I recently spent almost a week in Arizona visiting family. It was my first time visiting Arizona, and suddenly, I understand John McCain a whole lot better\u2026<\/p>\n
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We stayed in a rental house, for which we have the terrible housing market in Arizona to thank. The house had three bedrooms, two bathrooms (an extra half-bath would have really come in handy), pool, hot tub, putting green, outside grill\u2026if this sounds fun, it\u2019s available for rent<\/a> for a low price. Because I\u2019m the curious type, I looked up exactly how underwater the previous owners had to be. According to the property tax records, the house sold for about $180,000 in 1999, then for $352,000 in 2006. It is currently valued at $180,000 for property taxes, showing that in Arizona (and Florida and Nevada), what went up really did come down.<\/p>\n The Titan Missile Museum<\/a> was a lot of fun. Taliesin West<\/a> was even more fun, which was surprising to me, as I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d get into Frank Lloyd Wright as much as I eventually did. In-N-Out Burger<\/a> was everything I hoped it would be, and if I could live in one, I would. We also checked out the javelinas and indoor aviary at the Desert Museum<\/a> (I\u2019d never even heard of javelinas before the trip), and we spent about six hours at the Pima Air and Space Museum<\/a>, which was nowhere near long enough to see the 300 planes on more than 80 acres. It was too hot and out of season to get much out of Tubac<\/a>.<\/p>\n Culturally, Arizona sure is a special place. I don\u2019t know if I am just not old enough to appreciate it or what, but the monotony of the place did grow old. I know it probably makes sense to make every house mud-colored, but the lack of variation gets to you. Then, you have the golf courses and other obvious affronts to the desert, which I can\u2019t help but view as the hubris of humanity ripe for a fall. Two golf courses side by side is a bit much, especially when you know how far the water had to travel for those greens.<\/p>\n We also stayed just a couple miles from the Safeway where six people were killed and over a dozen others were injured, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. In fact, we completely unknowingly visited that exact Safeway when the grocery selection at Walmart became too much to bear. I found it odd that there was nary a memorial or other indication that just a few months ago, this had been a scene of a massacre (although it looks like there used to be one there).<\/p>\n If you want to visit Arizona, go in the winter instead of July so you can see the touristy stuff and the weather is nicer (it wasn\u2019t any hotter, heat-index wise, in Arizona than in Minnesota, though). However, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be moving anytime soon: I imagine my retirement to be more along the lines of the Maine coast in a Nor\u2019easter than in the sun-baked Southwest.<\/p>\n Of course, I took a bunch of pictures and I\u2019ll post them soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently spent almost a week in Arizona visiting family. It was my first time visiting Arizona, and suddenly, I understand John McCain a whole lot better\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-vacation","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t