Traveling with the Tombstones and friends

[Tombstone]

Pretty slow day again today, I cooked a big breakfast with mimosas and bloody’s, I say that so you will know what it takes to get me to cook breakfast for you. Anyway, slow day, we did run by the Harley Shop where Lady T got me looking at a new bike. Thank goodness they did not appreciate my bike as much as they valued theirs.
We went to a mine that was turned into a little tourist area with shops and a restaurant. Had a little fun browsing and had lunch. I was wearing my Proud American shirt with a saying on the back that raises a few hackles. This fellow came out and wanted to buy me a beer because of the shirt. He was from Turkey, had been kicked out of 4 countries, came to our country in 76, he became a citizen as soon as he could. He was a slave to a Muslim King and escaped to our country. He was prouder than most Americans I know. He loves our country and is so very happy to be here.

We are now sitting around a campfire eating one of the best pizzas I have had in a long time. We are heading to Tombstone in the morning. I will report more there as there should be a lot going on once we get there. On to Tombstone, the Town to Tough to Die.

More tomorrow.

[Fast Harley]

Don't get caught up in all the action, keep those stories coming.
Harley.

[Tombstone]

We made it to Tombstone. We arrived here about 2:00 and got set up and of course headed to town. Visited Big Nose Kate's and had a beverage and appetizer and came back to camp. I fixed dinner for about 10 of us here at camp. We had Titus and Fanny Kicker, Hombre Sin Nombre, two of our friends from Colorado that don’t shoot but still come down to visit with us for a few days and us five. We sat around a campfire until the wood/propane ran out and headed to bed.
We plan to do a little riding today and will try to get a group to go with us to Chiricahua National Monument. We went a few years ago and it is amazing. The rock formations are wonderful and go on for miles. I have been told it is the second most visited location in Arizona after the Grand Canyon.

We will run to the range tomorrow morning to get Lady T set up and visit with the many good people we have met over the years. By the way we are shooting early on Friday, temps are going to be in the low 40's. I told Whiskey Creek that at least it was a dry cold. It does warm up pretty quickly as the sun comes up so should not be too cold for too long but that is still going to be a shock to our system after the heat we have had this year.

This trip is winding down way to fast, can’t wait until we can come out and stay for a while longer. Everything about this state calls to me.

I have already run into a few cowboys and ladies with many more due to arrive today and tomorrow. The Derringer gang will be here in full force and we are all staying at the same campground.
 
I will try to write more later, it gets harder to write after I get to Tombstone, there is just too much going on and people to visit with.

More later I hope.

[Tombstone]

All I can say is GAME ON, the crew is here and it is already happening. We all went to the monument park yesterday. It was as breathtaking as I remembered and I think everyone was happy that they went. Took about an hour and a half to get there but was well worth it.

Copperhead and Whiskey rolled in yesterday morning and they joined us on the journey along with our friends from Colorado, Hombre and the five of us. When we returned to camp Mongo and Long Gulch were waiting on us. Seems the cabin they are in was not ready for check-in. We all met in Tombstone at Big Noes Kates for a beverage or two and then went to the Crystal Palace for dinner. There were 15 of us by that time. We were joined by Kid Rich and his wife. Shamrock Sadie and Knott came in with some local shooters so pretty much everyone in the bar was a SASS shooter. We moseyed over to the Crystal for dinner, still about 15 strong and had dinner while they closed that bar down. The Town to Tough to Die sure does go to bed early. We headed back to the campground for the regular doings and of course closed the campground down too. Ran Joe and Creek off so I could go to bed, we got to meet Joes new Lady Friend and got to know her. Wonderful lady and held her own with us. It is good to see Copperhead happy again.

Today we are going to get Lady T set up this morning and then going to Bisbee which has become a tradition it seems.  Looking forward to the trip although I can only stand going into one or two stores before I am overwhelmed and have to sit it out for the rest of the day. Luckily I do most of my sitting it out in one of the two bars in town. One of the bars is the “Oldest Bar in Bisbee” and they have a copy of the Chattanooga Post on the wall. It really is a small world.

Got to get moving so we can get everything moving. Looking forward to seeing the range and seeing all the wonderful folks we have become friends with over the years. I am still looking forward to being able to stay out here for more than a week at a time. I am thinking maybe 3 month in a few years.

More later….

[Tombstone]

We got Lady T set up yesterday morning and then spent the day in Bisbee, it is a great little town with some really interesting shops, it is a little to left for my taste but still pretty and a good place to visit.

Got back to Tombstone and visited the Crystal Palace, a new bar on the site of the original Crystal Palace. They have it set up with a stage and chairs in a row like the old Bird Cage Theater. Nice bar and friendly folks of course. We came back to camp and cooked steaks for about 12 – 14 people. Had a great visit and sat around the campfire until it went out, ran out of wood/propane again. Got to get that filled up again today.

