Day 6 Tombstone and Mexico

On Thursday we got up early again and this time went for a short hike on a trail by Matt and Jess's house.

 After our hike we headed downtown again with Jess and Ella to check out the museum. We went through the museum while Jess took Ella to the park. The museum was really well done and gave a great over view of the history of the town as well as a fantastic mining exhibit upstairs with beautiful stones they got from the mines. Once we finished up at the museum we went for a short walk with Jess to look through a few stores before heading to Tombstone!

 Arriving in town we found the historic main street and started looking for a  place to eat. We settled on the Crystal Palace which was interesting. The food was good, we ate Buffalo burgers...but the waitresses were dressed as whores, which wasn't so cool.



Eating the Buffalo Burger



They will drive you around town :)

 We looked through a couple shops after lunch and then headed to the re-enactment of the O.K. Corral fight. It was ok, the best part was the guy playing Doc Holliday, he seemed to be trying to act like Val Kilmer from the movie.

Random guy with his pet parrot

View from a side street

 The characters also just walk the streets and act out fights  which was really fun to watch!



Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday

We then headed to the grave yard and the picture below is of the guys killed in the O.K. Corral shoot out. It was also interesting to read that most of the people buried here were murdered. 

 Once we got back to Matt and Jess's house we drove down to the boarder with Mexico that is only about 15 mins from their house. Here is a picture of the fence...

 We walked across the boarder into Mexico and had a great time as the boarder patrol guys on both sides found us very amusing. I even found myself acting like I had never left the country before, but this was the first time I had ever just walked across. We got our passport stamped and walked into the small town of Naco. We snapped some pictures and then walked back, Dan even sent a text message while we were there :)


We are in Mexico!!



We then headed out for dinner making jokes about our time in Mexico which was only about 15 mins :)

Day 5 Arizona

Our first day in Arizona started early...thank you 2 hour time change :) We went out with Jess and her little girl to do a Mine Tour at the Queen mine. It is a horizontal mine so we could ride a train straight into the mountain on a little train. They use to mine silver, copper, and gold from this mine and they showed us some examples in one of the caves.


Ella ready for the train ride

 

Going into the Mine

700 feet in

How they use dynamite

Toilet car

 After the trip into the mine Jess took Ella back home and we went to Bisbee to take their trolley tour of the city. It was really interesting to hear how the town was a mining town and when the mine closed at the end of the 70's the town because almost completely deserted. Then some Hippie's from Berkley came and moved in, you only have to live somewhere for a year to claim squatter rights.

Downtown

 This sign was less then 100 feet from a guy trying to hitch hike :) After our tour we drove to the grocery store to pick up some things for Jess before heading home. On our way to the store we saw a storm was coming in and by the time we left it had started to rain. This was strange because right now they shouldn't be getting rain...and then we realized it had started to hail!


Pea size hail

View from the house

It was crazy seeing the ground covered...it looked like snow! We hung out with Jess while Ella napped and then got dinner together while watching a baseball game. We had a great time hanging out at the house with Matt and Jess.

Day 4 Good bye Texas, Hello Arizona!

      On our fourth day in the South, we finished up our time in Texas doing laundry and spending time together at the house. We had gone to an Asian market on Saturday in search of Dragon Fruit...what we did find was Mangosteens...they looked a little different here, less purple and not soft enough to open with your hands. I even had trouble using a knife to cut them open, Kenneth came and finally got them open for me.
       It was fun getting to spend time with the girls before we had to leave and I was working hard to get Rebecca to smile and laugh...I got really close. She smiled later for Dan :) We were flying out at 2:20 so we gave ourselves enough time to get checked in and get lunch before boarding our plane.

Mangosteen's!



Building a tower of blocks

 

Once we arrived in Tucson we got our rental car and began our drive to Bisbee where Matt and Jess live. We stopped to get food as it was dinner time in Texas when we arrived. Arizona is on Mountain Time but they don't observe day light savings, so they are 3 hours behind Indiana and 2 hours behind Texas. We were excited about the drive because I had never been to Arizona before and Dan had never been to this part of Arizona. Here are some pictures from our drive...

Leaving the Airport

 Once we reached Matt and Jess's house we dropped our things off and all went to the Historic downtown Bisbee to have some dinner. We stopped first at the Lavender pit to see how deep it was. It is left over from the strip mining that was taking place in Bisbee.



The pit



We had a great time at dinner and then walked around a little bit before heading back to the house to relax.

Day 3 video

Here is a video from Fossil Rim...Samantha thought this was really funny to watch.

Texas Day 3

For our third day we headed out in the morning to Del Rose, TX to visit Fossil Rim. It is a wildlife park you drive through and can feed the animals from your car. It took just under 2 hours to get there from Karie and Kenneth's and we made a stop for lunch along the way.



Lunch time

  We we arrived Kenneth got us feed for the animals and then we headed into the park.

The animals are use to being fed so it was fun having them so close to the car and getting to feed them right from our hands.



 The animals would stick their heads into the cars and as you can see from above get very close!

 All these animals came right up the car knowing we had food for them...they would follow us as we would drive away as well.

Cooling his jets :)

 Half way through we had a chance to stop and get something to eat and visit the petting zoo. It was fun watching Samantha with the animals and we got to brush the goats.

 For the last half the trip we continued seeing lots of animals and at the very end saw Rhinos in a large pen, but they were being fed and we couldn't get too close.

Perspective on the size of the bird when he stands next to a car (this was the car in front of us)

 When we reached the end we took some time to get out and stretch before heading back to Dallas. We got some pictures with Rebecca before we left.