April 9, 2007 at 9:24 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Since we started looking for property here, I have heard from many people about water issues in the desert. No question, it’s a desert and water is precious. Tucson and much of Arizona draw water from a giant underground aquifer which is not naturally refilling nearly as fast as it is being drawn down.
In addition to water use restrictions and financial incentives to conserve, the solution has been to negotiate a share of the overburdened Colorado River. This water is being put in giant basins in the Avra Valley and simply left to soak into the ground, thus recharging the underground aquifer. Tucson has an allocation of 44 billion gallons per year, although it doesn’t presently have the ability to make use of it all right now.
That’s a good start, but not enough forever. Still, it doesn’t appear that Tucson will run short of water anytime in the next few years, despite the many gloomy predictions I have heard.
I also hear a lot of other stories from people about how awful it is here. Come to think of it, I hear those stories everywhere that life is good. My theory is that people come up with such tales to discourage outsiders from moving in. In addition to reports of imminent drought, I’ve heard about “deadly” scorpions on the ceiling, scorching heat, black widow spiders, rattlesnakes, and killer bees. As with all such stories, there is a grain of truth to each, just enough to be slightly believable.
We’ve been looking for rattlesnakes on all our hikes in Saguaro National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus, etc. So far no luck. Most people never seen one. Bert, Janie, and I were hiking in Organ Pipe a few weeks ago in a spot that is reputed to have more rattlers than any other place in the USA (200 per square mile), but we couldn’t find any.
The scorpions are generally not deadly, except for the bark scorpion which can be deadly in some circumstances. But worrying about it is pointless: hardly anyone has ever been killed by one. Same for the black widow spider.
The water issue is of more interest to us. Our travels by Airstream have changed how we view water. With only a 39-gallon supply that often has to last for several days when we are boondocking, it’s important to know how to conserve. Tucson Water says the average usage per person is 177 gallons per day. (That includes water used for all purposes, including irrigation.) In the Airstream, our average use per person can be as low as 3.5 gallons per day when boondocking, and probably runs about 8 gallons per day when we have full hookups.
I’ve noticed that when we’re borrowing a shower in someone’s house, I am now compelled to shut off the water between soapings, just as I routinely do in the Airstream. I notice little water-wasting moments: the neighbor sloshing his car with gallons of water in the driveway, or a pool that is left uncovered to evaporate all day in a dry climate. The other day Eleanor spotted someone cleaning the sidewalk with a hose and was outraged. Even a regular flush toilet seems like an extravagance now.
So in our house we want to incorporate some RV economization principles for water (and power, but I’ll get to that another day). When we move in, I expect we’ll make several changes to cut our water usage, including water-saving appliances, a drip irrigation system, and even a rainwater harvesting system with rain barrels for watering the plants. It should be interesting and fun to try to apply what we’ve learned to our stationary house.
April 8, 2007 at 9:21 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
It’s a real relief to have a Sunday with no pressure to go see houses … and since it’s Easter, we’ve got a few fun things to do.
Yesterday, E&E did the egg coloring thing. We all love this ritual for some reason, maybe because it reminds us of happy Easters as children. (I personally love hard boiled eggs but I hardly ever eat them, so this may be my real motivation.)
We headed out to the Children’s Museum today for an egg hunt, but it was a bit of a bust. Emma is the sort of child who tries to be polite and follow the rules, and often these habits do not serve her well when other children are involved. The museum staff tried to set up egg hunts in which all the children would be entitled to find two eggs in the courtyard, but a minute or two prior to each hunt’s official start, unrestrained children would roam around and hoard all the eggs. Thus, dozens were disappointed, Emma included.
Good thing we made our own. It turns out that you can have a darned good egg hunt in and around an Airstream trailer. So good, in fact, that we took turns hiding the eggs and had three hunts. And then, we ate ’em … with chocolates from the Easter Bunny for dessert.
The campground is clearing out. On April 1st we saw a minor exodus, and again today half a dozen rigs pulled out. It’s another sign that the heat is coming. In Arizona, they say good parking spaces aren’t determined by distance, but by shade. I’m beginning to see how true that is, since our Armada has enough glass to basically be a giant greenhouse.
But outside of the car, it hasn’t actually been all that hot. It’s true what they say about dry heat — it’s not nearly as bad as hot & humid. We have yet to turn on the air conditioner, even in the past few days when we’ve hit 92 degrees. I’d rather go for a swim in the pool anyway.
