Well we went to the land of sunshine last week. I'm sure the person who wrote that phrase must have been thinking of the liquid variety. We were in the Phoenix-Mesa-Goodyear-Buckeye Arizona area during what must have been the monsoon of the century! I had packed only warm weather clothes and a thin jacket, so I froze most of the time. It was actually warmer up home, and of course I didn't bring an umbrella!
Our purpose for the trip was to look at possible winter-escape our Pacific Northwest cold, rainy season home. A real estate salesman had six homes in Buckeye (west valley) for us to look at. There were some great buys but we didn't get any of them. Some needed appliances replaced, or they were missing all together. After counting the costs of maintaining two homes we decided to look at other options.
The rain poured down all day and all night--about seven inches over two days. The desert ground doesn't soak up rain like a thirsty sponge, it either sits there on top and forms BIG PUDDLES, or it runs to the nearest low point in the terrain. I was expecting to see a Noah's Ark type boat in one of the yards. Behind Mike's home there is a park carved out of a bowl shaped depression which was now an outdoor swimming pool. In the accompanying pictures which we took on our visit there last year, imagine the water level up past the top line of bushes and you will see where the water line extended. The TV weather man remarked that he had watched his pool fill up, overflow and was heading towards his patio.
When we stopped to look at the 5th house, I looked out the side windows on both sides of the house to see a 6-inch swiftly running stream headed for the street. It was like living on an island. Several major highways were closed up north from Sedona to Flagstaff, where they got nine feet of snow! Buildings with flat roofs had to be shoveled off to keep them from collapsing.
The next day it had stopped raining (except for one quick hailstorm we were caught outdoors in) so we drove Mike's van over to Mesa (east valley) to visit Merle's brother and wife. We all went to a great restauranr--but I forgot the name of it. They live in a manufactured home park. It is a gated community with a pool, recreation building and activities for seniors. We got a list of homes for sale in the park and drove around looking at them. They were all 14-feet (single) wide models with attached Arizona Rooms built on. I had one serious objection to them. The rooms were so small you could barely turn around in them, especially the bedrooms. The park had other perks such as paying for the utilities with the lot rent, and most of the sale homes were fully furnished, but having once lived in a small single-wide trailer at Fort Devens, I could not down-size that far from our 4-bedroom house.
The next day we located a fairly new park near Buckeye called Buena Vista. It had double-wide manufactured homes, so we got the list of those for sale, and a nice saleswoman showed us several. The size was much more to my liking, all were quite new, and all were unfurnished. This park was still being developed. There was a pool but no community organization or activities. At either park we would have to pay the taxes. The costs are different at every park. This park landscaped every lot. The first park let the residents do their own landscaping.
So we put our plans on hold for a couple of months. Merle thinks he wants to drive down there about the end of March (because this is the best time to bargain for homes on sale). We want a double wide in a gated community, as it will provide security while we are up north. There are about 110 parks in the Phoenix-Mesa area, and Merle is a pretty good wheeler-dealer. Stay tuned for further developments.
P.S. My knees didn't hurt while I was in Arizona, but Merle's sciatic nerve still bothered him.
