Thursday Nov 28, Bisbee AZ….Thanksgiving Day!

A section of the Clifton mine...too big to get in one photo!

It is a strange feeling as we wind down our travels, this time next week we will be handing Ruakiwi over to her new owners in Tucscon and flying home….making the most of our last week.

Clifton is all about mining, it is here for the industry and has that feel about it. One of the narrow old original streets has been retained, many of the buildings on the historic register, they are rather derelict and nothing has been down to return them to their former glory, but an interesting place to walk through.

Drove about 5 miles out of town to the top of the hill to get a view of the mine…..one of the biggest copper mines in the world. It is huge, especially looking down watching the dump trucks climbing around the roads like ants. We got chatting to Anne, a delightful lady who came to Clifton as a bride 60 years ago when she was 17, her husband worked in the pay office all his life and they both still live in town. She had been born and bred in Anacortes, Washington and was most interested to hear that we had stored our van there and spent some time there. She told us how she cried a lot when she arrived in Clifton, as she so missed the coast so much and I can understand why as Clifton is not really a pretty place.

Anne....she spent 60 years here.

Then it was back on the road heading south for Bisbee, once again passing through Lordsburg. Hard to believe we were in snow covered hills yesterday as we drove through the desert. As we got closer to the Mexico and the border crossing at Douglas we saw quite a number of border patrol vehicles scanning the hills for illegal immigrants…didn’t see any action though.

Bisbee is also a copper mining town, but not on the scale of Clifton. The old town has been reinvented as a tourist destination with many galleries and upmarket shops (looking forward to checking them out tomorrow!). We found an RV camp overlooking the mine, and as it was just a short walk from town we found our way to the very old Copper Queen Hotel and had a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner with turkey and all the trimmings….I am sure our American family and friends will be pleased that we were able to join in with the celebrations!

The old main street of Clifton