It’s interesting how things unfold. It feels like nothing has happened since the last update, though quite a few things happened. Perspective is everything. Meeting new people and having several of them mention that I must have a lot of stories and my life seems really wild reminded me that this my “business as usual” isn’t very “usual.”
Part of why I document my travels is actually so I reflect on them and let them sink in a bit. I tend to wander a bit like a wraith, kind of in-between worlds, observing but not able to fully participate. Writing and taking pictures makes things more real and memorable. If I really wanted to be a successful travel blogger though, I’d swing too far in the opposite direction.
Successful blogs require you to be focused on the story-telling first, and the story after. For instance, I know from studying marketing that blogs need to feature the actual person and people they interact with. Pictures of people get more traction than landscapes or a picture of an empty road or historical building. The problem arises when you need to photograph and interaction while you’re having it. As soon as you interject a camera into the scene, the scene changes.
I take very few selfies or pictures with friends because I’m actually with those people, in the moment, and stopping to photograph the moment ruins it. I remember to take pictures of food because, before I eat anything, I stop to give thanks and try to make myself fully present for the experience. I take pictures of the motorcycle parked somewhere because I stop to look closely at it, looking for loose parts or leaks.
In the moments of living though, I am living, and that makes it difficult to remember to document things. Not a problem when writing about stuff, but it’s mighty difficult to add the photo and video content that make travel blogs thrive. With that said, I do have a few photos and experiences from the last few weeks, and of course they have to do with motorcycle riding.
Dirt trails
I’ve been riding with my new friend John quite a bit, but last week my clutch failed and the part I need is on backorder until mid-April. Fortunately it’s a seal, and I can keep adding fluid, and therefore keep riding. John heads back to Minnesota in April, so I’d like to do as much dual sport riding as I can before then.
Although not a local, he has owned a home in Bisbee for over a decade and knows plenty of trails. We managed to do a loop outside of Tombstone twice—one large one and another shorter ride. The area if rife with old ranch house ruins, abandoned mines, unique rock formations, and ghost towns. There’s literally a road called Ghost town Trail that connects several copper operations that once boasted thousands of residents but may now only be a few concrete foundations and heaps of mine tailings.
Above are the White House ruins, which I assume was a ranch owned by someone with the surname White, as it appears to be nothing but an adobe brick building. Large mind you, and near a likely water source, with a good view around for someone to keep an eye on their herds. There were still active ranch homes close by and plenty of fencing, so the land is still in use. Much of it is a state park though, so you never know if a side-trail leads to a home, a campsite, or a trailhead.
The riding in that area is generally easy, but there are plenty of off-shoots. Several old mines are up steep trails, like Black Diamond mine or April mine. Many don’t allow motorized traffic though, so to explore fully you’d need to be on horseback or on foot, like the men of the Old West who went out there either searching for gold or hiding from the law.
Eventually crossing this range out get out toward Sunsites, which is on the current State Highway 191. There were some ranches way back when and even a hot springs, but today most of the ranches are AirBnB’s and the “town” is just a few buildings, though they still boast a Post Office.
Pearce, Arizona
Just off the highway is Pearce, which was once a town and still reaches into the past with its old jail and a few original buildings. It’s kind of a hybrid, where it isn’t a town anymore, it isn’t derelict, so it’s just a time stamp more than a ghost town.
The remaining buildings of Pearce are occupied and maintained, but nothing is really open except some resident artists and the old mock storefronts.
Pearce is actually on the Ghost Town Trail, which turns to a graded dirt road only a few thousand feet south. From there all you need to do is keep your eyes peeled, as there are mine tailings pointing to many once-active spots. The only thing John and I really saw were some ring roads that might have been worth looking at if it wasn’t late in the day, and a pair of Air Force A-10 attack planes flying low, hugging the terrain.
The remnants of Courtland are out there, but that entire valley is owned by someone so you have to pay to enter the ghost town. I’ve never bothered, but there are turquoise mines and a lot of rare stones from what I’ve heard. You can look up “Bisbee Turquoise” and you’ll find it is quite valuable because of its unique color. It doesn’t seem like it will increase enough in value to make the mines profitable any time soon, but you never know.
Near Courtland are a few other ruins, one of which is “The Pack Rat Table,” which is just an abandoned concrete slab that people keep piling junk on. It’s been going on long enough that someone actually made a sign for it. It’s mostly a few unique rocks, old cans, a mannequin head, and other desert detritus.
There was a newspaper from last year still clinging to life, and even a few shoes, but you can easily ride past without ever noticing the odd desert monument, despite it being only 10-feet off the road. If you know to look for it you can still miss it while heading south, as the sign is small and only faces northbound traffic. Nearby are some other cool remains of concrete buildings though, looking a bit more like 1950’s than 1900’s designs.
