Tombstones on the road again

[TN Mongo]

Tombstone - Cowboy Mecca!  I will make the pilgrimage someday.

[Sam Buca]

Howdy Tombstone,

Really sounds like a dream I'd like to take one day.  Please say a BIG Howdy to Hombre for me!!

Thanks...Sam Buca

[Tombstone]

We made it to Tombstone yesterday afternoon and met up with the rest of the crew. We have Copperhead, Ms Bo, Iron Maiden, Whiskey Creek, Cash Proffitt, Ginger Ale, Hombre Sin Nombre, Cactus Red, Horse Doc, Appaloosa Honey, Lady T and Tombstone. We are all staying at the campground or the B&B run by the campground. We have not seen Judge or Yazoo yet but they are out here somewhere and staying in Sera Vista.  Everyone came over for dinner last night then we headed to the Four Deuces far a few night caps. Town was closed down early trying to recover from Heldarado, Tombstones largest event of the year.

Trip down was uneventful which is always good. Hombre rented a trike and rode over so we now have 4 bikes, we are going to run to Bisbee and give Hombre a day to recover before we take a longer ride tomorrow.

We will go the range on Wednesday to take a look and get registered.

Not much to report from yesterday but tonight or tomorrow will be a different story I do believe.

[Keystone]

Howdy,

I've enjoy your daily reports of y'alls adventure. Wishing everyone a great shoot at Bordertown.

Hasta Luego, Keystone

PS Your email seems to not be working.

[Tombstone]

Having a grand time in Tombstone. Yesterday we went to Bisbee with the whole crew, now up to 12 with Judge and Yazoo still just a rumor but I know they are here because there had been a sighting.

Spent the day in Bisbee, came back to the RV and hit town for dinner and drinks. Too many drinks more than likely. Whiskey is trying to get the best of me already with pool at the Cristal Palace. He got hot for a while, good thing we were not betting drinks or anything. Seems the ladies had more fun in Bisbee than the guys did, they took an early crash. We stayed out a little later and ended up at the Four Dueces, surprise, surprise.

Got up this morning and Doc, Cactus, Hombre and I rode up to Chiricahua National Monument. It was one of the most impressive sights I have seen, this has been a trip of amazing sights. If you google it there are pictures that do not do the monoliths justice. The views were breathing taking.
Got back and headed to the range to get signed in. Cactus is going to get to shoot with us on our posse so everything is grand. Our posse is all of our folks and about 10 we don’t know yet. We will know them before it is over. Sassy Dancer and Windy City Red are with us again this year so this will be a great time. Hope we all shoot our best and make a good showing for the South.

I am sure we will go to town again tonight. I will let you know how the side matches and warm up blast goes. I am so psyched up for this one. Can’t wait to get it started, will hate to see it end.

More tomorrow I hope.

[Tombstone]

Yesterday was a full day for me, I started out by going to Fort Huachuca which is the place where I was born many years ago. It took a while for me to get through security since I do not have a military ID. Full vetting with a background check. I now have a military ID that is good for a month. Anyway, I went to the museums and got to wonder around the base. Saw a picture of the hospital where I was born, it has since been torn down. This base is where the drone technology was started and it is still where they do the training here. It also has a large intelligent regiment stationed here. It was a very interesting visit and slightly moving to see the pictures from when Dad was stationed here.

Got back to Tombstone and headed to the range for side matches and the warm up shoot. Targets were like is expected at Bordertown. Large and close, shot the warm up clean with mostly no problems. Averaged sub-20 over 4 stages so this will be a fast match. Did the Posse Marshal walk through, stages look pretty much straight up with a few twist in shooting patterns. Should be pretty easy as long as we stay focused. The match director and stage writer is on my posse again this year so I guess he liked the job I did last year. We are all shooting on the afternoon flight today so early flight tomorrow. I will let everyone know how it went today this evening I hope. Kind of hard to post with so much to do each day and more to do at night.
We went to town last evening for dinner at the Crystal Palace again, they have a great open face roast beast sandwich which is comfort food for me. Ended up at the 4 deuces again for the evening night cap.

