Tombstone, Arizona

So, as I write this, I am at the Phoenix airport awaiting take off. Let me just say that this trip was an awesome one... I actually had time (without the kids) to sleep until 9 am. Amazing, ain't it? I managed to hang out with a lot of the ministers that will most likely become good friends. Went to see Nacho Libre (eh... ok movie, I guess. Maybe it will grow on my like Napoleon Dynamite did?) with some of them. It was awesome to just chill with some AZers. Likewise, it rocked to hang out with Louis and Phil -- both of whom are the church planting strategists in the west and east valleys. They rock, and it was great to hang out with them while sampling the incredible Mexican food Phoenix has to offer.

But, I must say... the highlight of the week was this last Thursday in Tombstone, AZ. I had planned on spending at least one day relaxing, doing nothing but something fun. I haven't done that since I don't know when... and here was my big chance! I really wanted to be in Sedona on Thursday, but recently AZ is riddled with fires (some schmuck flicked their burning cigarette butt out of their car window and into history... HUGE fires). So, since Sedona was out -- I had to choose somewhere to go. I had considered some downtown attractions like the Phoenix Art Museum, but I figured I could do that later once we moved here. At long last, I decided on Tombstone and started driving.

The rugged landscape of Arizona is breathtaking for someone that's spent so much time on the plains. Granted, this is not the Sierras, Alps, or the Rockies. But, it IS a beautiful rugged landscape of cactus covered mountain after cactus covered mountain. Sometimes one might wonder if one is on the surface of Mars... beautiful, arid, and sand everywhere. Usually, I am quite bored with long trips (Tombstone was approximately 3 hours away from my hotel in Chandler), but the scenery kept me moving (along with the help of some Ashes Remain tunes. ;) )

As I made it into Tombstone, I had a pleasant surprise! I managed to pull into the very first stop into town to use the restroom which happened to be a Holiday Inn. Low and behold, as I passed by the dinning room, I saw a familiar face -- Jason from the hit show GHOST HUNTERS on the SciFi Channel. And sitting next to him was Grant, the other founding members of the TAPS team. In time, I managed to hang out and get pictures with all of the show's crew: Jason and Grant, Steve and Brian (Wheezy), Donna and Lisa, and even Tango. They were in Tombstone to shoot a new show for season three and I was in the thick of it with them. I got to watch them shoot the show, at least the scenes on the outside of the Bird Cage Theater. For those that know me well, you know that I pray for all of the members of the TAPS team. It's something I do... and it was awesome to meet all of them in person and let them know "Hey, I'm that evangelical pastor that prays for you from MySpace" -- that opened up some cool conversation and some great hang out time with the cast. It was pretty awesome to hand Steve a copy of some Ashes Remain and hand Donna a copy of a Horizon Church DVD. Very cool... So, if you don't mind, pray for them, too.

Now, as cool as it was to stumble upon a TV show doing their thing, Tombstone was cool in it's own right. If anyone wants to study the heart of darkness, look no further than this town... or more specifically, Boot Hill Cemetery. Six or so rows of people buried in the late 1800s reveal some of the violent nature of this town during the wild west. For a lot of the cemetery's permanent residents, there is a description of how they died: Murdered. Shot. Suicide. Lynched. Hung. Stabbed. Drowned. Scarlet Fever. Suffice it to say, in Tombstone... death never took a vacation, especially during the early 1880s. It would seem that when Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil Earp settled here things just got worse and more tense. I doubt it was because of their arrival, but they obviously stepped into history in October of 1881 with their confrontation with Clanton and the Cowboys @ the OK Corral. It was surreal actually standing in the stop where the infamous shootout took place. I had no idea that when it started, each of them were in an area that measured a mere 18 square feet! That's close quarters for Doc Holliday's shotgun, and all the various 45s. Afterward, three men were dead and three men were wounded. Wyatt didn't get a scratch.

Also very revealing was the social life of this town. The Bird Cage was the local entertainment spot for the town. It served several purposes in it's short reign: saloon, casino, and brothel. The New York Times called it, "the wildest, roughest, wickedest honky tonk between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast." No doubt, that was true. The place is riddled with bullet holes: 140 in all. Between the main floor and the downstairs rooms, it saw just under 20 gunfights and 26 deaths and all it's eight years of being open. Along with the violence came a big dose of sex: The name, "Bird Cage", was derived from the 14 cages suspended from the ceiling in the main hall. The "ladies of the night" were put on display in these cages so the men could make their selections. The popular song refrain from that era, "she's only a bird in a gilded cage", was actually about the ladies at the Bird Cage Theater. One of those ladies became the wife of Wyatt Earp, who left his drug addicted wife for his new one, famous Josephine.

The town itself is just as you would imagine it with most of the building still intact as they were over 100 years ago. I found myself sort of taking it all in: "man... look at this. I'm walking the streets of Tombstone!" All of it was very cool and a great way to relax for a day. The only thing missing was Val Kilmer to be in character as Doc Holliday (why did he not get an Oscar for that???) and show me around town.

When any of you come to visit the Cowans in Arizona, come with me to Tombstone. It's worth the trip.

DCC: 6.25.06