From Cowboys to White Sand

October 15, 2012

This area is known for its white sand dunes, present in the White Sands National Monument.  This park encompasses about 80% of the white sands area.  The sand is pure white and powdery as sugar.  You maybe accustomed to the silica type sand and dunes that are off white, and found along shorelines.  This stuff is different.  It is gypsum, yep the same stuff that's in drywall.  Chemically its hydrous calcium sulfate, formed from dissolution of the surrounding mountains from rain and snow.  This runoff collects in the Tularosa Basin and forms lakes that dry up.  Everywhere else this runoff would go into the sea, but here it is trapped and evaporates.

Crystals of selenite form, which are very fragile and breakdown into very fine particles by the strong winds present during the summer monsoon.  This wind movement also creates the dunes, which are said to be moving southwest to northeast at a rate of up to 35 feet per year in some areas.  The true story though is how plants and animals have adapted to live here, from fast growing soaptree yucca, to the white earless lizards.  More than once though for us northerners, we caught ourselves expecting it to be cold when we jumped out of the truck.  It looks just like snow and the plow they use on the park road to keep it open creates the same plow furloughs.  Check out the views.

Gypsum crystals

October 14, 2012

This was a travel day as we made our way toward Alamogordo, Spanish for Big Cottonwood, due to three huge cottonwood trees that lived by the local spring.  Strange to us, we have now encountered two Border Patrol checkpoints, asking our citizenship in our travels.  You pass through several cameras upon entering these checkpoints.  The scenery is quite pretty, but there are the climbs as you make your way over some of the mountains.  The truck handled these with little problem, maintaining 45-50 mph, but at 8 to 9 mpg.  We have been experimenting with the gas, since regular is 86 octane.  It seems to work fine no knocking and fuel economy is the same as with 88 octane mid-grade.

October 13, 2012

Today we visited Tombstone, AZ, about an 1 ½ hour drive from Tucson.  The town is actually an Old West museum.  Of course it is most known for the shootout at the OK Corral between the Earp brothers, the McLowerys, and the Clantons, which we’ll get to momentarily.  Tombstone however  really began as a mining town after Ed Schieffelin discovered silver in 1877.  All the gunfights and typical old west type stuff were actually pretty common in mining towns.  Setting Tombstone apart were a band of cowboys that rustled cattle, robbed stagecoaches, and generally caused problems with the residents of Tombstone.

In the 1880s Tombstone was in its heyday, 15,000 residents and a booming economy.  They bounced back from two fires that destroyed the town, but when the pumps failed and the mines flooded that was pretty much the end of it.  We toured one of Schieffelin’s mines, down to 400 feet or so, as the rest is still underwater.  This is an underground hard rock mine.  They drilled the holes for dynamite by hand using hammer and star bits, by candlelight!  We can only imagine how many hands were broken in this process.  When he finally sold the mine, Schieffelin had earned $300,000 in 1890’s dollars.  Yield ran as high as 1400 ounces of silver per ton.  Schieffelin staked his claim, calling it Tombstone, since he was told he would have a tombstone before he found any silver.  Thus the town became known by that name.

 

Drilling holes for dynamite

Now onto the big gunfight, which lasted all of 30 seconds, however the build up was going on for weeks. Mainly it was between the Clantons and Doc Holiday.  Holiday started the thing going when he shot Billy Clanton.  Ironically, the McLowery’s were leaving town and were at the OK Corral to settle a debt.  They were armed which was against the law at the time in Tombstone.  As you know, Frank and Tom McLowery and Billy Clanton were killed. Virgil and Morgan were wounded.  Ike Clanton, Holiday’s nemesis got away as he was unarmed. Did you know that Doc was a dentist, but he was better known as a gambler and drunk? 

There was an inquest but without a decision. Virgil was later badly wounded and lost use of his left arm.  Morgan was killed.  After that,Wyatt went off the deep end and led a vendetta to kill all the cowboys; high on the list were the men that killed Morgan.  The town does a good job of preserving this history, although few of the buildings are original.  The OK Corral re-enactment was a bit of a disappointment.  There was no gun smoke and the guns sounded like toys.  Visiting Tombstone was really like a day back in time.

Tombstone Residents

Allen St, the main street of Tombstone

October 12, 2012

Today’s adventure took us to the Pima County Air & Space Museum.  Looking at a bunch of old airplanes is not Lynn’s idea of a day in paradise, but she did find parts of it interesting.  Dan took the tour to the “Boneyard”, actually the Davis Monthon A.F.B. (Aerospace Maintenance And Regeneration Group) where military aircraft removed from service are brought for storage or scrap.  There were 4,400 aircraft on site.  Many planes date back to the Korean War.  The U.S. has sold many surplus aircraft to other countries. When a part is needed that cannot be made, they place an order and the part is cannibalized from one of these planes.

Between the two locations is an amazing collection of old, and not so old, aircraft.  Pima has done a remarkable job in restoring the aircraft they have on display.  Dan is somewhat an aircraft aficionado, as the design and size of these machines is a fascination.  The following are pictures of a few.

Planes being parted out

F14A "Top Gun"