AJ, AZ - Last Hike in Phoenix

LAST HIKE IN PHOENIX

We stayed in the shop ‘campground’ last night because we are still waiting for our microwave to come in via UPS. Because we can’t travel anywhere we decided to take one more hike, this time back to the Pass Mountain Trail in Usery Mountain Park, just a short drive north from here. It was a sunny, warm day, just perfect for hiking and we were anxious to get back out on the trail.

But, first a donut. And, look what we saw in the donut case in the local store.Texas donuts. Off-da. They were as big as a plate, about 10” across. Color Gary a donut head but even he couldn’t eat that, not even on a hungry day. Think of all that sugar. Oh, my.

Out on the trail - we decided to go counter clockwise this time since we had gone clockwise the last time we did this trail. We enjoyed the trail as much this time as we did the first time. Great views, 360 degrees from the suburbs of Phoenix to the wilderness of the 4 mountains area, a challenging trail at times, 7.4 miles long, forests of cholla, ocotillo and saguaro all on the trail, craggy rocks and greenery from the recent rains.

It is a popular trail and we met many others along it although we found ourselves alone a good part of the time. At the end of the hike, we sat at a picnic table in the picnic area, had lunch and then drove back to the RV. And, back there, we found our new microwave being put into the spot where the old one used to be. The installer even put on little white booties to protect our floors.

Thank you. We’ll be on our way tomorrow.

CHANGES

The RV we have now is not the first one we started with and we laugh at ourselves for this. However every now and then we meet someone with more zigs and zags than we have had. One of our neighbors at the Apache Junction resort where we stayed in Nov and Dec, bought a new 5th wheel in September and drove down to AJ for 3 months. Half way through their 3 month stay, they decided their RV was too small so he drove back to Vancouver with his brother-in-law while his wife stayed with her sister. 5 days later he drove back with a new bigger RV. 3 weeks ago, they had decided they liked the resort so much that they extended for 3 months and were going to move into our spot. 3 days before the end of December, they decided that they did not like the ‘cold’ weather here in Phoenix, cancelled their extended 3 months and left to return to Vancouver before their original 3 months was up. They have stayed in Mexico for the last few years and liked the warm weather. She wants to go back, he’s not so sure about driving through Mexico. I wonder what they will do but will probably never find out.

IOWA CAUCUSES

We are listening to the CNN broadcasts on Sirius about the Iowa caucuses. Funny about listening to a TV station on radio: they are looking at a map of the 99 Iowa counties and pointing out the colors of the winners in each county. They say things like:

        Look at how much purple is out in the Western part of Iowa

        As you can see on the charts here Santorum has the most votes in central Iowa

        Look at his body language as he’s talking about all the negative advertising

We can’t see the colors, the map, the charts nor the body language. All we can hear is the words. But we love hearing about the Iowa caucuses.

We are also glad that we are missing all the political stuff in Iowa right now. I think the TV ads and the mailings must be more brutal this year than they were 4 years ago and 8 years ago when we were in the state. I’m sure that the Iowans, much as they like the money and the attention flowing into Iowa during this period of time, are happy that it is all over.

FOOD

I went shopping today at the Superstition Ranch Market, which mostly has produce. The prices here are amazing: 3 heads of Romaine hearts for $1.00, a bag of 6 pink grapefruits for $1.00, 3 yellow peppers for $1.00, 3 orange peppers for $1.00, etc. It’s the kind of place where you hear the final price, you look at the slip to see what they missed. Nope, 3 big bags of produce for $23.00. Our refrigerator is full: salads for dinner and fresh fruit for breakfast.

Of course, later I cut open one of these humongous grape fruits and found this. The rind sure makes the grapefruits look small but, actually, they were pretty large too.

We’re looking forward to begin able to find some hard ice cream shops in the Palm Springs area. There aren’t many here in the Phoenix area and we have’t had much recently. We’re a bit ice cream deprived. But in the Palm Springs area are Rite Aid pharmacies which have large hard ice cream sections in their stores. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that we can buy individual ice creams in the grocery store any time we want. But we want ice cream as an occasion, not just as a commodity.

BANK FEES

My brother has in his past gotten overdrawn in his checking account. To prevent being charged hefty overdrawn fees, he opened a savings account so, if his checking account is overdrawn, Wells Fargo can draw from the savings account and he won’t be charged this fee. Aha, it happened again and the system worked: Wells automatically transferred money from his savings account to his checking account and he was not charged for being overdrawn. What he was charged was a transfer fee, a new fee. GOTCHA.

And, what about the Verizon fees to pay your monthly bill. They were actually going to charge a customer a fee to pay a bill. Now, that’s chutzpah.