A Plastic Snake, Two Rabbits, Some Plants, and a Truck
After our respite at the Days Inn, we moved to McDowell Mountain Regional Park in Scottsdale, Arizona for several days. I'd read very positive reviews of it on Campendium but it still managed to be not quite what I expected. I expected that we'd be in the midst of trees at the top of the mountains I could see from the valley floor. But no, no trees there, just many tall cacti, and instead of being on what I think of a mountain, it was located on a wide flattish area that was sufficiently elevated to have open views of the valley and further off mountains. So, not what I expected but it was wonderful nonetheless.
They had an awesome playground that unfortunately I did not get photos of. It had one of those enclosed slides, only this one was designed to look like a giant snake. Here's a picture from the Fountain Hills Times:
There were lots of walking and biking trails close to the campground, as well as longer ones for those with more stamina than me. On one short hike, I got to see my first-ever jackrabbits. They were bigger than I expected and moved more slowly. My prior knowledge of jackrabbits must have come from cartoons, as I imagined them as having enormously tall ears and to always be in rapid, bounding motion. Since I grew up on the East Coast, most of my prior knowledge of the West comes from Wile E. Coyote cartoons and shows like Bonanza and Big Valley.
While we were there, I read some more about the local plant life. Mike and I had been wondering how old the Saguara cacti are that we see around here. I learned that they grow only an inch or so in their first decade and typically reach 100 years of age before they begin to grow their first arm. I also learned that they need unusual conditions to germinate: several consecutive winters that are warmer and wetter than average. More things I learned: the Palo Verde, which are unusual looking and beautiful because their trunks and branches are green, actually photosynthesize in these green areas--hence the green color--they are leaf-less for much of the year. The Jojoba bushes at McDowell were beginning to blossom and their flowers were covered with bees. The bushes will bear fruit eventually. I learned that Jojoba are grown commercially to collect the wax that is in the plant's seeds. It's used for lots of things, from engine lubricant to cooking oil, biodiesel to cosmetics. The nuts are eaten by many desert animals, but the wax in them is a laxative and toxic in large amounts to mammals like us.
In other news, while we were at McDowell, Mike bought a truck to pull the bigger trailer we are planning to get. We've both read the advice about getting a one ton diesel, ideally a dually (a pickup with dual back wheels, a new vocabulary term for me), and we would have liked to do this given that it would pull more with less effort and have greater braking capacity and suspension, but that didn't happen. Even the new diesels which are supposedly much cleaner emissions-wise than the old ones have enough particulate in their emissions and make enough noise that they make my head hurt and my lungs tight. And they're expensive, of course. Ones in our budget range were older and had already reached the neighborhood 100,000 miles. Which is not a lot for a diesel engine, I understand, since their engines are sturdier and they last much longer, but much of the rest of the truck, including the body, ages just like a regular truck.
And at any given time, there's a limited market of used trucks in whatever area you happen to be in. We searched online in several car sales databases plus Craigslist and found very few trucks that fell within our parameters: at least 3/4 ton, 4-wheel drive, gas, with under 100,000 miles, long bed, crew cab. We finally found one that fits all of those, except that it does not have a long bed (we didn't realize this when we bought it--it's got a regular bed, not a long or a short-bed, and we didn't use a tape measure to be sure). It has 29,000 miles on it and is in excellent shape, except for the tires which were dry-rotted and bald. The tires have now been replaced, it has new fluids, and it has received a good bill of health from a mechanic. Cha-ching. This shit's expensive! The bed-length will mean that we need to use a sliding hitch so that when we make very sharp turns we don't smash the trailer and the truck bed together.
Here's a picture of a truck similar to ours, a 2011 Ford f250 Superduty 4x4:
It's white. Unfortunately, my mother, who has some mental health issues, is obsessed by the color white and white cars in particular. She has attacked white cars before and had some trouble with the police about it. But can I really say, sorry, we can't buy this truck because my mother doesn't like the color white? How much can you let the paranoid delusions of family members dictate your actions and choices? Serious question. And I don't mean to demean my mother in any way here. Certainly some accommodation of health problems in close family members is reasonable. But determining the boundaries of that accommodation is complex and difficult.
They had an awesome playground that unfortunately I did not get photos of. It had one of those enclosed slides, only this one was designed to look like a giant snake. Here's a picture from the Fountain Hills Times:
While we were there, I read some more about the local plant life. Mike and I had been wondering how old the Saguara cacti are that we see around here. I learned that they grow only an inch or so in their first decade and typically reach 100 years of age before they begin to grow their first arm. I also learned that they need unusual conditions to germinate: several consecutive winters that are warmer and wetter than average. More things I learned: the Palo Verde, which are unusual looking and beautiful because their trunks and branches are green, actually photosynthesize in these green areas--hence the green color--they are leaf-less for much of the year. The Jojoba bushes at McDowell were beginning to blossom and their flowers were covered with bees. The bushes will bear fruit eventually. I learned that Jojoba are grown commercially to collect the wax that is in the plant's seeds. It's used for lots of things, from engine lubricant to cooking oil, biodiesel to cosmetics. The nuts are eaten by many desert animals, but the wax in them is a laxative and toxic in large amounts to mammals like us.
In other news, while we were at McDowell, Mike bought a truck to pull the bigger trailer we are planning to get. We've both read the advice about getting a one ton diesel, ideally a dually (a pickup with dual back wheels, a new vocabulary term for me), and we would have liked to do this given that it would pull more with less effort and have greater braking capacity and suspension, but that didn't happen. Even the new diesels which are supposedly much cleaner emissions-wise than the old ones have enough particulate in their emissions and make enough noise that they make my head hurt and my lungs tight. And they're expensive, of course. Ones in our budget range were older and had already reached the neighborhood 100,000 miles. Which is not a lot for a diesel engine, I understand, since their engines are sturdier and they last much longer, but much of the rest of the truck, including the body, ages just like a regular truck.
And at any given time, there's a limited market of used trucks in whatever area you happen to be in. We searched online in several car sales databases plus Craigslist and found very few trucks that fell within our parameters: at least 3/4 ton, 4-wheel drive, gas, with under 100,000 miles, long bed, crew cab. We finally found one that fits all of those, except that it does not have a long bed (we didn't realize this when we bought it--it's got a regular bed, not a long or a short-bed, and we didn't use a tape measure to be sure). It has 29,000 miles on it and is in excellent shape, except for the tires which were dry-rotted and bald. The tires have now been replaced, it has new fluids, and it has received a good bill of health from a mechanic. Cha-ching. This shit's expensive! The bed-length will mean that we need to use a sliding hitch so that when we make very sharp turns we don't smash the trailer and the truck bed together.
Here's a picture of a truck similar to ours, a 2011 Ford f250 Superduty 4x4:
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