Casa de San Pedro B&B

"Above all it is quiet.....!"

The Casa de San Pedro is situated on ten acres adjacent to The San Pedro River and the Riparian National Conservation Area. It is a couple of miles off the beaten path from Highway 92 in Cochise County, Arizona.

This charming and unique Territorial style inn is owned and operated by Karl Schmitt and Patrick Dome. A stay at the Casa de San Pedro offers a quiet and intimate getaway for any occasion. For more information, check out their web site at: www.bedandbirds.com.

Bisbee Marquee's Renee Doehrel visited this world class B&B recently and interviewed Karl and Patrick. Herewith, her report.

BM: What is the history of the Casa de San Pedro Inn?
 

photo: Alan Heidenreich

San Pedro River

K: The Inn itself was built in 1996 by five partners who actually wanted to built three of these -- this one, the one in Patagonia and one in Portal -- to be destination lodgings for birders. They had to hire managers to run the inn and it’s just harder to get a place operating the way you want it to with so many partners and hired staff. They focused almost exclusively on birders -- this was too limited of a market in some ways, and also they did it at a time when the internet wasn’t a presence in terms of a marketing leverage.

They kind of ran out of steam and put it on the market three years ago. By then, the internet had become a major marketing modality and it broadened the appeal of non-birders, although 65 to 70% of our guests are birders.

Now we’re also doing weddings, tours, family reunions and romantic getaways. We also host cooking classes, concerts, and art openings several times a year. People from Tucson and Phoenix like to get away from the heat and come down here, and many of them get excited by the bird watching, history touring, and of course Bisbee is a major attraction. So we are serving a wider public, here at the end of the road in this quiet little spot. We get a huge number of return guests and their friends now, and that pleases us greatly - we must be doing something right.
 

photo: Renee Doehrel

Karl Schmitt with Shadow and Patrick Dome with Cody

BM: How long have you two been in Cochise County?

K: We purchased the inn in October 2002. We bought this place sight unseen. We saw it listed on the internet, waited for the price to go down a bit and then we bought it. We were in Seattle at the time. We were looking to get out of the fast lane, the high stress. This is definitely not the fast lane!

BM: Karl, what was your line of work in Seattle?

K: I was in the Air Force for fifteen years and then eight more in the reserves. I was a partner in consulting firm working in hospital administration for a number of years before we decided to come here.
 

photo: Renee Doehrel

Foyer at the Casa

BM: I hear this story from a lot of people who’ve moved here. They want to get out of the big city hustle even when they had a good thing going somewhere else....

K: I traveled all the time -- 5 or 6 days a week. It was one high-stress environment to the next. I said, “Wait a minute! I’m 58 years old and I’m not going to make it to 60 if I keep running at this stress level.”

BM: And Patrick, what was your livelihood?

P: I worked as a buyer and seller of fine jewelry and then went into project management for Information Systems at hospitals.

BM: Do you have an unusual abilities or hobbies?
 

Enjoy the Sunshine!

BM: What is the longest period of time that guests have stayed here?

P: Most guests stay for two to three days but an increasing number of guests are using us as their vacation getaway and stay for a week to ten days.

BM: That’s a nice, long visit. I’d imagine you get to be almost like family with those folks.

 K: We cherish our wonderful relationships with our many guests.  Many come back frequently - we feel we are a part of their families. We have a couple that comes for eight to ten days a couple of times per year. We get birth announcements on their grandkids, Christmas cards. So, yes, we’re part of their family! It’s a great feeling to pick up the phone and be able to recognize a friendly voice calling to check up on us - they call just to chat sometimes. This is a wonderful spot and we have the best guests. Many are well-educated, well- traveled. It is a pleasure to sit and visit with them. They’re here to relax, so it is the “best of times” to get to know somebody. Guests often become friends with one another. We all enjoy gathering around the tables in the  dining room after breakfast to sit and chat in the  morning getting to know each other.

BM: Have you had any unusual or famous guests?
 

photo: Renee Doehrel

The butterfly garden

K: We’ve had travel writers, Pete Dunne, Kenn Kauffman, and John Dunn (writers of birding books), and naturalist photographers. We have had birders from all over the world stay with us and several have written stunning reviews of their stay with us and of the fantastic birding in this area.  They all claim to appreciate how well we cater to the needs of birders and how well we orient our guests to the many features of this great area.

BM: How about interesting wildlife stories?

K: The San Pedro River is the 2nd most diverse mammal habitat in the world. We have eighty-two species of mammals -- which is rivaled only by the Amazon Basin. There are 355 species of birds that either reside here or migrate through,  this number is half the species of birds in North America. We have deer, fox, coyotes, javelina, bobcats, mexican jaguars - plus all the usual suspects of rodents and reptile in the yard regularly.  But most people come to see the birds and butterflies.

BM: That’s impressive to say the least. Being here actually makes me want to take up bird watching! And, what are some of these landscaping features that I see here around the property?

 

photo: Renee Doehrel

Labrynth, Casa and Mule Mts behind.

 P: Our guests have a lot of space here to do things together or by themselves. There is the Butterfly Garden over there to the right of the Ramada. You can use the lap pool and hot tub or hike down at the river. We just finished Labyrinth just two weeks ago. We put the “bones” in first and we’ll be adding some benches and more landscaping to it. There is also the Palominas Observatory right down the street so all the star watchers are also able to enjoy our famous dark skies and the many, many stars that pepper our night sky.

K: There are all kinds of little niches around to explore and enjoy. We just love it here and so do our guests!