Where next in Arizona?

Our next venture in Arizona took us further south to Sierra Vista, near Ft. Hauchuca, closer to the Mexican border. We spent a week in a retirement type mobile home park but found ourselves close to many interesting places. Our first stop was at the Murray Springs-Clovis site part of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. It is one of the nation's premier Paleo-Indian archeological sites.  It is 13,000 years old and was recently designated a National Historic Landmark.

Next stop has always been one of my favorite places. Yes, Tombstone! As a child of the 50's, I grew up on these guys:

In case you don't remember the first guy, it is Hopalong Cassidy. The perfect representative of the American cowboy. Honest, straight talking, heroic, and loved his horse more than any girl. I have every one of the Saturday serials on DVD. And, what can you say about the original Lone Ranger and Tonto? How was it that they lived on trail and still kept their clothes perfectly clean? Hi-yo Silver, away!

But my real heroes were these guys....

Gene Barry as Bat Masterson and Hugh O'Brien as Wyatt Earp. To this day, Wyatt Earp still represents the west to me. I know in real life that he was flawed, but still what a life. And, where was the most famous moment of Wyatt Earp's real life, Tombstone, AZ. The gunfight at the OK Corral lives on as one of the most memorable moments in the Old West. Tombstone, the movie, said it all. Who can forget this?

The real Tombstone has become a little commercial with reenactments of the gunfight on a regular schedule and lots of souvenir shops, but you can walk the streets that the Earps walked or stop at Big Nose Kate's or the Oriental. 

The Tombstone Epitaph is still being published and, in fact is for sale. If you always wanted to be a newspaper editor, this is the place for it!

I know it is a dream, but to me, this place represents the Old West. It can be summed up in the moral code of the Lone Ranger,

I believe...

• That to have a friend, a man must be one.
• That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.
• That God put the firewood there, but that every man must gather and light it himself.
• In being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for what is right.
• That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.
• That 'this government of the people, by the people, and for the people' shall live always.
• That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.
• That sooner or later...somewhere...somehow...we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.
• That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever.
• In my Creator, my country, my fellow man.

Could you imagine if we had a president who lived by that code?