Douglas, AZ

Thursday, 13 December

In yesterday’s post, I overlooked a couple of items.  The first was setting up Sprinty.  We originally picked a site that backed up to some trees.  We plugged in, verified the LED was red on the power cable, but had no power in Sprinty.  Tried resetting the breakers, unplugging and plugging back in, etc.  No joy.  So we moved to a different site.  My guess is our EMS detected something wrong with the power (under voltage, bad ground, reverse polarity or something) and refused to connect.  The EMS has worked flawlessly since we installed it and I am grateful if it prevented us from connecting to bad power.  Changing sites is a lot less disruptive than fried electrical gear in Sprinty.

While we were setting up, one of the other campers came over to chat.  He said the “must see” sight in Douglas is the Gadsden Hotel.  So after breakfast, we headed over to the hotel to check it out.  Wow.  What a contrast.  Douglas is slightly above average town in this part of the U.S.  Many of the small towns we have encountered in West Texas, southwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Arizona seem very economically depressed.  Douglas seemed different.  While the buildings and houses are obviously older, the yards are well kept, and the town seems to be working hard to age gracefully.  Still to find a grand hotel in this city was a surprise.  

From Wikipedia:

“The hotel opened in 1907. Named for the Gadsden Purchase, the stately five-story, 160-room hotel became a home away from home for cattlemen, ranchers, miners, and businessmen.  The hotel was leveled by fire and rebuilt in 1929.  The Gadsden's spacious main lobby is majestically set with a solid white Italian marble staircase and four soaring marble columns.  An authentic Tiffany & Co.  stained glass mural extends forty-two feet across one wall of the massive mezzanine. ...”

“... An impressive oil painting by Audley Dean Nichols is just below the Tiffany window. The hotel's vaulted stained glass skylights run the full length of the lobby.”

There is a sign by the staircase that states that Pancho Villa and his horse Siete Leguas (Seven Leagues) rode up the famous Grand Staircase of the hotel lobby and is is said to have left a chip that can be still be found this very day.

Next up was laundry.  Again, the fellow camper recommended a laundromat which he said was the best in town.  

After laundry, we returned to the Douglas Golf Course to play golf.  Perhaps because we stayed there last night, the golf was very inexpensive.  After warming up of the range, we headed out.  We both bogeyed the first hole, and stayed fairly even for several holes.  At the turn, Darrell was up by 5 strokes.  On the back nine, Kris was closing the gap, hole by hole, and finished with an awesome chip in birdie.  Darrell hung on to finish 3 strokes up on the day.  Kris had a great day driving the ball, with her longest drive of 195 yards, and 166 yards average for the day.  She outdrove Darrell on several holes.

Again, we finished earlier than anticipated, so we scratched the plan A and Plan B for where to spend the night, and headed for Bisbee, AZ.  Bisbee was on our list of places to check out, and had the only Starbucks in the region.  First stop was the Starbucks for Darrell to pay up.

We then headed into Old Town Bisbee, initially to find the golf course office where we were supposed to get a voucher for free golf. 

Bisbee was founded as a copper, gold and silver mining town in 1880.  Open pit mining was introduced to meet copper demand during World War I.  A high quality turquoise was a by-product of the copper mining.  Bisbee copper mining operations were halted in 1975, and the Queen Mine tour was opened in 1976.

Today, Bisbee is a quirky artsy town with small shops, restaurants and coffee shops.

We failed to find the golf office, so we headed for Naco, AZ, which is right on the United States-Mexico border to stay at the Turquoise Valley Golf and RV Park.  An advantage of not having much of a plan is that you don’t have a plan to change when you decide to just do something that you had not even known about a few hours before.  Fortunately, camping must not be the thing to do this time of year as we are finding lots of available sites, and most sites that are occupied appear to be long-termers, not campers like us visiting for a day or two.

When we arrived, we learned the RV Park was no longer part of the golf course.  We were sent across the street to the RV Park to find the manager to check in.  We got checked in, all settled, and enjoyed a nice hot shower.  WiFi is okay - it is very fast for a burst, then seems to drag.  Still, better than we’ve had for quite awhile.