Trip to Arizona

I took a quick weekend trip to Hidden Valley Arizona to check on the desert property down there.

It's still there, no worse for the neglect we've been giving it. But, the people who live there are struggling. Land values which had been ridiculously exhorbitant, have crashed and people who had rushed in for the "land grab" with NO money down have been forclosed on.

Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense”
Robert Frost

Typical to the area, those evicted "looted" the place to bare walls before they just walked out! It's hard to decide which is worse the greedy thieves who act all suprised when they buy what they can't afford or the brain-dead idiots who loaned them the money expecting property inflation to pay the premiums.

I attended a water company annual meeting which was an eye-opener. Apparantly water has not ceased to be one of the major contentions of the desert. And speaking of desert, it is really obvious that the Phoenix area desert is different than the Mesquite area desert. Some of the cactus are the same but many are very different.

It was interesting to pass, yet again, over the Boulder (Hoover) Dam. They've been working on a new bypass ever since 9-11 and haven't got it done yet. In their defense, however, it did blow down once. All the access roads and ramps have been done for awhile now, they're just waiting on the bridge. The towers are up and they're stringing the cable-stays and pumping cement for the roadway arch supports.

At any rate, even though the Lowrance GPS map is several years out-of-date and the company hasn't bothered to update it, my XOG did come through. A lot of the time my "dot" looked like it was out on bare earth instead of a paved road; but, it kept shouting directions at me all through the crazy Phoenix freeway maze.

Despite the fact that the Lowrance XOG has incompetent software engineering in some areas, and the companies customer service is basically non-existant, the little unit has a good screen size, is portable and keeps slugging away.