Intermission

That brings us to the end of our Bisbee trip last February.  

 

Bisbee exceeded our expectations and jumped into our top places to live someday in retirement.  Las Cruces fell off that list.  Much to our surprise, on the way home, we stopped at a different New Mexico city on the way home that we liked a lot.  We didn't spend enough time there to check it out fully, so we plan to fix that sometime in the next couple of years with a much longer visit.

I'm going to take a short blogging break before writing the post about the mystery city.  We have some family business to work on; Justin is making some life changes, which will require new housing, new caregivers, and a new city.  And we need to take time to enjoy Wisconsin's brief northern summer.  

Hasta Luego!

 

Bisbee Side Trip: Chiricahua National Monument

 From February 2022

This is another place that I've wanted to visit for a long time but never had.  Chiricahua National Monument is about a 90 minute drive northeast from Bisbee.  We started with the trails at the bottom near the entrance.  Most people seemed to be crowded around the visitors' center; the crowd quickly thinned out on the trails.

Immigrants arrived here in the late 1870's establishing ranches in this dry, unforgiving landscape.

 

Faraway Ranch

After hiking up to the Visitor's Center, where hordes of tourists milled about, we hiked back to the car and drove up to the top of the mountain.  These views were what the tourists had come to see, and it was impressive.

 

Getting up to the top of the mountain during the 1800's would not have been a trivial thing.  I wonder how many times the original settlers made it there.

Downtown Bisbee: Good coffee, Fine Food.

Downtown Bisbee has two coffee roasters, and the familiar fragrance of roasted coffee (burnt toast) was often in the air.  We were usually smelling Old Bisbee Coffee Roasters.  Their storefront was not open, appearing to only sell their coffee wholesale.  In the retail outlets, I wasn't able to figure out the roasting date, so their coffee wasn't an option for me.  Bisbee Coffee Company was open for business and stamped its roasted coffee with a roast date.

Since I rant out of my home roasted coffee in Bisbee.  I was grateful to buy a pound of one-day fresh roasted whole bean from the Bisbee Coffee Company, and it was very good.

We had two great meals in downtown Bisbee. The first was at Thuy's Noodle Shop. What a find!  Excellent pho and squash curry--something we were not expecting to find in a small town like Bisbee.  It may have not have been fine dining, but it was excellent food at reasonable prices.

 

Our second terrific meal was at a fine dining restaurant called Cafe Roka.  Only open on the weekends, the food was amazing.  We had the night's special:   clams with french bread to soak up the white wine and garlic sauce.  Some people were dressed up in suits.  But I also saw a cowboy in boots come in with a ten inch knife, flopping on his hip.

Bisbee: Side trip to Lowell

I've read about the Bisbee Breakfast Club on other blogger's posts, so we decided to give it a try.  I had low expectations, but breakfast and the service were pretty good.

 

The restaurant is in the Town of Lowell on historic Erie Street.  Lowell was annexed into Bisbee in the early 1900's.  It was worth
strolling around after breakfast.

 

Refreshing Morning

 

Dave's corn field

After last week's hot and humid weather, I was graced this morning with 58 degrees and a beautiful sky during the early morning walk.  The hardest-working-75-year-old-farmer that I know doesn't have the highest production corn field in the area, but it looks mighty pretty this morning. The bit of fog rising up is from a tributary of Spring Creek, which it meets in Lodi in another mile.

Bisbee: City of Stairs

Bisbee is built into the sides of the mountain, and many of the homes have challenging sets of stairs providing "access."  Rather than complain about it, Bisbee has embraced its stairs, creating an annual race called the Bisbee 1000.

The actual event is in mid-October, but that didn't stop us from walking the 4.5 mile course.  It' a great way to explore this small Arizona city of about 5000 people.  There are a total of nine numbered staircases.

There are all sorts of interesting things to look at along the way.

Unlike most of our walks/hikes, we took our time on this one but eventually finished all of the staircases.  I was proud of Callie for staying out of trouble with several loose dogs around.  There is only one picture at the very end reminding us of her presence.