so ariz

joe and i took advantage of a three-day weekend to head over to arizona to do some exploring. after a work party friday night we left early saturday morning for tucson. upon arrival we found out about a stupid gem & mineral convention going on in town basically clogging the whole city up, most notably the hotels & hostel, so much that, to our disdain, every place was both booked and double priced, leading to an extensive, multi-hour search for the lone available room in the city.

we found it, after combing the city for way-y-y too long, calling and stopping by any place we saw. our mistake was to stop at the unbearable flamingo suites, this was perhaps at hour four in our search and joe agreed to the room without looking at it first, apparently a terrible move but in our haste we didn't anticipate the disgustingness inside. and oh god was that place a dump. it smelled like ass. we spent about five minutes inside and realized that it was uninhabitable, even in our state, it was absolutely shady and disgusting. joe is still playing phone tag with lourdes, the only person employed at the place able to make refunds, so we wait and hope it wasn't a pricey mistake. luckily the holiday inn across the street from the flamingo was kind enough to point us in the direction of the only decent hotel within the city limits with an available, overpriced room.

lesson learned to never again go somewhere without previous arrangements. too bad because a reasonably-priced, chic-seeming downtown establishment called the hotel congress seemed to be a perfect fit, but alas all booked up. same with the hostel, who by the way doubled their prices for the gaddam gem show; i thought that hostels had some code of ethics against changing prices (c'mon, hostels are supposed to cater to people with little funding, right?) so anywho. we did get to see pretty much all of tucson about 48 times but not the way we would've like at all.

no photos of that day. should've snapped one of the flamingo though!

we got up in the morning and headed due east for the desert museum, which was chosen due to its proximity to saguaro east, which was our ultimate destination. the museum/zoo/nature preserve was pretty cool, packed due to amazing weather. there were some interesting things to see there, but the hike in saguaro was much better overall, less tourists, more freedom to roam. we went on a four-mile hike up to a ridge and back. it was beautiful & weird & everything like that. those cacti are crazy...and they're everywhere, thick like a forest.


hummingbird at desert museum


joe at top of hike


typical saguaro shot

so then we hopped in the car and headed 90 miles south to bisbee, passing through tombstone, which we heard sucked so didn't stop. OK corral, wyatt earp, whatever, seemed like a tourist trap. so onward to bisbee, where we checked into a haunted bed and breakfast. then we went and got a big mexican meal in town & went to bed shortly afterwards. joe seems to think something spooky happened during the night there, and i'll admit that i was up on and off all night, probably mostly due to the screaming in the streets because of a nearby bar. but the b & b was really cute and old-timey.


B is for bisbee

bisbee is a mining town built into the mountains, with lots of old historic buildings and the like. but the copper & gold mining went bust half a century ago and so the town is in semi-disrepair, mostly inhabited by weirdos and hippies now. lots of art galleries and things, lots of empty houses or houses that should probably be condemned but are still used. mixed in with some really beautiful spaces and buildings.


bisbee decor

we spent today wandering around the town and we had a really nice breakfast at dot's diner. it was great but a half day of wandering was pretty much enough to see everything, plus the vibe there is strange, the locals didn't seem too welcoming even though tourism probably is the main source of money for the town. there seemed to be a lot of vagrant-types, a guy that lived there was talking about how the hippies retreat to the mountain tops to live in caves during the hot summer, then come down and display art or something in the winter, but i really didn't see any good art at all, just some crappy-ish stuff in some gallery windows. i think it seemed like the potential for the area was very high but something was a bit off about it all. the best part was the architecture, the labyrinth of stairways between houses and streets, and the european-scale of the town since it was built mostly before the turn of the century before cars were wide-spread. so that was neat.

as usual, lots of photos up on flickr. okay i'm going to bed!