We broke camp at LaPosa south and drove 103 miles to American Girl Mine Rd., in California just west of Winterhaven. There is supposedly a town called Oglesby but we didn't see it. This is actually an easy area to access for any size rig. We were only 7-tenths of a mile from a paved road.
On the way we stopped at a Walmart in Yuma, AZ. Wow! $323 for almost the identical basket which use to cost us $200 when we started full-timing. Capitalism at its . . . . I figure that things really haven't changed in hundreds of years. Capitalism is just feudalism but those who own everything and are getting richer as the rest of us are getting poorer just don't have royal titles. But they still use national pride and fear to get people to put up with it. To be honest, Pamela and I are so tight we make a penny scream for mercy. If everyone was a frugal as the two of us, capitalism wouldn't stand a chance. It is based on copious consumption.
A good example is in Quartzsite. The average class-A motorhome appears to run around a quarter of a million dollars. There are hundreds of these motorhomes for sale in Quartzsite during the big tent RV show. How much debt can a people manage? If these are not first time consumers, what is happening to all of the old class-As? It is mind boggling.
American Girl Mine Rd is very interesting. It isn't a lush desert - yes, there is such a thing - but we have some really beautiful mountains nearby. This was the first gold mining area in California and it's about 100 miles from where gold was first discovered in Arizona. There are still active mines just up the road. It is rather isolated. The only places where you can get a loaf of bread and not spend a fortune are at least twenty miles away. But it is beautiful and we are relatively convenient to the Los Algodones border crossing.
A good example is in Quartzsite. The average class-A motorhome appears to run around a quarter of a million dollars. There are hundreds of these motorhomes for sale in Quartzsite during the big tent RV show. How much debt can a people manage? If these are not first time consumers, what is happening to all of the old class-As? It is mind boggling.
American Girl Mine Rd is very interesting. It isn't a lush desert - yes, there is such a thing - but we have some really beautiful mountains nearby. This was the first gold mining area in California and it's about 100 miles from where gold was first discovered in Arizona. There are still active mines just up the road. It is rather isolated. The only places where you can get a loaf of bread and not spend a fortune are at least twenty miles away. But it is beautiful and we are relatively convenient to the Los Algodones border crossing.
The thing that bothers us about driving through this part of southern California is all of the irrigation. The once mighty Colorado River trickles into Mexico through a 24 inch culvert. It doesn't even fill the culvert. We have taken so much water from the river for irrigation and replaced it with toxic waste which has totally destroyed a once beautiful lake called the "Salton Sea" just west of us, among other places.
We had a friend visit the Salton Sea a few years back. She said that walking on the beach they commented on the strange looking sand. But it wasn't sand. It was dried fish bones. The lake is dead and toxic.
I'm sorry. When I see a farm worker wearing as Hasmat suit, I take a second look at the produce I buy in the store. This is a good argument for buying locally grown produce whenever possible. You have to be careful even then because people will import produce to sell at local farmers' markets. However, even in Columbia Falls, MT., where we have to have one of the shortest growing seasons in the country, there are local farmers who have figured out how to provide their community with good and healthy produce.
Water is so precious! Is it really that hard for people to realize and understand? Something just isn't right when nature, including people, are in desperate need of water and you drive along a road where they're spraying this precious commodity over thousands of acres of desert to grow a crop for profit.
We had a friend visit the Salton Sea a few years back. She said that walking on the beach they commented on the strange looking sand. But it wasn't sand. It was dried fish bones. The lake is dead and toxic.
I'm sorry. When I see a farm worker wearing as Hasmat suit, I take a second look at the produce I buy in the store. This is a good argument for buying locally grown produce whenever possible. You have to be careful even then because people will import produce to sell at local farmers' markets. However, even in Columbia Falls, MT., where we have to have one of the shortest growing seasons in the country, there are local farmers who have figured out how to provide their community with good and healthy produce.
Water is so precious! Is it really that hard for people to realize and understand? Something just isn't right when nature, including people, are in desperate need of water and you drive along a road where they're spraying this precious commodity over thousands of acres of desert to grow a crop for profit.
We can hear a lot of rail road traffic at American Girl Mine Road, but it doesn't bother us. For a short period each morning the big gold mine trucks rumbled by, but, again, they didn't bother us. This is a good place to come if you want to avoid politics and other drama of society. If it weren't for a few neighbors on the other side of the wash, we could pretend we were the only people out here.
No comments:
Post a Comment