Old Miner's Day in Chloride

What a hoot!  Yesterday we spent ‘up town’ watching the celebrations of “Old Miner’s Days” in Chloride, gunfights, parade, yard sales, food and spirits, was live music although we did not stick around for that, and watching all the locals shootin' the breeze on every street corner.

Driving around town, came across these nibblers

Yard art

Parked by a business

AZ's oldest continuously run post office

I told Dave later in the day that I would love to live in this tiny little town.  At one snippet in time there were over 2000 people living here with over 80 mines going full blast.  Then it became a ghost town and now about 250 people live here full-time.  Some homes are really really nice and some are really really sad.  You can see abandoned mines all over the town if you look hard enough.  There is one right here inside our campground.

20 minutes later, a real banquet going on now!

Some homes are amazing!

This one was built in 1873, garage is bigger than house!

Howard Hughes would be impressed - his invention is now art!

The parade was very cute.  The Grand Marshall was a woman who had the longest running business in town, a second hand store.  Tonight we are going to go to Digger Dave’s - the local restaurant/saloon.  The town boasts the oldest continuously running post office in the state.  And the oldest still-operating mine, although we don’t know where that is - could be over the mountains which butt up against the town.  Lots of coyotes at night.  Lots.

Art work for a fence

We are going to Digger Dave's this evening

A rolling HOG diner

The locals

While standing watching the parade I (of course I did!) started a conversation with the lady standing beside me.  She and her husband just moved to Chloride in June of this year from….......
you guessed it!  Ohio!  She said that she visited this town 8 years ago and said that one day she wanted to live here.  Vo-al-la!!  Winters are mild, a couple of days down below freezing, rarely snows, and summers no hotter than 92.  Pleasant.

The emcee's for the parade

That same station wagon, with a cart behind

The re-enactors for the shootout

That's Bill, our neighbor, in a 1949 Jeep truck (the real McCoy)

My favorite - a miner and his pack horse

I guess when you eat at Digger Dave's, you leave a message.

Lots of ‘HOGs’ came into to watch and participate in the fun, and people driving antique cars.  Since we saw so many cars going to the parade we walked it, only about 1/4 mile.  No grocery store or gas station, you need to do your business in Kingman.  A convenience store that sells the bare minimum, there is 1 church (Baptist) that has been around for 125 years. A VFW hall which looks like it does a good business, a playground but there are only 2 children in this town (they are driven to Kingman every day for school).  But plenty of quietness if that’s what you want.

Wednesday we pack up and move again, this time closer to Picacho.  Haven't decided yet where we will be - this will be our 'clean out and pack up' time that we go through.  Just makes it easier when we get back to just move stuff into the park model and be able to put the RV into storage in one day.