From the Wild West to the Cold War

We were sure that when we left the Gulf Coast, we would leave those dreadful rainstorms behind us. Boy, were we wrong! It rained intermittently all day long, the downpours increasing, somehow, whenever we would start to drive. The good news is that we did not have very far to drive to see some really fun stuff this morning.

We awoke in Tombstone, Arizona, and got an early start exploring the historic "town too tough to die." Unfortunately, the town is not too tough to sleep, and, consequently, nothing was open until 9:00. We used the time to walk through the historic district and to plan our activities for the day.

Once the businesses on Tombstone's main strip opened their doors, we stepped into the Bird Cage Theatre. This building, featured on the History Channel's special "Haunted Tombstone," is the town's only original building and stands today as it has since the 1880s, with very little restoration. We toured the theater's gambling hall, saloon, stage, and even the rooms downstairs where the "ladies of the night" hung their licenses, so to speak. Bullet holes in the walls bore witness to the many gunfights this building has seen over the years.

Next, we toured the "Ghosts and Legends" exhibit. This haunted house attraction was creative and fun in its presentation of the history of Tombstone. The tour is guided by the ghost of Doc Holliday and features a few fun surprises to keep even the most jaded tourist on his toes. Andy got a big kick out of Kala's reactions to a few of the scary moments. The tour ended in the very room where Wyatt Earp's brother Morgan was shot and killed so many years ago.

Following the ghost tour, we visited the O.K. Corral, site of the infamous gunfight between the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and the McLaury and Clanton brothers. We toured the museum, learned more about the hierarchy of prostitution in 1880s Arizona, and watched an animatronic reenactment of the gunfight. The "Historama" includes a diorama and film presentation of the history of Tombstone from its beginnings as a mining town, through its glory days as the county seat, to the end of the mining era and the subsequent exodus of the majority of Tombstone's citizens. The film was not very impressive — it didn't even have Sam Elliot in it, for goodness sake! Still, it was worth the price of admission to get a refresher course on the history of the Wild West.

We had lunch at a local saloon, picked up our souvenir copies of the Epitaph, Tombstone's original newspaper, and visited Boothill Graveyard and the Tombstone Jewish Memorial (Who knew there was such a thing?) before returning to the Interstate. Just outside of Tucson, we stopped at Mission San Xavier del Bac, where we had been told we could find the best Native American fry bread in Arizona. Of course, we had to try some. It was like a giant beignet! We suppose every culture has something similar. We enjoyed the treat very much, but we decided to forgo exploration of the eighteenth-century mission and instead visit the Titan Missile Museum about twenty kilometers (Interstate 19 is, for some reason, marked in kilometers instead of miles.) south.

During the Cold War, what is now the Titan Missile Museum was one of eighteen nuclear missile silos in the Tucson area. With the disarmament treaties in the 1980s, all of the other sites were destroyed, but this one, in Sahuarita, Arizona, has been preserved as a museum. The 103-foot-tall missile, now disarmed and disabled, still stands in its underground shaft, aimed at the heavens, as a reminder of the massive destructive firepower once deemed necessary for the defense of our country and our way of life.

Our tour guide led us deep below the earth's surface, behind eight-foot-thick walls of concrete and steel, to the control room where for almost twenty years our brave defenders of democracy sat and waited for the order to launch: an order which, thankfully, never came. We were shown the codebooks, the control consoles, and the launch keys, and the complete procedure for firing the weapon was described to us in great detail. It was a fascinating subject and one of the best historical museum tours we've ever experienced. If you ever get the chance, see this museum!

Having returned to ground level, we set out west again toward Yuma, where we would be spending the night, but we were unable to resist the lure of yet another small-town roadside attraction, the Dateland Restaurant, where we just had to sample the "World Famous Date Milkshake." It actually wasn't so bad.

Tonight we're in Yuma, Arizona, just a mile or so from the California state line. Our grand summer adventure is nearing its completion, a fact that has sparked mixed emotions in us. We've been having such a wonderful time touring the continent, but lately we've also found that we've been missing home. We'll see it again soon.