Jan 19-24 Southeast Arizona and Video link

Here is a link to a video of Washington DC, Virginia, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

Jan 19 - we head out of New Mexico through pecan groves, cotton fields, and farmlands to McNeal, AZ.  Whitewater Draw Conservation Area is home to 35,000 sandhill cranes during the winter months.  What a sight to see - flocks of large gray cranes, the mature ones with white cheeks and red faces.  The cranes spend the day on the farmlands and then return to the water in the afternoon in flocks of hundreds.  We are able to camp overnight and listen to the soft trilling and cooing of the cranes during the night.

Jan 20 - Beautiful sunny day up to 21 degrees and we head to Tombstone, a national historic old west town.  It is very touristy with stagecoach and wagon tours.  There are lots of gunfight/shootout tours to visit, but nothing is free (unlike those in Deadwood and Cody that we saw last year).  Tombstone is the site of the OK Corral shootout with Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Halliday versus three outlaws.  We visit the Boothill Graveyard - well worth the $3 admission each.  Here lie the three outlaws from the OK Corral.   The best epitaph in the cemetery - Here lies Lester Moore/4 slugs from a 44/ no Les no more.

Jan 21 - Near Benson, we visit Kartchner Caverns for a super informative tour of the gorgeous caverns.  These caverns are quite new to the public, opening in 1999 and 2003.  Carlsbad Caverns were closed in New Mexico so this was the next best thing.

In the afternoon, we visit the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita.  We take a 1-hour tour of the underground facility and see the huge 103-foot decommissioned Titan II missile in its underground silo.  Very scary to think about how close we all might have been to a nuclear war.

Jan 22-23
Mission San Xavier del Bac is called the White Dove of the Desert.  Founded by Jesuits in 1700, the dazzling white towers and dome rise from the desert.  It is well preserved, beautiful, and still active.

We find a small piece of BLM land (Snyder Hill) to boondock near Tucson - a desert strip amidst surrounding neighborhoods.  We count about 55 rigs out here with us!  The weather is still near freezing at night, but the sunny days go up to as high as 20 degrees.