Back to Utah

We finally finished all our business in Arizona--house closing, building permit, bids for leveling and grading the site for our pole barn, and ordered the pole barn kit from Sutherland Lumber in Sierra Vista. Time to head home. Steve will go back in about a month when the pole barn kit is delivered. He decided it would be fun to build it himself. Hmmmm. Maybe. I think he's going to try and round up a little help from some of our new friends.

Ellie and Tex knew something was up and didn't want to be left behind; they planted themselves in the doorway of the Royal Palms and watched us as we packed things up and secured the house. We spent the first night on the road at my brother Jeff's in Dewey. He's the one who's built a house and gorgeous home up on a hill overlooking Prescott Valley. Steve built his wine cellar for him. Jeff has bees now, and chickens. Any family member that visits gets to have a chicken named after him or her. So far, there's Little Dawn, Susannah, Lolly, and Car Car. Car Car is me--that's the name my younger brothers started calling me when they were learning to talk. How they got that from "Sandy" is a mystery, but it stuck. I am "Aunt Car" to all my nieces and nephews. That's "my" chicken in the picture. The patio is Jeff's. It's much larger and grander than we will have at the new house, but I can see something like it on a smaller scale, so I took a picture.

We spent the second night at the NFS campground in Red Canyon, between Panguitch and Bryce Canyon National Park. It's a nice little campground right off the highway, and has some nice big pull-through sites that were perfect for us. We were quite a parade--Steve driving the Royal Palms pulling the trailer , followed by Kermit the Truck with me at the wheel. We got settled in our campsite early enough to take a hike in Casto Canyon, just a few miles from the campground. People call it a mini-Bryce Canyon, and they're right. The area has miles of trails suitable for hiking, mountain biking, ATVing, and horseback riding. We were there late in the day, when all the ATVers had gone back to their camps to suck down some beers, and had the place pretty much to ourselves.

That's it for this trip. My next blog entries will probably be in July or August. We plan to head up to Idaho then for some canoeing and kayaking. maybe our friends, Jim and Janice, will join us again.

It's Not Easy Being Green

The Varleys have a farm truck. No laughing, please. We decided a truck would be a good idea, both for hauling constructions materials to the new house from Sierra Vista and/or Tucson, as well as hauling things from our Salt Lake house to the dump and/or Deseret Industries (Utah's version of Goodwill and St. Vincent dePaul). Steve got on the internet and started researching used trucks, and by far the best deal are trucks that used to belong to the National Forest Service. They are in amazing good shape, the government has performed all the regular maintenance, and they are much, much cheaper than equivalent trucks that are not painted Forest Service green. This one is a 2003 Silverado with 72,000 miles, crew cab, and new tires. Runs great and drives like a dream. We'll add a camper shell and a hitch, and Steve can haul the trailer down loaded with stuff for the new house, and not have to put so much wear and tear on the Royal Palms. Now all we have to do is sell one of our cars. Steve thinks we should sell my Subaru Outback and I think we should sell his Honda CRV. Maybe we'll do what we did the last time we needed to sell something and couldn't decide--put both on the market and see which one sells first. I'm not going to give up my heated seats without a fight, though.

The other picture is a not-so-good shot of Omar's Highway Chef Restaurant at the Triple T Truck Stop at Mile Marker 268 on I-10 at the south end of Tucson. We stopped there by chance to get gas, were starving and decided to try the restaurant. There was a big sign as we walked in proclaiming it to be The Food Network's #2 Choice of "Best 18-Wheeler Food Stops." Omar himself was sitting at the cash register as we walked in. The tables were manned (womanned?) by waitresses who looked like they'd been there all their lives; not one of them was younger than 50, and few looked under 60. Some were motherly, some were hard-boiled, and some were funny and wise-cracking. All were friendly and effiicient, and kept Steve's coffee cup filled. No need to refill my Diet Coke--it came in a 32 oz. glass! Ice water and tall plastic glasses on each table to help yourself. The food was great. And reasonably priced. Steve had a Spanish Omelet (breakfast is served 24 hours) and I had a patty melt on a wonderful marbled rye and onion rings. Our waitress told me the onion rings were the frozen kind, not homemade, but were very good. She was right. We're putting Omar's on our list of roadfood stops, for sure.

The Home Tour

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAOho_-F29w
Steve figured out how to get the home tour onto YouTube, and I figured out how to upload the link here. It was our first movie, and unedited, so please be kind. Ignore me and just look at how cool the house is.

I took the pictures of some of the plants in bloom around the property. Prickly pear, mesquite, and yellow daisy-like things. I'm planning on making some planting areas in the front of the house where all the gravel is and transplanting some of these and some others here. I picked up a brochure at the library the other day from the county extension service that lists the native plants of Cochise County according to how much water they need. Prickly pear needs no water, mesquite needs a little, and I don't know about the daisies, but since they're growing along with everything else, I'd guess not much.

