Bisbee and southern Arizona

This trip actually started out by dropping down from Palm Springs along the Salton Sea and then into Yuma, AZ. I've been in Yuma a couple of times recently, and pictures of that area fit in best with my commentary on the lower Colorado. From Yuma, heading east on I-8 to Tucson is an interesting drive through a very desolate mountain range, but I didn't get any pictures because the lighting wasn't good. I-8 merges with I-10 south of Phoenix, and the drive down to Tucson is fairly depressing -- very heavy traffic and quite a bit of development along the way.

In fact, Tucson was sort of depressing. The last time I'd been there was about 8 years ago, but somehow in just those 8 years the town has grown tremendously and seemed to have lost some of its charm. This was probably due to the feeling that it has gone from being a relatively separate and fairly unique town, to becoming part of an urban and suburban sprawl that is growing in a band along I-17 and I-10 from north of Phoenix to 50 or 60 miles south and east of Tucson.

Despite the sprawl around Tucson, the Saguaro National Park remains a fascinating view of the Saguaro cactus. The park has two sections, one west of Tucson and one east -- these pictures are in the west section.

As I left Tucson and headed east towards Bisbee, I was getting anxious. Everything I'd heard about Bisbee and the general area around it was of an older mining town off in the mountains, relatively remote and historic. Driving east on I-10 seemed to contradict this image. The suburbs of Tucson continued for quite some distance, and then the road running south from the 10 (AZ 90 and then AZ 80) went through more and more recent housing developments, though not quite as dense as the Tucson area. This did not look promising. Was Bisbee going to be just another one of those towns that had been repackaged as another 'quaint' shopping district for a larger urban environment -- was it going to be cutely historic, instead of genuinely historic?

on to Bisbee ->