It is pretty chilly here in the morning with a daybreak temperature of about 43, it warms up quickly as soon as the sun is up but it is dang cold until then. Tomorrow morning we are all shooting the first flight that starts at 7:30 left coast time. I don’t think the sun is up by then. The range faces pretty much East so should be fun for the Black Powder shooters. The temps are forecasted for the high 30’s at day break. It will be hard to get started with cold hands and feet. Anyway, today is the warm-up match, I think it is 3 stages but may be 4. I will have the posse marshal walk through this afternoon and that is always brutal at this match. We plan to behave this evening since we will have to be at the range about 6:30 for the 7:00 safety meeting. We will probably go into town tonight for dinner but it will be early and pretty dry as far as adult beverages go.

I will let you know how the side matches and warm-up stages, it will be the first time Mongo has shot these targets but I think he will like it. They really are too close but what the heck, when in Rome and all of that stuff.

More Later…

[Anita Margarita]

Tombstone,

Sounds like you are having a good time so far.  I don't envy the early start times. 

We are down at the North Alabama Regulators for the SE Regional.  We have seen a bunch of our locals here already.   Shot the warm-up today in dry sunny conditions, but the two main match days looks pretty rough (read: wet).   Here, they are embracing the idea of diversity in target sizes.  One stage has a giant cowboy 8 feet tall and another has two pistol targets that are approximately 10" x 10" at maybe 5-ish yards.

I wish you all luck out there and, well, we will be using umbrellas here!

AM

[Tombstone]

It is 5:30 in the morning out here and I am getting ready to go to the range. The safety meeting is at 7:00 and shooting starts at 7:30. The warm-up was fast and fun. Of course since it really did not count for anything we started playing on the last stage. All of us Outlaws took a “P” so we could shoot it differently than written. I know that is hard to believe but hey, we are still Outlaws. We had a fellow GF that had never been around us and he kept looking at the book and then would watch one of us shoot. He finely went to Black Zack and pointed out that the instructions called for a sweep and we were not sweeping, Black Zack told him what we were doing and to not follow the Outlaws, he was a trifle upset because he wanted to shoot it like we did. I told him he was welcome to and it would only cost him 10 seconds. For some reason he did want to play that way.

We went into town for dinner and everyone agreed that it needed to be an early night with some restraint shown on our part. It must have worked because only a few came back to camp for some small talk and a final drink around the campfire.

Early flight this morning with the temps hovering at a balmy 44 degrees, I don’t know if there is a breeze or not but I am riding the bike into the range so there will be a big breeze for a few miles. I am sure my fellow campers who shoot the afternoon flight will be happy to hear the Harley fire up this morning right before daylight. Hope everyone shoots well today both out here, at the Regional and at with the Rangers.

More later after I thaw out…..

[Tombstone]

First day is in the books, I think most of our group is doing OK, a few misses were recorded but all in all we are hanging in. At this point Whiskey Creek is having a fantastic match and I hope he can maintain for the next 6 stages. For my part I had a small shotgun problem that I was trying to clear and the gun went off while I was holding it one handed. I managed to hold onto the gun but the hammer ripped a part of my thumb apart. I now have a deep gouge that is the shape and size of a 97 hammer. I am going to try to shot today but by the last stage yesterday I was flinching every time I cocked my right gun. It sure has slowed me down and not sure how it will fell today. I guess that is the life of a cowboy in these days.

Had a big crew over for dinner last night, I think there were about 15 of us there. Had a little too much fun and all of that but we are shooting the second shift today so plenty of time to recover.
I heart is out for the regional shooters, it looks like it has rained non-stop for two days. Good luck to everyone and try to stay as dry as you can. Out here it seems to never rain so all is good in Arizona.

I will report the final day I hope this afternoon and award are tomorrow morning. I hope that Whiskey Creek is top of the list for Gunfighter but there are some really fast youngsters this year.

More later…..

[Tombstone]

The 20th BorderTown is in the books. It went OK for me considering I had my thumb taped so tight and thick I could not feel my hammer on my right pistol. Whiskey Creek beat me like a drum and I hope he takes the Gunfighter category but he threw a miss on the third stage yesterday and that may have cost him a place or two. We had a posse of 27 shooters; they worked hard and made it a lot easier than last year. We met some folks from across the ocean, two from Australia, one from the Netherlands and one form Sweden. The last two are a wonderful couple who said they only get to shoot about 12 times a year and had to drive 8 hours to get to the closest SASS match. Sassy Dancer had a great match, clean and fast. She seems to get better every year. She is in the shoot off along with Copperhead Joe (he has decided not to shoot in the shoot off.) On the last stage I told everyone that I had brought a little taste of the South for them to enjoy and pulled out two boxes of mini Moon Pies for them to enjoy. Everyone loved that little surprise. Our posse also did a tribute to Judge em All Duncan. I think about half the posse was in tears by the end of that.

The awards are this morning and then we head back to camp to start getting ready for the journey home. Last night Tombstone was packed and every bar and restaurant was packed with a waiting line to get in. Not really that much fun but we at least had dinner at Long Horns but by the end of dinner we all decided we needed to go home and get some much needed rest. I always feel like I have been running on adrenalin for three days and then I really crash hard. Hombre, Doc, Cactus and I sat around the campfire for a little while but even that was a push for me to stay up.

