Bisbee, AZ to Peoria (Phoenix), AZ

2/2/09 Mine Tour and Travel to Phoenix

Weather - Beautiful day, clear blue sky, 60

Today we got up early and walked down to the entrance of the Queen mine for a 9AM tour. The Queen mine has an interesting history. Evidence of ore was found, lost in a card game, changed hands in a horse race, etc. It's interesting reading at http://www.queenminetour.com/index.htm
The mine produced 6.1 billion dollars of metals (1975 dollars) including copper, gold, silver, and zinc during it's operation. Today you can ride the old mining train 1500 feet into the mountain and learn the mining process used. It's all very interesting. Below is a video of our trip into the mine.

After finishing the mine trip we packed up, unhooked and headed for Tucson. A few miles north of Bisbee we came to another border patrol checkpoint. A couple simple questions and we were again on our way. Joan was amazed and somewhat disappointed that they didn't want to search our trailer for unlawful aliens. My feeling is that they can tell just by looking and a short chat whether they want to do a search.

Just a few miles past the checkpoint Joan asked what was in the sky over to my left. At first I didn't see anything but then I saw this white spot in the sky. At first I thought that it was an airplane but after watching it for a while it just stayed in one spot. I decided that it was a UFO and needed further checking out. It was probably 5 miles away but pretty large to show up that well. At the first opportunity I pulled to the side of the road and got out the binoculars. I was trying to figure out in my mind how I was going to get a picture of a UFO and deal with the resulting fame on the newsreels, etc. Upon using the binoculars it turned out to look like a small blimp but stationary in one spot. Remembering back to articles in Popular Mechanics or someplace I decided it was one of the tethered balloons that the Border Patrol uses to watch activities on the border to Mexico. After watching it for a few minutes it was back on the highway to Tucson.

Amelia led us to Joan's family friend Oleta's in Tucson. The GPS is handy when you don't know your way around a city. We had a nice visit with Oleta and picked some grapefruit from the tree in her backyard.

From Tucson we headed up to Peoria on the NW corner of Phoenix. It seems like once you get to Phoenix you should be there but it takes an hour just to get across Phoenix. Anyhow we got to Tracey and Anjan's around 6PM.

The final mileage was about 2,900 miles since leaving home.