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Well we didn’t quite make it to Yuma by 3:10, but then again the film was called 3:10 TO Yuma, so your guess is as good as mine as to what time it was due to get in. Knowing how the current Amtrak timetable works, probably 6 am the next day. Whatever time it is, don’t ask Ivan to look it up for you as he’d tell you the time for the train in the opposite direction. Bizarrely one of the rooms we got was 310, how serendipitous, but despite all the references to the film, there is no way any of us could be mistaken for Russell Crowe (although my holiday beard is coming along nicely).

The mention of trains and Ivan brings me to the big news, the party is going to split tomorrow lunchtime. As the guys were not able to get a train at any stage on the trip Ivan had decided he didn’t want to go to four corners and wanted to spend a couple of days in LA. He spent a good couple of hours in the car this morning using Rag’s air card to book a car and hotel in LA for them to then catch up with us again in Vegas.

However back to today, and again I have given away the ending in the first paragraph, but yes we did end up in Yuma, Arizona, adding an extra state and another 460 miles onto our journey.

We started the day by jumping states quite early on and hit Arizona first thing. Our destination, Tombstone. We weren’t sure whether to go there or not, but a little research on the internet suggested it may be worth a try, although we were concerned that it’d be shut like most places we’d been to. Either that or be a huge disappointment like Roswell.

The good news is that the weather had warmed up and it was sunny so we were all in good spirits when we arrived in Tombstone to find what we’d hoped for, an authentic looking cowboy town. They had a main street all done up to look like it might have done back in the days of the Wild West. Ok so it was a bit tacky and OTT, but that’s what we’d been looking for. It was a shame we didn’t really have the time to explore fully, I’m sure I could have happily spent a day or two there touring the museums and watching the shootout at the OK Corral etc. If you are ever down Tucson way, I highly recommend spending the day in Tombstone. However we knew we had some miles to cover and we moseyed on out of there.

Next we tried to find the aircraft bone yard, something my brother had mentioned was in Tucson and as we were zinging by on the interstate we should check out. This one we didn’t research so well so guessed it would be somewhere near the US Air Force Base. As we approached we could see lots of planes so headed in that general direction. Again not wanting to spend any money we didn’t look at the museum or try and find the tour, we just drove around the outside for a bit getting frustrated that we couldn’t see anything so turned around and got back onto the interstate.

From there it was just pretty constant driving into Yuma making sure we hid all the fruit and Mexican immigrants we’d been smuggling along with our pillows past the border patrols.

Yuma itself, like many American towns has some right shit holes, and we drove past those, eventually ending up at our most expensive motel thus far. Not that it’s any better quality than anywhere else, just that Yuma seems to over charge. We did end up in a bar & grill for dinner tonight and they were running a sports quiz in the bar, as it was free to enter we took part thinking we’d be lucky to get any answers. Ok so we only did get the 5 out of the 30 questions, but that is 4 more than I thought we’d do at the start and at least we took part. Plus that was our last night as a group together until Vegas or possibly for the entire trip.

Our final challenge as a four is to hit the beach at San Diego to finish the coast to coast and to rack up 4,000 miles as a foursome which should be achieved well before lunch. Then we can work out how we are going to pick up the car at the airport from a company none of us have heard of and separate the luggage.

Once we do split, Rag and I will continue to blog and treat the remainder as a road trip as we had originally planned on it being just the Dynamic Duo but we may not get to see four corners as it will mean an awful amount of driving for little ol’ me. Let’s see how it goes.