Travel Tips & Adventures

Bisbee bowl - quality artistry

Fortunately, the shop we were in was having a 50% clearance on everything in the store.  Native American pottery, which our find is, is normally quite pricey.  So, we were thrilled to have a price tag of $40 for the bowl. The shop where we found the bowl is named, “Indian Touch.”

Main Street shopping - Bisbee

Moving on down the street, still in search of our covered casserole, we saw at least three other shops where colorful pottery was sold, but no covered casseroles.

Main Street - quaint shops

There is a hat store, numerous gift shops, Chocolate, the chocolate shop (we featured that last week), and a one-of-a-kind turquoise shop.

Bisbee Blue

The turquoise shop, Bisbee Blue, is not in the historic part of downtown, but overlooks the old “Lavender Pit” mine.  What is unique about Bisbee Blue is their high quality turquoise. The manager of the shop mentioned that they have the exclusive license to sell the top quality turquoise.  What is different about other turquoise, I asked?  It seems that they pump in resin to stabilize the lower quality stone.  What Bisbee Blue sells is “the real stuff.”  The price tags were above our reach for our budget, but the items, ranging from silver to other gems and, of course, turquoise, were lovely.

Lavender Pit mine

Surprisingly, turquoise and silver were byproducts of the copper mining that dominated Bisbee a century ago.

And, when you need a break from the shopping, there are some great food places.  (We reviewed a couple of places in our previous blogs. See blogs on Bisbee last week )  There was also a really hot party going on one evening with a live band – really a live band – at The Stock Exchange.  The Stock Exchange really was the first stock exchange in Arizona, now it’s a funky restaurant and, obviously, sometime purveyor of live music.

For a small town, Bisbee can be a fun place to stop.  For a number of people we met in town, they stopped – and stayed.

Between the climate and the friendliness, the cool shops and restaurants (and the fact that they are the County seat of government), there’s more than you expect. And, if you’re intrepid, you can take the mine tour and experience a very unique flashback to other times and lives.

Next time: We’re heading south of the border – for real this time. (We resolved our technology issues and have recovered our images from the never never land where they had landed.)