Part of the last several weeks, I volunteered to help my brother move out to Arizona where he starts his new job.  Driving a U-Haul across the country (1400 miles) is not a big deal, but it does take 3 or 4 days to do so.  I-40 in Arkansas is fairly rough, but the worst stretch is in Oklahoma.  That state needs to seriously upgrade the interstate there.  I noticed construction, so they have started, but they also have a long way to go.  The only mishap while driving was having one of the rear tires explode (incidentally, shortly after we entered Oklahoma).  Luckily, the rear tires on this U-Haul were the dual kind, so I didn’t have any trouble after the blowout to make it off the freeway and into a gas station to wait for the repair guy.  We didn’t have to wait long and were able to continue within an hour. =)  The funny thing about that gas station was that I had stopped by that very one when I moved out from California headed the other direction.  Cherokee Casino and Travel Plaza on the border of Cherokee Nation in OK  is a very nice stop if you’re ever around there.  They even have a lounge with a big screen tv playing movies as well as showers if you need them.

After helping my brother’s family move, we had a few days before my flight back home and could spend a couple days out doing the tourist thing.  We ended up taking a tour of Tombstone, Boot Hill and the nearby old copper mining town of Bisbee.

Tombstone sprang onto the scene in 1881 when the silver mine was discovered.  It boomed and died out before 1890 with it’s death due primarily to an earthquake that sent the nearby river underground and flooding the mines.  It stood as a ghost town for nearly 50 years before it was brought back to life as a historical tourist town.  Thanks to the desert air, quite a few of the original furnishings still exist, complete with bullet holes and knife scars from those early days.  There’s quite a number of venues to watch and participate in while there.  Reenactments of the OK Corral, cat house museums, comedy shows, street fights, people in costumes and the like can be found here.