Settling In

We've been busy, although from these pics, it looks like we've mostly been busy relaxing. I drove up to Sun City West to pick up my parents and bring them down to the house for Mother's Day weekend. We had a great time. We went to the big Festival de la Primavera at the monastery in St. David on Saturday, where I fell in love with another Mexican rug. My parents bought it for us for a housewarming present. Steve and I are argui8ng about whether it should go on the wall (Steve) or floor (me). It started out on the floor, but is now draped over a chair. I don't want to hang it up and put holes in the walls until we get furniture in and decide where the rug will stay. Other than the festival, we spent a lot of time hanging out on the patio. All the pictures were taken with my new camera that Steve surprised me with for Mother's Day. It's been years since I've had my own camera. This one is a cinch to use and takes great pictures. And little movies. haven't done that yet, but I will.

Yesterday on a trip to Benson, we stopped in at the western shop next to Ace Hardware and Safeway for a stampede string for Steve's new straw cowboy hat he bought at the festival. I wandered to the back of the store and started looking at cowboy boots. I've been wanting a pair of red ones for a long time. they didn't have any red ones in my size, but I found these, on sale, and fell in love with them. They are on my feet now.

We are still working on a bulding permit for our pole barn (storage building). Thought we had it all set, but when the permit arrived, they flood zone people said we had to be 250 feet from the wash instead of the 50 to 100 feet they quoted us originally. There isn't that much room where we'd plan to put the barn, so back to square one. Found a new site, called the planning people to check it out, and got more glitches. They driveway can't run over the septic leach field because it "might break the lines", even though utility trucks and big machines used to build our house had been running over that area for months. After some careful measuring, we were able to just squeeze in the driveway between the leach field and the property line and still meet code. I just faxed the new site plan over to Planning and Zoning in Bisbee; we hope to get the okay quickly so we can order the pole barn kit from Sutherland Lumber. Actually, if it goes through, it will probably be a better location anyway. It was going to cost $4000 to grade the site and do the driveway because it was very uneven ground and we'd have had to install a culvert to deal with a drainage. The new site is already level, and there are no drainage issues. We were initially worried that it would block our best view of the mountains, but we don't think it will. Cross your fingers and toes that it all works out.

Official AZ Homeowners

Hurray! We did it! After signing a stack of papers literally 2 inches thick (Steve measured!), on Wednesday morning, we now own a solar home on four acres in St. David, AZ, or at least we will in 30 years. We moved out of our real estate agent's front yard and out to our little house on the prairie, umm, desert. We spent the rest of Wednesday unloading the trailer we has hauled from Salt Lake with some things to make the place livable and semi-comfortable--a bed, dishes and pots and pans, a camping table and chairs, TV and DVD player and a couple of living room chairs. None of us (dogs included) slept very well the first night--too many new creaks, hums, and other house sounds. Last night was a little better.

Yesterday was getting-established-in-the-community day. We went to the power company and got the electricity in our name, established an account at the local credit union, got library cards. We met our nearest neighbor, Keith, and his dogs, Lobo and Tramp. Keith is an old motorcycle guy/ex-hippie who scrounges around in the desert for downed mesquite and manzanita, and makes really beuatiful rustic furniture that he sells in upscale shops in the little tourist towns around here.. He had a really cool bar stool that I thought would look great in our kitchen. He would give them to us wholesale at $125 apiece, but we need three, so I'll have to think about it.
And save my pennies.

Today we went shopping and spent a couple hundred dollars on little things--shampoo, laundry detergent, paper towel holder, shower curtain rod, etc. It's amazing how fast that stuff adds up. We are also getting used to all the new appliances, and running into a few problems. I've cooked on a gas range all my life and this one is electric--definitely a learning curve.l The dishwasher and fridge are great, with the ice cube dispenser far superior than the one in our SaltLake house.
The shower controls in both bathrooms needed some tweaking. The installer had set them so the handle wouldn't go past warm, apparently so we wouldn't accidentally scald ourselves, probably for liability purposes. Steve and Glenn, the general contractor, were able to take fix them, so we can have nice hot showers instead of lukewarm ones. Our new washer, however, is another story. It's a front loader, and when it tries to spin, it makes horrendous noises and bucks and shakes halfway across the room. Doesn't matter how large, small, heavy, or light the load--it does the same thing. Luckily, being brand-new, it's under warranty. The good news is that there's an authorized service person right in Benson. The bad news is that his repairman is out sick, so we'll have to wait until Monday to get it looked at. I counted my undies and have enough to get by until then.

Our son Chris and his girlfriend, Sharon, are coming up for the weekend. We're looking forward to showing them around.