More after todays shooting

[Fast Harley]

Here's a thought: The targets at Bordertown are about the closest one's out there. I wonder If, and probably not,

that has anything to do with the proximity of the participants in the O.K. Corral?

Harley.





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[Tombstone]

Two days without a report. Bordertown is over, we shot the first day in the afternoon and then again this morning. It is now official; I cannot shoot Bordertown well. The timing for our group was pretty neat, the sun was setting as we finished last night and was rising when we started this morning. The only way to describe the match is it was Good, Bad and Ugly. Whiskey Creek took me again (this is getting to be a regular happening) Copperhead had some good stages but also a few bobbles along the way so Slick McClade probably took B-Western. Iron Maiden did well as she normally does.

Whiskey and I had stages from 15 seconds to 35 seconds. I had a P and a miss, he had three misses so the penalties evened out. The stages were wonderful, well written and fun to shoot. Fast and fast, my miss came on the last stage but since I already had a P it did not matter too much at that point. We learned a few new sweeps that you all may see in the future. Different but not too complicated. We also had a fellow on our posse that used to shoot with Jackalope and Anita Margarita, an incredibly fast BP shooter named Lefty Eastman. He said to tell then hello.Judge had a few problems but still had a good match, Yazoo was wonderful to watch and did well. Made us all proud.

We will be in town tonight along with a large group of shooters after the crew gets back from side match awards. Most of us did not seem to interested in going tonight since we were not even in the running’s. It will be a calm day tomorrow with the awards starting around noon.
 
We had a great posse, most of the folks had been on my posse in the past. Seems everyone likes to shoot with the crazy folks from Tennessee. If you want to make this match next year I will post when the applications come out and you will need to get your app in quickly. I will be coming back if the Creek don’t rise and road goes on.

More after the awards tomorrow.

[Tombstone]

It is all over, scores are posted and awards are awarded. Iron Maiden won first in Ladies Dualist, Copperhead won second in B-Western. Gun fighters were Cactus 9th, Tombstone 8th, and Whiskey Creek 5th. Judge and Yazoo both took home metal, not sure what ranking they were but in the top 5 in both of their categories, Cash also placed in duelist but not sure of his standings either. My good friend Sassy Dancer won everything she could, top lady shooter, top of her category, Arizona State champion. She was literally walking on air buy the end of the awards. Although Doc did not place in the top 10 he won a gift certificate in a raffle for a very top end Cowboy hat. He was not at the awards so I picked up his winnings, I even offered to swap my award for his but that did not fly.

We are packing up camp tonight; this is our last night in Tombstone for a year. Sad but still have a few stops to make on our way back home. Cactus and Hombre left this morning for their respective homes. It was so good getting to spend time with Hombre again. I think he is already planning on meeting us again next year.

From here we go to Ft Worth for a few days for world champion Appaloosa Horse show for Honey, then will be heading home. As I was packing up I counted left over bullets. I started with about 1500 when we left for Tennessee State and I will be bringing about 300 home. That is a lot of shooting over three weekends. It was fun but I will take at least one week off before shooting with my home club the second weekend next month. It is still hot out here and we noticed it is pretty cold back home. It will be a shock to our system in more ways than the temperature. They have no humidity out here and seem to lack some oxygen too.

I will post a few more adventures as we travel first north then east moseying back towards Tennessee.

[TN Mongo]

Thank you for your posts.  I have been looking forward each day to see what mischief you guys have gotten into.

[Tombstone]

