One thing I’d heard about and really wanted to see in the US was a plane boneyard and on the way out of Tucson I got my chance, sort of. We were driving East along the highway when suddenly row upon row of planes appeared on either side of us. A quick Google showed we were driving through a boneyard – not just any boneyard – it was The Boneyard (or 309th AMARG), America’s largest storage facility for old military aircraft.
Of course despite having wanted to visit this place in principle I hadn’t done any research on it, so we had no idea we’d be reaching it so soon. Some further Googling revealed that there’d be no chance of us popping in to see it that day either. Bus tours (the only way to see the planes) require at least 10 days advanced booking to give the military base the boneyard belongs to enough time to background check you.
Leaving the planes for another day, we headed off to our next cemetery-themed stop, the ghost town of Tombstone.
Whereas Rawhide had been a fake Wild West town, Tombstone is the real deal – a genuine old silver mining town with a high street straight out of a John Wayne film.
After a long chat with a Disneyland actor turned silver miner and a look at the world’s largest rose bush, we found that even in a ghost town in the middle of Arizona we couldn’t entirely get away from our previous lives in finance. A small display in one of the museums held original copies of the Tombstone mining company’s stock and bond certificates as well as a drawing of the Tombstone stock exchange.
Back on the road again and, looking for other attractions along our route, Roadtrippers pointed us to something called “The Thing”. Soon enough billboard after billboard with statements like “The Thing? The Mystery of the Desert!” and “The Thing? What is it?” started appearing. Naturally, we had to see this wonder of the West while we were in the neighbourhood. Now, we can’t share any details of what “The Thing” turned out to be… but what we can tell you, is that there are (at least) 247 billboards for it along the I-10. This was the sheer power of advertising before our very eyes.
Out of Arizona, into New Mexico. In these barren, fiery lands you’d struggle to settle anywhere, but the Mogollon people did just that around 700 years ago, by building their homes into a system of caves in what is now known as Gila National Forest. The forest was our camping spot for a couple of nights, so we headed up to see what remains of the cliff dwellings today.
The road up to them was stunning, snaking up the mountainous forest; what we didn’t appreciate was how fuel-hungry roads like that are, so we had no choice but to let gravity do its magic on the way back down the mountain. We made it, all the way down to the nearest petrol station 45 miles away!
The Big Adventure 
Very jealous, would love to be visiting these sites.
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Hey Lord of the Flames, can’t you give us a hint as to what ‘the Thing’ might be??? X
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Remember I told you about a similar incident when touring California. It is the air con that really drinks the fuel. Fill up when ever you pass a gas station, going up steep roads turn of the air con and open the windows if you can beat the heat. Like the way the beard is growing, you will not look like your passport photo when you leave USA.
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I was trying to remember who it was that told me that story! We coasted on all the downhill sections and made it back with enough fuel. The beard is certainly going to cause trouble with those biometric security gates at airports.
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