores on opposite sides of the street, that we found out later are actually both the same store.

Here is one of the more famous gunfight sites. Now a site for reenactments

Here is the local mayor and guard. We tried to talk to him and find out about his town, but he refused to get off his high horse(donkey). Actually he couldn't get down and just wanted people to pet him.



We had lunch in this really fun restaurant with live music and awesome stained glass. It was so busy we were put at a table that already had another couple waiting for food.

Here's a couple of the mementos for the tourists to buy.

We went to a gunfight reenactment show. It was supposed to be the history and reenactment of six major shootings in Tombstone. Here's how the first one went down.
Guy 1 " You cheated"
Guy 2 "No I didn't"
Guy 1 shoots Guy 2.
Scene 1 ends and on to scene 2
Guy 1 "How come you didn't pay me back that money you owed me?"
Guy 2 "I just bought this expensive ridiculous looking shirt from New York and I don't have any money left"
Guy 1 "I want my money. Take it back!"
Guy 2 "No."
Guy 1 shoots guy 2.
Scene 2 ends.
After the first two scenes, we had our fill of fake gunfights and bad acting. The really entertaining part was that most of the time the guns were actually pointed at the ground.





We had a really wonderful day. Good food, good ice cream, a few pieces of nice American Indian jewelry, and lots of laughs. Spending time together is great, pretty much no matter where we are.