Photo of the Day: Of Gunpowder and Dynamite in Duncan, Arizona

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM | Setting: f/4, 1/13, ISO 100

The little border town of Duncan, Arizona carries a wild, desert scent of mesquite pods and Sonoran dust; the local law demands traffic buzz on through at a mere 35 miles-per-hour.  It's the kind of place that reminds you without saying so, "This is a quiet place and we like it that way. And we wear cowboy hats."

Duncan sits right on Highway 70, the stretch they call "The Old West Highway."  I drove this highway one winter, but it was the section between Duncan and Safford late in the afternoon that I like the best. I traveled solo westward into a sinking sun and thinking about home and my daughter and my wife because I'd been away for four days already, camping, hiking, and dirt-road-driving in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

Back there in Duncan, though, I stopped to walk around "old town Duncan" which is a fistful of late 1800s buildings (either restored or replicated) complete with dead cow skulls, worn leather saddles, and other rusty metal things pinned and hung to the weathered boardwalk posts.  To complete the package, I saw that gun control's always been a challenge.  It's not a burgeoning breed: