Arizona - Bisbee and Roadkill Cinema

We didn't roll into Bisbee until after dark - after the harrowing night evading Satan's spawn, TJ and I managed to severely muck up our sleep schedules by sleeping until an unmentionable hour and missing a lot of the next day. 

In larger towns, like Tucson and Casa Grande, this is no problem because most of the businesses are open until about nine; in small little Bisbee, everything closes at six and late night activities are limited mostly to the bars. 

We went to one such bar on our second day in Bisbee with our lovely Couch Surfing host. His friend "Roadkill Bill" is an amateur film maker and was showing the entirety of his works at a place called Hot Licks. We stayed for two of his movies, and they were both grotesquely and wonderfully awful.

The first was a short film about road kill…but not just about road kill, starring road kill. A diverse collection of deceased animals in various states of decay ranging from freshly killed to petrified highway pancakes, were used as marionettes to act out the loose plot. I erupted several times into short bursts of laughter, mostly because I was too horrified to do anything else and sitting with my mouth gaping got old after the first five minutes.  

The second film was called Bisbee Cannibal Club and was basically about a group of cannibals who only ate annoying, poetry-spouting, vegetarians, and a group of (animal) meat-eaters who decided to hunt them down. Bad effects, loose plot, inaudible dialogue aside, it was still better than the knock-off Twilight spoof called “Taintlight” I bought at a thrift store in Morro Bay. 

Our third day in Bisbee, we (even with a valiant, but failed attempt at getting up at a decent hour) went on the 3:30PM tour of the Copper Queen Mine, and rode around under ground on a ridiculously fun, battery operated train. I am easily amused.

Mines have a smell; it’s a combination of rock dust, water, and something I can’t quite pinpoint but I’m sure has something to do with winds bellowing from deep within the excavated crevices of the earth that were never supposed to be exposed in such a way by man. This smell, when we entered the Copper Queen Mine, immediately sent me back to my home town, which boasts it’s own mine and tour, which I used to go on in the summer to escape the heat. It was strange going into the earth in a different mine and it was very difficult for me not to point out inane little factoids to TJ about stalagmites forming on the ceiling and my supremely un-cool knowledge of iron pyrite.

TOURIST TRASH.

We spent the rest of our time in Bisbee exploring a little of the town and relaxing out at our hosts' house, before heading back on the road. We decided to go back through Tombstone during the day, which was ultimately less cool than at night mostly for the same reasons Quartzite was less cool than expected: Senior Citizens. I don’t know if it’s a commentary on the sorts of things TJ and I find interesting enough to visit, but there always seems to be an abundance of rickety old people wherever we go. We’re always the youngest people in the vicinity, and oddly enough, in the smallest vehicle. (All old people in the States drive enourmous, bus-sized, RV’s and we loathe almost everything about sharing the road with them).