tombstone!!

(cowboy cole- yeehaw!!!)

on saturday we decided to go to tombstone- it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. we woke up and decided we didn't want to just stay at the apartment all day long, so off we went. tombstone is about 2 hours from us... and we got there at about 11.30- just early enough to be able to make a day of it! we've wanted to check this place out for awhile now and it was really exciting to finally get there! the spirit of the old west is still buzzing there... it's a really neat place! tombstone is the site of the ok corral, where the famous shooting with doc holliday, the earp boys and the canton boys took place. it's pretty famous!

(kelvin and cole at the ok corral)

(the birdcarge theatre/ the poker room in the theatre basement)

the highlight for me was a visit to the birdcage theatre... it has quite a reputation of being haunted. not that i'm a nut or anything, but i am certainly interested in the paranormal. i'm sure that this admission will spark a debate, but oh well. think what you want! anyway, the cool thing about the theatre is that it was open from 1881 to 1889, and everything is as it was left when it was closed. the broken bottles on the bar in the poker room in the photo above? original, and sitting exactly where they were left upon closing. anyway, the birdcage was named for the "cribs" above the main room/stage area. these were the rooms that the ladies of the night (or soiled doves as they were often called) did their 'business'. there were 14, seven on either side and they were kind of suspended above the room. apparently, the deeper one digs into the birdcage's past, the darker it gets... lots of bullet holes to remind visitors of that! there were at least 26 deaths that occured there, too... mostly barfights and whatnot. the list of interesting history and facts is seemingly unendless! anyway, we were walking around in the backstage area- just kelvin, cole and i- and i heard footsteps above us. kelvin was about 5 feet away and didn't hear anything. fellow tourists, one would think... except that no access was allowed above the main floor. all the stairs that led above the backstage and stage area have been boarded off for a long time. hmmmmm.

(the stage and the original grand piano in front of it... and a performer from times past?)

the other weird thing that happened was something i didn't see until after we left. on the way home i was looking through the photos we had taken and noticed this photo above. i had snapped a shot of the stage, and at the time i hadn't seen anything unusual, even on the 5-second preview after shooting it. look at the right side of the picture, by the swag part of the painted curtain... see that round thing? i'm not the only one to have captured this sort of thing on photos of the stage... there are several others documented! all about the same size, in the stage area. cool! now, you all are entitled to think what you want, but try to explain it! one could argue that it's just a speck of dust that was in the right place at the right time, and a very valid arguement indeed- however, we have had this camera for almost a year, and in the hundreds of pictures that we have taken in various places, we have never captured a dust speck. of course, there's first time for everything, but it's very odd that it would happen here. anyway, needless to say, the birdcage was really really cool... history come alive!

(the graves of billy clanton and frank and tom mclaury, shot during the ok corral shootout on 26th october, 1881... boothill cemetery)

our last stop was boothill cemetery. it's just outside of town and there are about 13 rows of graves, almost all of them marked either with a name and date or with a simple 'unknown'. the souls buried there range in age from 3 months to well-aged. included is the grave of dutch annie, one of the most well-known ladies of the night. her photo is hanging with the others in the basement of the birdcage, near the bordellos.

('black mariah')

the 'black mariah' was the hearse of tombstone... it was the final ride of all but six who were buried at boothill. it's uniqe because it was one of only eight that had curved glass... the curved glass panes are the ones at the front, right behind the seat. it has gilded gold and is on display backstage at the birdcage.

i can't wait to go back; we might go this coming weekend when kelvin's parents come to visit. it's memorial day weekend and also wyatt earp days in tombstone, which should be extra fun! if you want to check out more, visit tombstone.org for general info, or legendsofamerica.com for more on the birdcage theatre. or, as always, a general google or yahoo search will give you tons of places to check out!

on a non-tombstone related note, cole is 9 months today! he's growing way too fast... sigh. and also, for all you folks back home that are wishing it was warmer, come join us here- it was over 100 today!!