Follow The Sun...

...To the Shady Dell in glorious Bisbee Arizona!

After driving down down down and across Arizona, Rich and I landed in Bisbee Arizona at the most wonderful little trailer park called The Shady Dell...The Shady Dell is made up of several vintage trailers you can rent for the night, and also includes some spaces to park your own trailer if you're so inclined. The owners are wonderful and friendly greeting us by name as we walked through the office to check in (their kitty curled up on the HP printer in the window) There are tons of wonderful vintage accents throughout the park, 50's music plays at the gazebo in the center of the space...and there is a fantastic vintage historical diner (which is currently being restored further and will open quite soon) the whole thing makes for an enchanting back drop in which to spend the first day of 2009!

After unhooking the Airstream and getting situated...taking respective showers to wash off the travel grit, we ran into town. This is Rich's first visit to Bisbee, and only my second. It's just as fantastic as I remember it. I came down years ago for a good friends grandmother's retirement party (she later became the mayor of Bisbee...the grandmother, not my friend) and we mostly visited with family rather than checking out the town. Today gave us a good start to checking out the town...

We have bigplans to check out even more tomorrow...officially starting Tour De Ghost Towns 2009: The Arizona Edition (where we are attempting to visit myriads of different ghost towns in Arizona and documenting our journey) and are looking forward to waking early to photo without all the people and cars here in Bisbee, and to visit the many shops that sprinkle the downtown (most of which were closed for New Year's Day) and Rich will be checking his book to send us to many other ghost towns down this way. Of course, he's realizing that there might not be enough time to do everything we want to (I warned him this may be the case) and I see some more trips in our future...

I did pop into an antique shop this afternoon and found some fantastic vintage Gurley Christmas candles that I will put into my collection (both a huge tree with gold glitter and a huge huge Santa in its original shrink wrap...I got them both for a song!)

Well...I'm wrapping up from the road to eat some early dinner and some after dinner photography before enjoying the rest of the evening in this enchanted little place...why is it every time I visit Bisbee I want to move here? You would too if you saw how cute the downtown is, and how fabulous their old buildings are...Then again, Rich and I have looked at each other several times wishing we owned this little park...both remarking how jealous we are and how much fun it would be to do this for a living...

I wonder if Prescott is ready for a vintage RV park/motel?

(See Dina? We could also have our diner too!! Hon...)