Unexpected Fun

Yesterday, we had planned to go to the Bluegrass Festival in the park in Benson. We had taken the dogs for a hike in the wash near where we're staying, messed around for a little while, and finally wandered into Benson in the early afternoon for the festival. When we got there, close to 1 p.m., we discovered that it ended at 4:45, admission was $12 apiece, and you had to bring your own lawn chairs if you didn't want to sit on the grass. Didn't seem worth it, so we left, stopped at the Benson Ice Cream Stop for hot fudge and banana shakes, and decided to take a Sunday drive to see some of the country instead. We drove down a little country road, through a town (smaller than St. David, which is pretty small) called Pomerene; we were headed toward the mountains when we saw a small sign in the middle of a cluster of mailboxes on a side road, pointing the way to something called Gammon's Gulch and a donkey rescue center. Intrigued, we turned in, and soon found ourselves at a parking lot to what looked like a set for Western movie. We were the only car in the lot, but got out to have a look, and were met by the owner and proprietor, James "Jay" Gammon. It WAS a Western movie set, lovingly built by Jay, and furnished with antiques from 1870 to the early 1930's that Jay has scrounged from all over Arizona or had donated. All the buildings are "real," not just fronts, and are mostly very old buildings that were ready to be torn down that Jay discovered, took apart, and reassembled here. Jay's father was chief of security for John Wayne in the 1960's, and Jay has been around the making of westerns all his life, as a set designer and a bit player. If you remember the John Wayne movie "Rio Bravo," the little Mexican boy leading the funeral procession and beating on a drum was Jay. Gammon's Gulch has been the setting for many movies, mostly independent student films, but also some for the History Channel and some Hollywood ones too. Jay has met and worked with many Hollywood actors and had an opinion about them all: Val Kilmer--"very hard to work with, full of himself;" Kurt Russell--"the worst. Thought he was better than everyone else;" Peter Coyote--"toilet mouth, but a really nice guy;" Sam Elliott--"great guy, really friendly and down-to-earth." Jay took us on a personal tour of all the buildings, talking a mile a minute about where everything came from, and obviously very proud of his little town. He even played us a tune on the honkey-tonk piano in the saloon as well as a number on the banjo. He and his wife live on site, in the Grand Hotel at the end of the street. The price for our personal tour? Seven dollars each, payable only after the tour was finished and only if we liked what we saw. We did both, and left smiling, promising to spread the word and bring our friends. The donkey rescue next door is only open for tours by appointment only, but we took the phone number and will save it for another visit.

Back "Home" in Benson

We are back in Benson (actually, St. David), ready to close on our new home. Yep, we bought it! We got an amazing deal--apparently the builder had several spec homes that weren't moving in this market, and wanted to sell before it went into foreclosure. It was originally listed at $214,900 when it went on the market in October, dropped to 189,000 in January, and had just dropped again to 179,000 when we looked at it for the second time in early March. We made an offer of 167,500, figuring that would give them room to counteroffer, but they accepted the offer as written. We couldn't believe it! So, for the past month, we've been mailing and emailing paperwork back and forth to the mortgage company, the realtor, and the title company. The amount of paper is staggering--we half more than a half inch worth of copies! Things certainly have changed since the last time we bought a house (20 years ago). Both the realtor and the lender agree, saying that it gets worse every year. Some of it I can understand, but some of it is totally ridiculous. The lender actually required a "motivation letter" saying why we wanted to buy a house in Arizona. Why that is any of their business is anyone's guess. Anyway, all is well; our closing is scheduled for Wednesday, but may happen a day early, which would be great.

We arrived here on Tuesday for the home inspection and final walk-through on Wednesday. We parked the RV on the property Tuesday night, but, because of liability issues, the realtors didn't want us staying on the property after that one night until it's officially ours, even though it was ok with the owner. Sydney, our realtor, offered her front yard as an alternative to $30plus a night in an RV park, and we gratefully accepted. She lives on 15 acres, has a huge yard, horses, and two dogs who welcomed Ellie and Tex like long-lost pals. There is a lot to see and do around this area, and we've been doing day trips here and there. Once we close and have the keys to the house, we'll be moving some things in. Although we won't be moving here permanently for at least a year, we'll be making lots of trips down with stuff, and working on building a storage building and a garage/workshop.

The pictures in this post show a couple of views of our house and some of the flora on our property. The barrel cactus are starting to bloom, and prickly pear and cholla won't be far behind. There are lots of little desert wildflowers in purple, yellow, and white. The mesquite, which in the winter looked black and dead, like they had been in a fire, are beginning to green up too. The elevation is 4000 feet here--too cold for saguaro and citrus, but I can have my favorite ocotillo. My mom said she'd buy me one as a housewarming present (Thanks, Mom!).