We were able to sleep in a bit, and after a home-cooked breakfast with Angelia, Jeff and I were ready to head out for the day’s activities. It was a later start than I wanted because dragging F.S. away from his YouTube took an act of Congress. What’s more, he forgot to bring his tablet to the car — which was somehow my fault — and I refused to have Jeff turn back to the house. I reasoned that F.S. gets way too much screen time, which will rot his brain, and he needed a little boredom to allow those neurons and synapses to wake from their slumber. His little eyes teared up, and Jeff would have succumbed if I hadn’t been such a meany. I hate being the bad guy, but I guess that’s what foster mamas are for.

F.S. pouted for about ten minutes until we got to Cochise Stronghold, which is almost literally in Angelia’s back yard. It was here where Cochise, a Chiricahua Apache chief who was never defeated in battle, used the natural fortifications to protect his people. Unfortunately, there is a fee to park there — I assume because it’s more for camping and hiking than historical sightseeing — so we were just going to do some drive-by pictures from the car. But then F.S., to abide by the unspoken kid code and inspect every bathroom he comes upon, said he needed to go. Jeff stopped in the road in front of the facilities and let the car idle in case he needed to move out of someone’s way, and I took the opportunity to quickly read the signage in the small informational trail to learn something about the place.

 

With everyone back in the car, we followed Google’s directions to a couple of ghost towns on the way to Tombstone. Appropriately enough, we turned off the main road onto Ghost Town Trail, which quickly became a dirt road. I was afraid Google was confused at first, but came to understand dirt roads were not unusual here. The first town we came to was Courtland, established like most communities in the area for the silver mining. The only building left was the old jail, its doors and windows gone and graffiti covering its walls. From there, we drove a little further to Gleeson, which, while technically a ghost town, still has a handful of loners living there. I saw a mailbox there with the best last name — Seven Stars — that I’ll have to steal for a novel character one day.

 

Now it was time to head into Tombstone. Our first stop was Boot Hill, and I admit I felt a little bad for F.S. not knowing the history of the place and getting bored after only a couple of minutes. For a modest fee, we were given a pamphlet detailing the denizens of the graveyard and how they died. I have to say, Tombstone was full of terrible people! Aside from the occasional child, lawman, or honest worker, most of the people in this cemetery were either shot, poisoned, or hanged. One of the men buried here was described as a mild-mannered Christian — I took a picture of his marker because that was such a noteworthy accomplishment in this company! Some of the epitaphs were evidence to the type of devil-may-care attitude toward the sanctity of life in such a degenerate town.

One of the more sobering parts of the graveyard was a section clearly segregated for Chinese immigrants. In the 1880’s, these poor people weren’t good enough to be buried even among cutthroats, and sometimes, not even good enough for their names to be known.

It was well past lunchtime, so we drove to the historic downtown, which we discovered was blocked off for pedestrian only traffic. F.S. and I did a tuck and roll out of the car in front of the Crystal Palace Saloon to get a table while Jeff found a parking spot a couple of blocks away. The Crystal Palace was the saloon frequented by Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, and there are still bullet holes in the tin ceiling from the carousing done there. Though the interior went through many changes and was eventually gutted by fire, it has been restored to look much as it did at that time. The food was okay, if overpriced for the privilege of sitting where a town full of sociopaths once did their drinking. Before we left, F.S. had to give the billiards table a try, grasping the cue more like a broom than anything else.

 

The air became chilly, but F.S. had left his jacket in the car in his haste. He wouldn’t take Jeff’s coat, but instead allowed mine to swallow him. He quite liked flapping around in the too long arms as we wandered through the shops along the street. We stopped in one to get him some ice cream and came away with a reasonably priced Native American blanket and a kitschy wolf hat that at least covered F.S.’s ears against the wind.

 

By the time we got to the O.K. Corral, the last gunfight of the day was long over. F.S. was ready to go, and though I would have liked to go through some more historic buildings, it was getting close to sundown, and the way back to Angelia’s was on back roads. It was a good thing we left while there was still daylight, because Google did get confused and tried to have us turn into the middle of a private field. With some latent Gen X map reading skills, we got on the right road to backtrack the way home.

I took a short walk on the dark road at Angelia’s house before she locked up for the night because there is nowhere around our house that would give me such a view of the stars. One of my favorite memories of my Daddy is lying out on the porch to stargaze, and I long to do it every chance I get, regardless of the cold. One day, I’m going to learn to take proper night sky pictures, the Milky Way being number one on my bucket list.

We spent the rest of the night talking and playing Uno and Oregon Trail. Once again, I had the shakes when I went to bed, but at this point, I’d come to expect it.