Bisbee Breakfast Club on Erie Street Next to the Pit

 I really need to get us out of Bisbee and back home before Christmas. Actually we got home before Thanksgiving. I'm just really slow about getting my blogs done. Anyhow, this is going to be a long post with lots of pictures. So enjoy.

After sleeping with ghosts wandering around the hotel, we woke hungry. That definitely means a trip to the Bisbee Breakfast Club on Erie Street. Everybody finds their way to this place. The food was really good with large portions and very reasonable prices.

The restaurant was opened in 2005 in the historic Rexall Pharmacy building.  They then expanded into the defunct glass factory next door. But there is sad news in their future. Their lease expires in September of 2025 and the landlord is not going to renew that lease because the age of the building makes it unsafe. The lease is held by Freeport McMoRan who also owns the mine.

 The manager of the BBC has said that regardless of what happens with their lease, the restaurant will remain in Bisbee.

Erie Street provides a glimpse of the past in a town frozen in time. The streets are lined with 1940s and 1950s vintage vehicles including a Greyhound bus.  It is one of the most photographed streets in Arizona. 

 

 

Erie Street sits right on the edge of the Lavender Pit. 

 

The Pit is a non-working copper mine and was named in honor of Harrison M. Lavender. The Pit covers an area of 300 acres and is 900 feet deep. The pit was opened in 1950 and mining operations ended in 1974.

 

 

There is also a WWII Memorial at the Pit viewing point. The monument is for 77 Bisbee area residents who lost their lives during WWII. 

Our last stop was at the Mining and Historical Museum.  It's a small but really interesting museum which is also an affiliate of the Smithsonian. Definitely worth a stop if you are in the area.

We needed fuel and the woman at the gift shop told us about a Circle K that was on our way out of town. I have never been at a gas station that only had one pump before. A new experience for me. I enjoy the simple things in life. 😃

This shrine is a few miles north of Bisbee.

As we got closer to Tombstone, I mentioned to Pat and Marilyn that the largest rosebush in the world is in Tombstone. It is a white Lady Banksia. The original root came from Scotland in 1885. From the one trunk it has grown to cover 8,000 square feet.

They wanted to see it and we were in no hurry, so I dropped them off. There was no place to park and I had seen the roses with Jim several years ago. So I wandered around the town until they were ready to head out. 

The weather was perfect and there were still trees hanging onto their fall colored leaves. 

The rest of our journey back to Apache Junction was uneventful which is always a good thing. We are in the process of planning another trip in 2025. Good times ahead.

Hotel La More

 Bisbee, AZ 

Marilyn picked a great place to stay. It was originally a boarding house for miners. People say that the hotel is haunted but we did not see any ghosts 😞. However, the hotel creaks and squeaks enough to make up for the lack of ghost sightings. The original building burned down and the current building was finished in 1916. Truly my kind of place. Well, except for one (maybe two) major problems.

Adventure Awaits

 

Google Maps had trouble finding the hotel. We ended up completely lost up on the hillside. Not usually a huge problem, but the streets of Bisbee are not usual. They are only wide enough for one vehicle but are two way streets. My understanding is that the person going up has the right-of-way. But there are very few places for the going down vehicles to pull over. 

We finally found some people to ask directions from (3 different people, in fact) but even with their directions??? we stayed very lost. Several "streets" appeared to be dead end alleys. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown (trying to remain cool) when we ended up on a dead end high up on the hill. Only took me about ten minutes of maneuvering to get turned around. I wished I had Daisy with me because she is much smaller than Jazzy. As we were headed down the street, Marilyn spotted our hotel. I was overjoyed. 

 

The joy didn't last long because we could not find a place to park. We finally pulled into the parking lot of the hotel that was next door and Marilyn went into our hotel to find out about parking. The manager explained that they have 8 parking spots at the bottom of the hill and around the corner. WHAT??? If those spaces were taken, then it was up to you to find parking on the street somewhere. She did tell Marilyn that we could block the street (remember it's only wide enough for one car) in front of the hotel while we unloaded and then drive down and park and walk back up. We are in our 70s and 80s and Marilyn was the only one of us who was in shape to walk up and down the hills. 

Looking down the street to the parking area.

 

Marilyn, or was it Pat, then came up with a brilliant idea. Let's ask the hotel next door if we could park in their lot (which held six cars) and pay them for parking. They weren't full, so they agreed to that plan. They wanted $15 for the parking but we gave them $30 because we were so happy. 

Pat trudging up the hill to our parking spot.

However, we were afraid to take the car out for dinner because we could possibly lose our parking spot. And since I couldn't do the jaunt down and up the hill, it was decided that Marilyn, who loves to walk, would go down and pick up a pizza and some onion rings for us for dinner. 

We ate in the social room and got to say hi to other guests that came through checking out the hotel. The social area is where the miners were able to entertain their guests. We didn't find any gentlemen guests to entertain but it was a great place to hang out.

The Lobby greeters

This was my room.

Each room came with ear plugs. I didn't need them even though my room is right next to the lobby. With a very creaky front door.  (They almost look like orange circus peanuts - the marshmallow ones.)

Now, on to more exploring in the morning.

 

Hamburgers, Cowboys and Good Friends

 Bisbee, AZ   High 76  Low 41

Time for an adventure. I mentioned in my last post that Pat and Marilyn would be seen again in this blog and here we go.

The "girls" figured out how much I love to drive and we decided to take advantage of that fact. We checked the weather and figured out that going south would be a better option than looking north. So many places we could head for but after a lot of discussion, we settled on Bisbee. 

Bisbee is south of Tombstone and is 11 miles from our border with Mexico.  And as many towns in the west, it was founded as a mining (copper, gold and silver) town in 1880. 

Monday morning we headed south. Jazzy was a joy to drive. We stopped in Benson to have lunch at the Farm House Bakery Restaurant and had the best hamburger ever. Definitely worth another stop if we're in that area again.

Marilyn and Me (and cow)

Pat and Marilyn (and cow)

We also took time to stop in Tombstone and do some strolling down the streets. Not many folks wandering around because most businesses are closed on Monday. We visited with a couple of the locals and we did not improve their economy.

 

Marilyn and friend

The local hangout. They stage a gunfight here in the afternoon but we passed.

Merry Christmas

After stretching our legs and checking out the cowboys, we headed on down the road to Bisbee.

Since I was the driver, Marilyn was responsible for getting us a hotel room, and Pat was in charge of finding out fun facts about Bisbee. 

1. In it heyday, Bisbee was the largest city between Houston, TX and Los Angeles, CA.

2. Because of mining over 2000 miles of tunnels snake their way around Bisbee in the Mule Mountains.

3. More to come                              

Our adventures with the Hotel La More deserves its own blog so I am going to end this part of the adventure for now.