I will try to post some on the return trip but due to very questionable weather we are looking at taking the southern route home and that means a few days in Texas which really does not do anything for me. I will at least let everyone know how we stacked up in the awards. Hope the regional shooters survived. That storm looked really bad from out here.

More later…..

[Fast Harley]

Very sorry to hear about the thumb. Hope Creek finished well, and all of our pards shot well and enjoyed!
Did brother Cactus impress?
The SE Regional was indeed a wet one, but mostly on day one. Seemed our posse got the hardest rain on
the most open-air stages.
Long story short, I will be on line looking for more reasonable rainy weather footwear, because of.....
Yep, Bo Dacious beat me like a drum.
Safe travels, friends.
Harley.

[Tombstone]

The awards were fun, Windy City Red missed his calling, he should have been a stand-up comedian. He does make the long process easy to sit though. The scores are posted on the BorderTown website if anyone wants to see them. Whiskey Creek came in 3rd gunfighter and I managed to hang onto 6th. Long Gulch and Mongo also took home a very nice plaque but I don’t remember what place they came in.

We spent one last night in Tombstone after fixing dinner for Fanny Kicker, Titus, Shirt Tail Bess, Kid Rich, Hombre, Doc, Honey, Lady T, Cactus and myself. Went into town to say our goodbyes to the folks we have gotten to know over the years. It is always hard for me to leave, hopefully next year we  will be able to just stay as long as we want to. I am pretty sure that next year we will be out here for at least two weeks and maybe longer before the match but that may be decided at a later date.

We have left Tombstone and are heading east, wind is kicking hard but it is our back so maybe I will get those mpg’s back that I lost coming out week before last. We are pretty much just driving back 350 – 400 miles per day. Doc has to be back by Friday for a special event at UT homecoming on Saturday. I need to get back so I can leave Sunday for Orlando for a business meeting. With any luck this will be one of my last ones.

Long way to go to get home but we are heading  that way.

[Tombstone]

Harley, I looked at the results yesterday. An chance any one kept an eye on Bodacious? He is bad to double discharge his pistols and most folks will not call that on an Outlaw. Some are miss-informed that we can do that in Outlaw category.

[Fast Harley]

Yep, saw it real close.....he was on our posse.
Harley.

[Tombstone]

Not too much to write about but since Lady T is driving I thought I would try to put a little down in words. Yesterday we saw the wall in El Paso, you could see it from the interstate. Sorry for those that it offends but we liked seeing it. Made having to take the southern route almost worth it. We will be spending about 2 ½ days in hell or as the locals call it, Texas, but I degrees. We have been passing thought the oil fields this morning and they seem to be very active. You could see many “candles” burning off the bad gas. You could see many of them across the horizon. We have not made it to the Windmill farms yet but should get through them tomorrow.

We pushed hard for the first day and put down 400 or so miles. Wind was pretty hard but from behind us for most of the time so helped the fuel economy a little. We spent the night in Van Horn, TX at a pretty good RV park, they had a restaurant on site so that makes it very nice after a long day, food was good enough that we had breakfast with them this morning before pushing onward. We will make it to Abilene this afternoon and plan to eat dinner at the Bee Hive restaurant which is said to be the best steak house in Abilene. I am looking forward to that one since this is the heart of beef country.

Yesterday we saw a few things I never want to see again, we saw a Class A motorhome in flames on the side of the interstate. They had gotten a truck they were hauling off of a trailer but the trailer was still attached and flames were shooting out of the back half of the Motorhome. There were not emergency vehicles there yet and some fumes that had to be extremely toxic coming off of vehicle. There were people standing around and all they could do was watch it burn. Thank goodness most of that class of vehicle don’t have much propane and even if it did have a tank it would have a pressure valve that would have keep it from blowing up. We also saw a 18 wheeler driving down the interstate with black smoke coming out of one stack and about 3 feet of flames coming out of the other one.  Not sure what happened to that one, there was an exit he was approaching and hopefully they made it somewhere safe and got that one put out.

We did see another thing that was funny, there was a fellow jogging west down the east bound lane of I-10, he had on shorts, at tee shirt, hat and glasses with a scraggly beard. Lady T and I both said Forest Gump at the same time. We thought they were remaking the movie and he had out run the camera crew.

Maybe something to write about later….

[Tombstone]

After 3 nights in hell aka Texas we have arrived in Yuma, that's right Yuma, TN. Crossed into Tennessee this afternoon after being re-routed off of the interstate due to a massive wreck on I-40 just east of Little Rock. Lady T kept looking at alternate routes but I always responded with I will go where the trucks go. You don't just take the big rig down any old road. I follow the trucks, where the can go I can go. At least that is my theory. Of course a friend once said theory aint squat without experience. He may not have said squat. Anyway we are really in Yuma Tn and will be home tomorrow afternoon in time for me to leave on Sunday for Florida. Of course with this dang cold weather Florida is sounding pretty good to me.
We have had a great trip, although I really hate the one night stops. Too much work and nothing but interstate to see is pretty boring. We are already talking about next year. I hope my partner has found a replacement for me buy September. I hate I will be missing our regional but this trip has become too much a part of me for me to give it up.
Hope to see everyone in a few weeks. I plan to be at our match next weekend.