We have decided to take our time going to Ft Worth so we are going to make it three 5 hour days instead of 2 eight hour days. We are in Ruidoso NM tonight actually in Lincoln County staying in a RV park that has a path that goes to a monument where John Tunstall was killed. Lots of Billy the Kid places of course. Also lots of little green statues around since we are also very close to Roswell. We got to town around 4 and got set up. While we were checking in we were asked to use our water tank and not stay hooked up to the water since it was going to get below freezing tonight. It was 80 degrees when we came through Las Cruces, we climbed from 5000 feet to about 7500 feet and the temperature dropped to about 50 in just two hours. Tonight it is going to drop to about 29 degrees and get this, it is going to snow. Not what we had planned to say the least. Assuming it does not really stick we plan on getting out tomorrow morning. Also when we checked in we were told the local casino/hotel had a dinner special on Mondays for people 55 and over. Half price on the meal, it is the first time Lady T has used a senior discount but it is hard to beat a buffet for two for $10. We had a great meal played a little video poker and came back to camp to get ready for the big freeze. We plan to come back when we can stay a few days and hopefully the weather will be a little warming. There is a mountain here that climbs to around 13,000 feet and we want to go up that one too. Maybe next year. A little earlier in the month.

We plan to be home this weekend and shoot with all my partners next Saturday. Hopefully better than I did in Tombstone. 

[Tombstone]

We traveled to Snyder TX today from Ruidoso NM. About a 6 hour trip on highways all the way. We saw more Antelope then was possible to count. We saw one herd that had at least 75 Antelopes in it. We saw many herds on the way mostly in New Mexico but also saw one large herd in Texas. New Mexico was mostly cattle; we passed one ranch which went on for miles on both sides of the road. When we passed into Texas the product changed from cattle to crops. Cotton for as far as the eye could see. Also sorghum fields, vineyards, and what was probably blue berrys. I figured the vineyards beside the cotton fields is where really dry wine comes from.

We started a list of all of the animals we have seen on this trip. We started with too many hawks to name or count, went to rabbits and quail (yes they still have quail out here) a tame deer that would come into the camper if you left your door open, mule deers, elks, more mule deers, a golden eagle, coyote, lots more quail, and I am sure there are more that I have forgotten.

We have had a fantastic trip and I have seen more animals this trip than ever before. Cant wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Ft Worth tomorrow so I should have more to talk about then.

[Fast Harley]

I am still very jealous of you and Lady T. out west, but then I realize just how much money
your reports are saving me! Have fun and keep up the good work! 
Harley.

[Tombstone]

We made it to Ft Worth, most of the way across Texas without getting on an interstate. No traffic but not the smoothest road out there. We did not see much wild life but did see lots more cotton and other crops. We passed a few hunting preserves which is always a great place to see strange and exotic animals but nothing this time. Lady T and I actually saw Kudus one time when we were passing one of the hunting preserves, we had to look it up on the internet to see what they were. Anyway got set-up and decided to ride the bikes to the Stockyards for dinner.

We ate at Joe T Garcia’s Mexican restaurant. We had been told by no fewer than four different people that we had to eat there if we were in the Stockyards. So we went. We got there to signs thatsaid it was cash only, no problem, they did not have any draft beer just bottles, slight problem but manageable, no menu, just two dishes offered, back to no problem. We ordered one of each for each couple. Food was good, prices were reasonable, not sure what the hoopla was all about. I for one would have stopped at one of the many steak houses we passed to get to the Mex place but we can say we ate there. Anyway we are heading back tomorrow for a day of shopping and sightseeing. They have stars in the sidewalk that feature all of our heroes, that is really neat. Plan on seeing every one of them. I also will be looking at a new pair of boots along with some duds. I may even dress cowboy and get my picture taken with some of the tourist, it’s a lot of fun and really pisses off the locals.

I will let you know how it goes tomorrow.

By the way I do have some pictures if someone can tell me how to post them.

[Tombstone]

Summary:

4600 miles at 10 mile per gallon with the camper, around 800 miles on the bike, walked around 125 miles.

4 nights in Wartrace, 2 nights in Amarillo, 5 nights in Albuquerque, 7 nights in Tombstone, 1 night in Ruidoso, NM, 1 night in some small town in Texas, 3 nights in Ft Worth, 1 night in Vicksburg.

38 CAS stages in three week-ends, around 1200 rounds shot,

Got to spend some time with a lot of good friends, saw some beautiful country.

We are home. Fantastic trip. We are already planning on next year. We plan to spend some days in Ruidoso, NM. It was a beautiful place, where we saw all the animals, looks like some good bike rides. A mountain around 13000 feet.

See everyone on Saturday.