Gleeson is another ghost town but not much is left. Someone build a replica jail and filled it up with historical artifacts and plenty of old stories of the town. In the copper boom of WW1, the census had several thousand people living there, and the concrete skeleton of a two-story school reinforce the possibility.
However, the only original building is an old store, boarded up and being overtaken by trees. The “jail” has several relics of firearms found with a metal detector, along with plenty of coins, shackles, and old pieces of wagons or mining tools. There is also the “jail tree,” which was literally the jail when the town was small. The old steel line is still present. Prisoners were simply shackled to the cable around the tree and left to the elements to serve their time before being released or transferred to a larger town.
The original steel door to the Gleeson jail, outside the current museum.
The Bisbee Prowl
Another hot-ticket item for a travel blogger is attending events. The same rule applies though: if you are walking around aiming a camera at people, you don’t really meet people the same way as if you are part of the crowd. Also, due to some effects of PTSD, I have a hit-and-miss relationship with events and crowds. Much of the time it’s fine, and others it is not.
The Prowl’s pre-party was once again held in Naco at the only business open to the public.
The Prowl is one of many cool events mainly organized by the guys at Biltwell. I’ve covered some of their events and they do great job of creating events with a unique feel. They draw hundreds instead of thousands of people, which is the point. You don’t see any yuppie biker types, nor do the hotel parking lots fill up with trailers because people didn’t actually ride their bikes to the event.
The Prowl draws choppers, in the classic sense. There are many that clearly wear the patina of being a loved treasure that ripped down the roads in the 1970’s or 1980’s and then ended up in the back of a shed. It was eventually found by a young man with the same ideas of freedom and the open road, but they simply got it running and started riding it.
There are many Shovelhead Harley’s, which is often called the last “real” Harley engine by old-timers. In a sense it is, because the Evo engine that replaced it didn’t leak oil and fall out of tune every 500 miles. The point is, the bikes aren’t just replicas of what people were riding in the heyday of choppers: these are the actual bikes. 50-years-old, with sketchy brakes and no suspension, kickstart only…you gotta really want to ride to keep one of these on the road.
There’s also even older stuff from Indian (who went out of business in 1953) and Triumph and even the occasional Japanese four-cylinder engine. The crowd skews young compared to most biker rallies, where the average age is probably late-50’s. The prowl is a lot of people in their mid-thirties to their early-sixties, and seeing tents set up in corners of Brewery Gultch, amongst the ruined buildings, really added a touch of class.
I spent most of the event either at home waiting for things to warm up, or at my buddy Kevin’s restaurant, helping them set up for the dinner rush. As the Prowl officially wound down I went in, but the place was at least half-empty. That was fine by me, as I just wanted to stop by my friend Jenna’s booth, see some bikes, and get a feel for how things went.
And the party wasn’t over, just the official event. The bars were still full, but the occasional sound of a bike leaving town did reinforce the silence more than break it. The main thing I picked up on was people have a way more accepting vibe. A lot of biker events have a real prison-yard vibe as tough-guy types size each other up or act like gatekeepers to their sacred little subculture. Other events are full of posers with the same attitude, just fake.
The Prowl is similar to other Biltwell events in that people say hello when your eyes meet instead of mad-dogging you or sizing you up. People laugh and smile more, the percentage of women is way higher, and the conversation can be typical bike-talk or can roll into a talk about Zen Buddhism or Roman battle tactics. Flatly put, the people have more than one dimension but are still passionate about motorcycles.
Once the sun was down I went back to the restaurant and ran into several friends. It was a great mix of friends who were local, who were from my time in Los Angeles, and friends-of-friends I hadn’t met yet. We checked out an art show put on by yet another friend I hadn’t seen in forever, and I ran into even more people I knew from various facets of the motorcycle industry.
And I got not a single photo with them…but I already told you why.
I could have been tagging myself in selfies with Instagram influencers, or could be having genuine conversations with genuine people. I chose the latter, and repeatedly had people telling me either that I had a fascinating life, a unique perspective on things, or a lot of good stories to tell.
It did make me realize I need to get more serious about writing my book. It has been almost entirely stagnant for 11 months. Fortunately I did join a writer’s group and they are helping me remember to “get it down first, then make it good.” Trying to spit out a fantastic book is too much pressure. Just get some stories out, see if they’re good, and if they are, edit them into something great. Expecting great right out of the box is folly.
Until next time
And that dear friends, is a good time to close. It’s 2:30 in the morning because I can’t stay asleep for more than two hours, leaving me constantly feeling tired no matter how many hours a day I spend in bed. It’s not a new thing and actually happens to me a lot when I’m off the road. The only reason I don’t have this problem when on the road is the sun blasts through a tent very early and being on the road helps tire you out mentally each day.
The sun’s position in the sky dictates all when I’m on the road, and a rhythm develops. It becomes welcoming, then tedious, then monotonous…just like everything in life.
Johnny Killmore 