I may not have been flying the bird on the way out of this place. Its fun to visit but wears on the nerves. I was over it and ready for the next adventure. We intended to see the Hoover Dam, but unfortunately I support the second amendment and they have a security check system that believes in me not exercising my rights, up to and including searching all of my belongings. We turned around at the security check point and decided that there is enough pictures of this man made structure that we will survive without an up close and personal encounter.
We blew past the welcome to Arizona sign. Not that we could stop and take pictures, there are signs everywhere, no stopping, no walking, nothing..... unless you are the homeless guy with the shopping cart. This guy was against the establishment and living his best life with his dual state citizenship...Just past this we did see a huge wind farm. Its exciting to see the potential for a future of alternative energy. I often encourage both of our kids to consider an interest in this. I cant imagine our future on this planet will be long and prosperous if this sector doesn't continue to grow. Arizona currently makes only 11% of its electricity from Solar or Wind, given the wide open spaces and ample sunshine I would expect more. There is an initiative to increase these metric with benchmarks in 2025 and 2030, but this get complicated to explain and I want you to read the rest of this before glassing over with crappy details.
With this missed opportunity we had to make it up. Krystal wants to get pictures of each state border. Likely easier back in the day with lower speed limits but many of these states are happy with a 75mph speed limit. She googled it and found a place with a sign that we could get a picture. It was about 30 miles in from the state line and I was onboard with making it happen. This was a true statement up and to the point that google led us off the paved road and onto a dusty washboard wore out dirt road. After some further research google was going to run us 2 miles down this road, past all the side by sides and 4x4 trucks, to another side road with grass down both sides and down the middle, to a nice spot to park where we could walk up to the highway and get "The Shot". Long story shorter, I shut this adventure down about 2 miles in on the dirt road, basically where the road turned into a hunting road, but still enjoyed another 3 miles of 5-10 mph dusty dirt road to continue through to the paved road on the other end just praying I don't get ANOTHER flat tire. I don't pray all that often, but given the last Sunday flat tire fiasco I wasn't quite ready for another.
One of Lances wishes was to see a Saguaro Cactus as well as Ava. I noted this earlier in the about us I believe. These wishes change hourly so keep up if you can. If you are keeping up let me know so I'm in the loop too. Anyway, we got to see some cactus, stopped off a couple times. Got a good picture. We learned a thing or 2 about these. They have a limited habitat consisting of Northern Mexico into Arizona over into the Senora Desert in California. These cactus grow to 40ft tall or so typically. The tallest know cactus was 78ft tall in Cave Creek Arizona. The cactus is a slow grower. It can commonly be only 3 ft tall at 50 years of age. The iconic cactus shape with the main barrel and 2 arms means that it has likely reaches minimum 75 years of age. These cactus routinely live to be between 150 and 200 years old. When they are fully grown and fully hydrated they can be upwards of 5000lbs. I once heard a story of a man shooting the trunk of one of these cactus only to have it fall on him and crush him to death. Seems like natural selection to me. That plan was in place for likely 150 years based on my calculations.
The trip from Vegas to Phoenix is only about 3.5 hours or so, compared to Reno to Vegas it felt quick. The drive was uneventful other than our baja excursion for the attempted picture. We pulled into the new rental in Surprise Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix and we are so pleased. It is a really nice house in a nice neighborhood. Even though its nearly 80 degrees out, this house's pool was still too cold for the kids. This house was one of the lesser expensive rentals, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it ends up being one of the nicest. We are now an hour ahead from PST, so our schedule will change by an hour even though we are going to continue the same 7:30a to 4:30p PST schedule. Tomorrow is a day off for us. Not sure of the plans, might just relax by the pool and put some miles on the house provided margarita machine.
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