Steve and I visited Tombstone down in Southern Arizona a couple of years ago. I only had a crappy camera, so it was amazing that I got anything at all worth keeping. We just happened to be passing by the cemetary at sundown.
I love history, and I love visiting places like Tombstone that have the old courthouse, the old saloons, and, well, in this case an old livery stable where people were gunned down. What I can't stand are the hack re-enactors who stop everything so they can do a crappy performance of something that may or may not have happened. Tombstone has strict ordinances about the re-enactors, so they don't have that particular problem.
However, we have a town nearby called "Oatman," and it's about ten buildings on a hillside that developed in the 1800's when there was some mining in the area. It's an awful tourist attraction. The stores all have overpriced garbage, the food is expensive and meager, and they charge money for people to walk thru a two-room hotel that Clark Gable MAY have slept in. Of course there are signs everywhere stating that Clark Gable haunts the place. Oh, okay. Could they have been any more desperate and random? And the worst part about the whole place is the re-enactors who make a bunch of noise and block the only street in or out of town. They act as though they're drunk and they do a hideous job of reciting lines. Get real.
So. Back to Tombstone.
I am going to Tucson in October as a delegate for a Republican Women's convention. It's about an hour drive from Tombstone, and luckily it falls on the same weekend as the annual "Helldorado Days." It's when they commemorate the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. I am so there. I will most definitely be dressed as a saucy little cowgirl so I can pose for a picture in the saloon that Wyatt Earp owned. Yeeehaaaa!!!!
