The Pumpkin Cheesecake Diaries: 2-7-2020

Shoplifters and Pooper Scoopers

Tombstone Livery

It looks like I will be forced to be a real blogger and keep my post fairly short and to the point! Not sure I am capable of that. I am dry camping for the remainder of my Arizona adventure and will be conserving battery power where I can. I still don't know if my battery blow up was the result of a faulty inverter or just bad batteries. Not taking any chances. I can dry camp for 4 days before needing to charge off the pickup. I should be good.

We left Ben Avery for Tombstone about 10:00 AM. Traffic into Phoenix was a tad puckering. Not real comfortable when you have a battery acid burn on your butt. No way am I going to the ER for that one. Nope. We jumped on to the 202 bypassing much of the Phoenix congestion. The bypass is new enough that Google map hasn't picked it up yet. Gigi gets awful excited attempting to reroute you down little jeep trails for 20 miles. She eventually goes on strike and tells you to buy a Rand McNally.

Right smack in the middle of pulling a three horse LQ through Phoenix traffic, VOYA calls with news about my monthly distribution. Hands free didn't help. I could not concentrate on the phone call and not die in Phoenix traffic. Kelly, the totally awesome VOYA rep, said to hang up and she would call back and leave a message of what I needed to do to get my money straightened out. She wished me luck driving through Phoenix. Turns out she was sitting in an office in Phoenix as we spoke.

We stopped at a Loves outside of Tucson. The place was packed. We had to wait in line behind semi's that dwarfed our rigs. There's not enough room at the regular pumps to pull in and out. The big truck pumps don't take regular credit cards so I have to pay inside. Making your way on foot through line after line of big rigs fueling up should be a featured stunt on Fear Factor. Can they see me weaving in between these things like a gnat buzzing around a herd of elephants?

I make it inside Loves without getting squashed between a Mac and an International. The line at the counter inside is almost as long as the line of trucks outside. I'm nervous knowing I'm holding up a line of commercial rigs behind me. A man in front of me steps up to the counter, hands the lady a box and says he wants to make an exchange. This isn't the clerks first rodeo. She notices the box is empty and confronts the guy. He mumbles something and heads out the door without paying for the product in his other hand. The clerk yells to stop him. I'm thinking the only way I can stop him is to shoot him and I don't think shoplifting is a shooting offense...even in Arizona. A handful of truckers take off after him. I don't know if they caught him or not, but I imagine if they did, he will be wishing somebody shot him instead.

Lynn and I get our fuel and pulled ahead so the trucks behind us could get to the pumps. We can't pull completely out because Pete's still in the store. Lynn runs back in the store and finds Pete at the condiment counter trying to shake mustard out of an empty container. There are certainties in life – one is you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip and the other is you can't shake mustard out of an empty mustard container. There's also taxes, death and copious amounts of horse poop to scoop.

All accounted for...we dive back onto the interstate headed for Tombstone. Cowboy Doug had given us directions to the Livery. “Take a right at the Border Patrol Station.” Fabulous. I really do need to brush up on my geography. I had no idea Tombstone was that close to the border. Let's see....that's 16 species of rattlesnakes, horse eating Javelina, mutant bobcat the size of cougars, jumping white cactus, quicksand and now border patrol check points. I envisioned my truck surrounded by a pack of canine drug sniffing dogs. My future life flashes before me as an inmate enrolled in drug and alcohol rehabilitation for CBD contraband. “But officer, it's for my tendinitis!” Bet they've never heard that one before.

We pulled into the Livery about 3:30 PM. Cowboy Doug directed us to where we are to dry camp and pen the horses. He went over the rules and regulations (not exactly the lawless territory it once was) had us sign a waver and warned us of the perils of quicksand if you ride “that-a-way” and rocky trails “over yonder. You can ride in to Tombstone if your heart is set on it – but be careful you don't get run over by the Stage Coach that swings in to town several times a day. Oh...and your going to have to clean up after your horse. Great. More poop scooping. I bet Wyatt Earp didn't follow his horse around the streets of Tombstone with a pooper-scooper. I wonder how much poop I've scooped in the last 30 days? In the hundreds I “wrecken.” You have to use words like “wrecken” and “yonder” in “these here parts.” Not sure what happens to you if you don't, but “I'm a guess'in” it involves the Border Patrol.