Bounding the Borders: BENSON Bound - Monday, November 28, 2011

We pulled out of our camp at "Lost Dutchman State Park."
We decided to head south for a few days so down through Tucson and over to Benson AZ we ended up. Barb found us a great little privately owned campground that had an Observatory on the site. So once we got set up we headed over for the "star show."
It was great! There were four of us there and the man ( a Retired Air Force Fighter Pilot) leading the presentation; All inside of this dome shaped building with a huge telescope.
He gave us stories and introduced us to what stars were and the difference from planets.
We got to actually step up and view stars, planets (Jupiter with its 4 moons), Nebula's, the Moon and more.
The Moon was unreal, we had never seen it up close like that before we could look into craters and see all sorts of things on the surface.
Some of the other things we were looking at (ex Nebula's) weren't even there anymore!
The reason being is that they were so far away (light years) that what we were now seeing had gone a long time ago!
Most of what we saw was in our Galaxy but we even looked into the next Galaxy too. The size of space and the distance some of these things were away would blow your mind. I can't recall the numbers but millions of light years would be low.
It was a lot of fun and the small group gave us the opportunity to ask lots of questions. I must say if you are ever down that way this is a "must stop." Make sure to check-in at the Butterfield RV Park.

BISBEE, ARIZONA
We took a day and drove down to Bisbee AZ which was a place we were told we have to visit. On the way we had to drive right through Tombstone (of Cowboy Shoot Out Fame). The terrain changed quite a bit. No longer did we see cactus but more and more trees and one could see that spring down here would be quite green.
Bisbee is a unique town. It was a huge hub at the turn of the century. Things change though with mining towns and this one was no different.
The town is built in the canyon and on the rocks and wow I'm not sure I would want to live there. Some of the buildings and homes were built on the sides of mountains on stilts. It sort of reminded me of an area of Italy that we had visited once.

As one gets right into town we could immediately see why this was another must do town. Many of the buildings were from the late 1800's or turn of the century and well preserved too. Its famous for its "Arts Community" and we saw lots of restaurants there too. Being good tourists we decided to have lunch and it was very tasty to say the least.

Another reason we wanted to see this town was because of an article that we had read a couple of months ago. A young couple had bought a Campground in the town and had some antique trailers from the 50's in it that people could actually stay in.

The Shady Dell

These trailers had been restored and updated with things like flat screen TVs and so on. Well the article and the pictures that went with it didn't do it justice. There was no one around they had closed for holidays (still the slow season down here) so I wondered around and took some pictures.