Day-trip adventure: Stop and smell the flowers at Tombstone's Rose Tree Festival

If you ever wanted to feel like you're in the Wild West version of Stars Hollow this is your chance — Tombstone is hosting its annual Rose Festival this weekend to celebrate the 133th blooming of the town's "World's Largest Rose Tree."

This year's Rose Festival kicks off with the coronation of the 2018 Rose Queen — a Tombstone High School student — and her court, Friday, April 6, at the Rose Tree Museum and Bookstore. Admission into the museum is free during this time and you can check out the beautiful gigantic flower tree for yourself.

Planted in 1885 by friends Mary Gee and Amelia Adamson in the back yard of a mining company boarding house, the clippings of a White Lady Banksia rose bush flourished in the desert. In the 1920s when the building was a hotel, a system of wooden poles and metal pipes where devised to help prop up the tree's branches and encourage growth. Today the rose tree takes up 5,000 square feet and has a trunk 14 feet in diameter. It's even in the Guinness Book of World Records.

On Saturday vendors will be at City Park, located on Third and Allen Street, all day. You can also catch square dancing, folklorico, music and many more performances in the park's gazebo space starting at 10 a.m.

If you're in the mood for some morning food you're in luck, there's a pancake breakfast at the Tombstone Community Congregational Church on Second and Allen Street from 8-10:30 p.m.

At 11 a.m. Allen Street shuts down for the town's Rose Parade, where entries will be judged on their presentation and rose displays.  

On Sunday there's a pet parade at 11 a.m. followed by a Tombstone vigilante gun fight show at 12:30 p.m. and fashion show at 1:30 p.m. — all of this is happening on Allen Street. 

Be fancy and enjoy some high tea under Sacred Heart Church's rose tree, located on Sixth and Safford Street from 1-3 p.m, admission is free.

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Take a look at the entire festival schedule here.

And if those things aren't enough to do, you can check out This Is Tucson's guide to Tombstone here.

Happy adventuring!

If you go

What: Tombstone's Rose Festival

When: Friday-Sunday, April 6-8 

Where: Tombstone, Ariz. It's about a 75-minute drive from Tucson. Take I-10 East for 45 miles and use Exit 303 to get onto Highway 80 toward Benson and Douglas. Take Highway 80 east for about 25 miles till you hit Tombstone.

Cost: Events are free to attend