However, we have been obliged to turn on the new refrigerator fans that we had installed back at Roger Williams Airstream in January. On a 90+ degree day, if we don’t run the fans to draw air through the refrigerator vent, our refrigerator warms up into the mid-40s and things spoil much too quickly. With the fans on, it rarely exceeds 39 degrees.
The difference is noticeable in the freezer, too. We forgot to turn on the fans one day and found the ice pops turning to slush. So the fans have already paid off. As it gets warmer, I expect they’ll really get tested. In a month or two, we’ll probably be enountering 100+ degrees several times as we travel through northern Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.
April 7, 2007 at 7:03 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
It looks like we will indeed be homeowners again. After about eight weeks of looking, the conclusion of the search happened remarkably quickly. Yesterday morning we got the usual daily email from our agent, showing properties newly on the market. He had only one house, and my initial inclination was to skip it because it was near an area we’d ruled out the day before.
But the listing looked good, and so we went over to see it, not expecting much. The house and the neighborhood surprised us — in a good way — and a few hours later we were writing up the offer …
Apparently we encountered that most rare and magical type of seller: a motivated one. This afternoon, they accepted our offer, even though it was below the asking price and the house had undergone two price reductions already.
So now it’s real. We are about to become homeowners again. It’s not an amazing house by any stretch, but it’s perfect for us. The kitchens, baths, and floors are all pretty dated (think 1970’s), but structurally and functionally it’s all in good shape. The neighborhood is surprisingly nice, dotted with palm trees and neat little ranches from 1967-1972. The house is nice and cool with burnt adobe block walls and a reflective roof, and it has a lovely view of the Santa Catalinas from the back yard.
It also has something I never dared dream of. The previous owner owned an RV and so the house comes with a carport sized for tall vehicles like Airstreams. No silly HOA restrictions here. The carport also has sewer & water connections. By merely adding a 30-amp plug, we’ll have a covered full hookup in our carport! Too cool.
Now I know a few of you are thinking, “Hey, I’d like to come to Tucson next winter with my Airstream.” Well, as it turns out, we are most likely going to rent the house out for a while, so there won’t be courtesy parking for a while — and when there is, we may be using it ourselves!
See, we’ve decided we don’t actually want to stop traveling for a while yet. Emma is on a waiting list for her school. While we are waiting we will keep home schooling and getting some more travel in. Soon enough she’ll be locked into a school schedule, but until then we don’t want to pass up any more opportunities. When the school calls, we’ll come back here and live in the Airstream until the tenants’ lease is up.
Having done this, we’ve stepped back into the world of traditional real estate. There will be many calls to make this week, paperwork, and decisions. Having lived in the Airstream all this time, it seems like far too much trouble to have a wheel-less house.
But ironically, having completed this task of finding a house means we will soon be free again. Once our pre-paid month at the campground is up and we’ve gotten all the inspections of the house done, we plan to hit the road for three weeks. We’ll return for the closing and to get the house set up for rental, and then take off again, not to return until next fall at the earliest. It’s nice to have a start on a home base, but we’re not going to let it take over just yet.
April 6, 2007 at 9:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Guess what we did today?
The search is narrowing. I don’t want to jinx it yet by saying too much, but things are looking very good. It’s about time too. Our Airstream needs to drop about 100 lbs of miscellany, and clear up some space. I’m beginning to think we need a house just so we have a place to drop off junk we’re not using, while we’re in the southwest.
If things go well we will blow town around April 17 or 18, and do some traveling before coming back here for a few short days. The Airstream needs a little exercise. Then, in May we’ll head out entirely for northern AZ and the Las Vegas area. We’re working on plans to meet some other Airstreamers along the way.
Once again Emma is amazing me with her reading. Today we spent an hour in the car and she finished off a “Level 3” reader of about 60 pages. Didn’t hear a peep out of her the entire time. Hmmmm… I like this! So we took her to Bookman’s, a local used book chain. Great place! I have a feeling we’ll be there a lot while we are in Tucson.
April 5, 2007 at 10:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Although we have had many adventures over the past year, I have to say that watching Emma learn to read is probably the most exciting thing I’ve seen in a long time. When she was learning to talk as a baby, I was counting the words she knew: 4, 5, 6, 10, 20, 50 and suddenly her vocabulary exploded beyond counting. Reading has been exactly the same. A few months ago we were working with flash cards on “sight words” and now suddenly she’s sitting down and reading entire books all by herself.
