Focht Family Blog

Today we are leaving Tombstone. Yesterday was a day of spotting wildlife. Nathan went out to walk Misty in the morning and was about 30 feet from a coyote. Then later that day we saw roadrunners around our campsite. This thrilled Timmy because he has been wanting to see a roadrunner since we passed into Texas. Then as the sun was beginning to set I spotted a skunk in the dog walk area. I did manage to get a picture of the skunk but it wasn’t very good. However, the sun setting over the mountains was absolutely beautiful, so I took some pictures of our last sunset in Tombstone Territories RV Park.

Today we will be taking our time. We will check out of here by 12:00 and then we have a few places we want to stop and shop in Tuscon. We will spend the night at a Walmart somewhere in AZ. We wanted to go as far as Yuma but they do not allow overnight parking there. We have reservations in San Diego starting Thursday but check-in isn’t until 2:00 so we will be able to take our time getting there.

Yesterday we just stayed around the park. I thought I would post a picture of the kids from the first night. They had a beautiful pinata that was a ball with cones all around it. I have never seen a pinata like this. The kids all took turns with two other children from the park hitting it and the whole shell finally fell off and left the paper ball in the middle, still unbroken. Here are the children with two of the broken off cones.

The next morning they had the opportunity to meet an African Gray that is in one of the neighboring RVs. The kids enjoyed seeing his tricks.

Then we went to the pool in the afternoon. It is heated and in a room that blocks the wind. Unfortunately I should have taken a change of clothes with us because although the pool feels great while you are in it, it is extremely cold when you get out. The temperature dropped a little while we were swimming and the wind picked up quite a bit so we froze on the way back. Here are the kids on their way to the pool.

Today we went to Tombstone. At first driving into the town we were a bit disappointed because it didn’t look like an old town. But then Nathan found the touristy street. Here is a picture of one of the stage coaches that you can take a tour in.

We ate lunch at Longhorn. Virgil Earp was shot from the second story of the building. It used to be the Bucket of Blood Saloon. According to the plaque on the door, the original building burned down and this building was rebuilt on the site so it isn’t the actual building where Virgil Earp was shot from.

After lunch we were trying to find something to do while waiting for the OK Corral reenactment at 2:00. So we went on a mine tour.

We all had to put on safety equipment before we could go into the mine.

This mine was active for 9 years. They mined silver and mined $3 million worth with only candles and chisels. The mine is still full of silver ore and also copper. He said the price of silver needs to go up another $10 an ounce to make it worth the money to continue to mine the site. Everyone enjoyed the tour but it was a bit too much excitement for Josh.

The next stop was the OK Corral. The group that was performing today did some skits that showed several different sides of life in the era before showing the reenactment of the shootout. Here is a picture at the end while both groups are lined up right before they started shooting.

The final picture is of the three dead performers laying in front of their tombstones with the other actors behind them. The Earps and Doc Holiday were in front of the saloon and I didn’t get a picture of them.

The funniest part was when Josh was waving goodbye to them and William Clanton waved back to him while he was supposed to be dead. :) After the OK Corral we went to Walmart and bought a metal detector for the kids that Nathan is going to take them out tomorrow to use. Unfortunately Misty has a cut on her pad and also has a stomach virus that medicine doesn’t seem to be helping so we will also have to find a vet tomorrow. When we came back to the RV she had gotten on our bed and their was blood on our bed as well as a bloody path from one end of the RV to the next so we will have to figure out how to get all of the blood stains out tomorrow as well.

This morning we woke up and started back on the road. We stopped in New Mexico before the Arizona border and drove to Stein’s Railroad Ghost Town. It was extremely small and was closed until January 24. So back on the road we went. We drove to Tombstone Territory RV Park. They have huge sites and advertise that no rig is too big so we actually have both of us on one site. We paid for our site and then you pay for your electricity separately when you leave so they didn’t care that we are using both the 50amp and 30amp plugs.

As soon as we parked we got out our stickers and put Arizona on.

I think we are just going to rest and enjoy for today and tomorrow. They have a heated pool and a jacuzzi so we will probably do that tomorrow. Mom is happy because they have a book exchange. Tonight at 6:00 they are busting open a pinata so we will take the kids to that. It seems like you are in the middle of nowhere out here but it is beautiful and we have views of the mountains all around us. Here are some pictures that I took outside of our site.

I was sick yesterday so I will use that as my excuse. I forgot to add that after we went to the caverns yesterday we drove to one of Nathan’s customers, Salsa Express. The company is situated on a 300 acre ranch that had an abundance of wild life that was varied. We saw deer and some kind of African antelope. It was very interesting. The kids were given a tour and they got to pick eggs out of the chicken nests. They also were able to pet a chicken. The kids had a lot of fun and Samantha was overjoyed by the experience.

Today has been spent on the road. We left the Walmart at Fort Stockton about 10:00 and stopped in El Paso to get the dogs groomed. I had to take a picture of Punch. Usually they put bandannas around their necks but apparently they felt Punch was a bit more froo-froo.

During our driving today the kids were getting a bit silly. Samantha put all of her doll’s knitted caps on Josh and he was just too funny.

The last picture I took today was of Mexico. We are on I-10 and there is a section close to El Paso where you can literally see the Mexico border. We have seen a lot of Border Patrol cars today.

I believe Nathan said that tomorrow we will be going to a ghost town on our way to Tombstone.

Natural Bridge Caverns IS definitely worth the money! It made us want to drive back to Cascade and ask for our money back. :) Wow is all I can say. We took the Northern Cave Tour. I thought it would be fitting to have a picture of the “natural bridge” so you can see where it gets its name.

The tour guide we had was VERY knowledgeable and explained the differences between all of the rock formations and how they are formed and even where the coloration comes from on some of them. Here is a picture of one of the stalagmites in the first large room we came to.

I honestly cannot remember what all the different types of formations were so I will let some of my favorite pictures speak for the beauty of the cavern.

I had a hard time paring it down to only 6 pictures from inside the cavern. It was absolutely beautiful. Next time we go through we will have to stop again and go on the Jeremy Room Tour. After we finished with our tour we bought the kids some bags of dirt that had rough gems in it. Then we went to their sluice and picked out boxes so they could slosh the dirt around and uncover their gems. They had a lot of fun finding the gems.

We are stopped in Fort Stockton for the night. I-10 is very desolate in this area. We drove for hours without seeing any signs of civilization. We were going to go to Carlsbad but we have decided to save that for next year’s trip west. I’m not sure what we will be doing tomorrow other than catching up with school. Our next planned stop will be for a few days in Tombstone, AZ.