We had planned to take the Queen Mine tour in Bisbee, but unfortunately, it was booked. Instead, we explored the visitor center and watched the movie about copper mining, and copper production which had been produced by the U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Division of Mines sometime in the early 50’s. The movie (about 20 minutes long) took you through the 4 stages of copper production: mining, concentrating, smelting and refining. As we had toured the mine on a previous visit, we found the movie more interesting and informative than the tour and were glad we missed the tour.

Following our visit to the Queen Mine, we headed out toward Phoenix with a quick gas stop in Sierra Vista. As it is only about 2 1/2 hours to Phoenix, we searched for some back roads that would keep us off the interstate. Unfortunately, we could only find road running north to south and nothing going east to west, so were were condemned to take I 10 most of the way there. (The reason there are no east to west roads in that part of Arizona is because there are small mountain ridges, sort of like riffles, that run north to south and the only roads run north to south in the valleys between them.) Anyway, we arrived safe and sound at our dear friends’ new home in Phoenix, where we had a wonderful dinner and visit.