After the miserable weather the night before, we woke up to over cast, but not rainy skies.
Nogales was hard on the Mexican border, as evidenced by the signs.
Nogales had some neat adaptive reuse, like this City Hall building.
Not quite sure what they were trying to do to this gas station.
We stopped for breakfast at a little adobe looking place. The food wasn't great, but it was hot and quick.
We headed eastwards from Nogales back over the same roads we had driven over the night before. In the daylight it was kind of pretty. Unfortunately, we would encounter overcast skies on and off for the rest of the trip.
We headed into Tombstone, AZ completely by accident. It was a neat old town, with a side-street running parallel to the main street that was set up as it would have been in the late 1800's.
Yes, it was as touristy as you'd expect, but watching a reenactment of the Gunfight at the OK Corral was still a lot of fun.
BOOM! BOOM! The actors were funny, and you could tell they enjoyed their roles.
They put on their game-faces for photographs.
We didn't eat in Big Nose Kate's, it was far too touristy.
We wandered across the street to another saloon that felt a bit more "local" and had food and a beer.
I think also possibly some whiskey, because we were in the Olde West, right?
Heading eastward again, we ran into more storms and cool temperatures.
One of my favorite places that we stumbled upon was Bisbee, AZ. It was a neat little mining town nestled in the mountains, and had a lot of charm. There were shops and restaurants, and a lot of people wandering around. I definitely want to go back.
Just outside of Bisbee was the main reason the town existed, a huge open mining pit.
After Bisbee, we ducked down to the Mexican border again in Douglas, AZ, where I once again attempted to cross over to Mexico.
Douglas didn't have much going on, but they did have a lot of neat old architecture.
More tempestuous skies as we continued eastwards.
Lunchtime found us stopping at this roadside rest area.
It was sadly far too cold to actually eat at the picnic table, so we made our food and climbed back into the car.
Threatening skies again.
Towards the end of the day, we crossed over into New Mexico finally.
We picked up I-10 a few hours later, and motored on into Las Cruces. We passed through Las Cruces and over the Organ Mountains, looking for Aguirre Spring Campground. It was dark by the time we attempted to set up camp, and unfortunately the campground we had selected had closed for the night. So we made do with pitching our tent, building a fire and making dinner in a gravel lot behind the ranger's house, overlooking a huge military base. Even though it wasn't idea, it was a beautiful spot to camp.
