Jayne and I observed 45 years of married life yesterday with a drive with our friend Steve to Sierra Vista, a nice steak dinner, and a visit to the Coronado National Memorial, a lovely park situated on
the Mexican border immediately southwest of Bisbee. This is supposedly near the site where the 1,500 men expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado crossed the line into what today is known as the United States. It is a good thing they made the trip back then; today they would have had to contend with a russet-colored steel-slatted barricade that extends as far as the eye can see. Back in his day, Coronado made it all the way to Kansas before he realized there was no gold among the native inhabitants of the plains, but at least one of his lieutenants managed to stumble upon the Grand Canyon. The Coronado National Memorial is also the site of a hidden geocache which we found easily (once we asked the ranger where it was) and a visitor's center with dress up clothes for kids. They had helmets, swords and even a heavy chain mail shirt. Of course the two biggest kids on this trip had to participate but Steve is a bit camera shy.
I began the day with presenting a card to Jayne to observe the date properly, and designed by myself in TrueArchives style. The inside joke on this one concerns my periodic threat to open
a tourist stagecoach ride concession in Tombstone with my brother, an idea crazy enough on its own but even more so when you consider the town already has TWO coaches competing for the tourist dollar. I had so much fun thinking about Tombstone while designing this card that I almost forgot that this Memorial Day weekend was also the "Wyatt Earp Days" festival in Tombstone. I drove over on Sunday to observe the intersection of myth, memory, and mayhem that constitutes the gunfight reenactments in the middle of Allen Street. A very surreal touch was the addition of a belly dancing club from Sierra Vista performing an interpretive dance to the music of "Ghost Riders in the Sky" which seemed curiously appropriate.
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