Emma reads a book to her grandmother over the phone
As a writer and editor, it’s gratifying to see her absorbing new words and learning the pleasure of reading. At this point I can see that she is running with it, and now our major task is to assist her and give her opportunities. She’ll do the rest.
It’s also nice to see how this aspect of home schooling has worked. Despite our busy travel schedule, Emma’s education hasn’t suffered — in fact, exactly the opposite. We’ve been able to share with her the words and ideas of every place we’ve visited, and she’s absorbed them.
I can admit to you now our little secret: the first words she learned to read came from billboards on the highway. I remember the first sign she spontaneously read to us: CRACKER BARREL. At the time we were mortified, but now that she’s reading books, we don’t have to worry about her vocabulary being limited to STEAK’N’SHAKE, EXIT ONE MILE, and PEDRO SAYS VISIT SOUTH OF THE BORDER.
We are facing a decision point soon. If we don’t find a house by mid-April, we will run out of time to close a deal before we need to start moving again. We’ll have to postpone the search until next fall. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it does force us to either get serious about making some offers now if we want to make a deal.
We have decided that the school we’ve selected for Emma is worth waiting for. Right now she’s on a waiting list, and it could be a long time before a slot opens up. Having some presence in the local market (a rental, a seasonal RV spot, or a house) will give us the option to come back anytime we want, when the school is ready. So even if we don’t buy, we’ll do something to establish a base.
If the waiting list means another year in the Airstream, traveling and homeschooling, we can (easily!) live with that. In fact, running down the list of things we want to do, we’ve already got tentative plans that could keep us busy well into 2009. There’s always something interesting to go see & do in this great big country of ours.
April 4, 2007 at 3:52 pm · Filed under Maintenance
Long-time blog readers will recall last summer’s debacle when a wheel came off the trailer. The whole episiode started in Grand Teton National Park, when we pulled into our campsite and ran over a 2″ drywall screw. This caused a flat that resulted in the tire needing replacement, and subsequent disasters caused by a mechanic over-torquing the wheel.
A few months before that, we got a nail in a tire, either in or near Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. We were able to patch that one. A month after the Grand Tetons, we ran over a nail in a campground in Gunnison Colorado.
My point is that of all the flats we’ve gotten, all of them have been from debris we ran over in campgrounds. We’ve never had a blowout or flat on the road. This is because campgrounds are often full of debris left by previous campers, hidden in the gravel. Many people use utility trailers to haul their toys, like ATVs and motorcycles, and those utility trailers are the same ones they use to haul a load of trash to the local dump. So screws and nails end up falling out in the campgrounds.
Here’s what I have found in our campsite this past three weeks (click to enlarge):
Obviously the items I’m concerned about are the screws. So far I’ve found two, including once again a drywall screw. It’s just a matter of luck that we haven’t hit more of them in our travels. They seem to be in every campground, even the state and national park sites.
Campground owners could reduce this problem by periodically cleaning each site with a magnetic sweeper, but I’m sure most of them don’t feel they have the time to do this. Too bad. I don’t know that there’s much we as campers can do about it, but it does underscore the importance of checking your tires for proper inflation every time you leave a campsite.
April 3, 2007 at 8:44 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We looked at another couple of houses today. It feels like the search is narrowing, but there’s no slam-dunk yet. There are 8,000 properties for sale in the Tucson MLS, and yet it seems like every one we see is holding out for a high price based on the frenzied market peak of 2005.
The latest one is owned by one of the hundreds (thousands?) of California investors who helped drive up prices. Now a lot of them are left holding the bag. This one is typical — bought by starry-eyed speculators with 5% down, lightly made over, and left vacant for two years. Yet they expect a tidy profit of 50% even in a slow market.
It’s frustrating for us as buyers, because many of them won’t negotiate. Too many people are watching either “Flip This House” or “Flip That House” on cable, and getting the idea that real estate speculation guarantees a big return. Most of them will be disappointed, as this article explains.
The last house we saw today has little charm or curb appeal, a crummy kitchen makeover and a hideous backyard … but the front has a pretty decent view (above). Mostly we’re interested in it because it is close to the school we like for Emma, it has space for the Airstream, and it’s in a nice quiet spot up near the mountains. We shall see. We’ve learned not to get our hearts set on anything, since we’ve already passed on a few other houses with inflexible owners.
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