Searching for a Land Anchor

Land anchors … those things that keep you tied to the land when you're at sea. David didn't include them in his anchor book, but they're very real. When we decided to sell up and sail off back in 2000, we sold our home, furniture, cars … all those material things that kept us tied to land. We wanted no mortgages, no property taxes, no cars, no storage pods with furniture… and we were quite successful. Our family has been wonderful for nearly two decades, offering bed, board and storage whenever we show up … for a week or a month or sometimes longer. Now, we're thinking we'd like a place of our own to nest once in awhile. Yup, we're looking to buy a land anchor. After 16 years afloat, we need a place to store our souvenirs.

We've been out of the market for a long time and things have changed. Duh! For instance, getting pre-qualified and/or pre-approved for a mortgage loan ...you can do it on-line. In fact, they almost insist you do. You just spill your guts, including all your financial intestines, to a loan specialist via “chat”, whom you've never met and could never hope to meet. Before you know it, you're pre-qualified. We felt uncomfortable with that process and asked for a face-to-face sit-down with a loan officer at a bank we've dealt with for a couple decades. The bank, too, preferred an on-line or telephone interview, but we insisted and they acquiesced. We're definitely old-fashioned that way, I guess. It was a waste of time. We were on time and he was late and unprepared. No problems getting the approval, but we knew more than the “loan specialist” did … plus he forgot we were the customers. Grrr!

Searching for a place to live? Easy enough … whether we're interested in a house, condo, mobile home or desert property, we can shop on-line for that, too. That process, though exhausting, we've kind of liked. We don't have to deal with aggressive realtors too early in the game. We've decided that Las Vegas would be a good place to have a condo. David's mum and sisters live here. There's no state income tax. It's easy and relatively inexpensive to travel here. And, at the moment, property values are reasonable and mortgage rates are low. We figure it's better to invest in real estate than let our savings stagnate in a next-to-no-interest bank account or lose its value in the volatile market.

It turned out that once we found a place we wanted to look at, however, we couldn't get a realtor to call us back. Must be too many realty sales in Nevada to bother with us. Mary finally contacted a fellow she knew and, by default, he became our agent. The place we liked was not available, but he had more to show us. We provided our general criteria: location somewhere near Mary, bargain price, lots of square footage, no yard to maintain, but a private patio for a grill, beautiful grounds and views, facing east (morning sun, you know), several self-cleaning bathrooms, all top-of-the-line appliances included, low taxes and low or no HOA fees. We didn't think we were asking for much. He wasn't able to find one to show us until we compromised on our criteria a bit.

We've seen a couple of properties now, but we think this will be a slow process which is okay because we're used to traveling on a sailboat. Of course, once we buy a place, we'll want to buy a car and furniture and “stuff”. It's almost depressing! And if we don't find a place we like, what then? Well, life will go on and we'll look again another time or another place, maybe. The big question you ask … do we intend to swallow the sea anchor once we acquire a land anchor? NO! We figure we've still got quite a few good sailing years left in us and there's still lots to see out there. Stay tuned and we'll all see how it all turns out.

Catching Up on Politics

Being away from the US for such long periods of time, we're always out of touch with politics and what's happening on the political front. Usually, that's not a problem, but here we are in a presidential election year and we need to learn a bit about the prospective candidates. We don't consider this blog an appropriate place for discussing politics (or religion for that matter...much too controversial for us laid-back sailors). But the process of catching up is an interesting exercise. We took a look at who was running first … Democrats and Republicans et al. There were a few familiar names … Clinton … Trump ... and some we didn't recognize at all. There's a pretty full roster of Presidential hopefuls out there. We're used to hearing about American politics through the eyes of people in the countries we visit. Amazing how much other countries know about American politics and how little we know about theirs (or ours). Can you name the Prime Minister/Premiere/President/Head of State of Great Britain? France? Germany? Australia? I'll wager most Americans cannot, yet most of the citizens of those countries know Barack Obama's name.

So, we searched on-line to find the major issues of contention and where individual candidates stood on each. Immigration, gun control, ISIS/terrorism, the federal deficit, health care, environmental issues … seemed to top the list. The issues are complicated. It's hard to figure out, sometimes, exactly what the candidates are advocating. They tend to spout about what's wrong and how they disagree with the other candidates … but they have a hard time defining exactly what would be right. Understandable … there are no easy answers, and to quote the 15th century monk and poet, John Lydgate, “you can't please all the people, all the time.”

We found several quizzes on line that matched up our political views with candidates. Sometimes I couldn't figure out the question; sometimes the questions were phrased in such a way, I couldn't answer. Then there were those questions, I'm sorry to admit, where I was totally ignorant of the topic, e.g. Do you advocate American exceptionalism? (Yikes, what the heck's that ... I had to look it up). Depending on the quiz you chose and the wording of the questions, it was possible to match up with a different candidate each time, even though my views hadn't changed. Just google “presidential candidate quiz” and see the results.

So, between now and November 8th, we'll stay tuned to the American political scene and try to figure out who best represents our own ideologies. We'll make a sincere effort to learn more about the issues and the candidates and vote accordingly. David and I certainly do not always agree on each issue. We do agree however, that it would be nice if the Democrats and Republicans could, perhaps work together for the good of the country versus their own political agenda. Enough said … let's move on to something even more controversial. Sail or motor? Stick or stinkpot?

Road Trip to Dolan Springs

According to a lottery executive and the Chicago Tribune, the U.S. Powerball lottery jackpot is the largest, single ticket jackpot in world history. We were deciding where to buy our out-of-state PowerBall tickets when Mary came across a thread about the tiny town of Dolan Springs, Arizona for purchasing tickets as an alternative to the 3-5 hour queues just over the Nevada-California border in Primm. We googled it. Dolan Springs was only about 80 miles south of Las Vegas, just down US93. What the heck? Road Trip! We piled into Mary's car around 8AM and headed down Boulder Highway. Dolan Springs … here we come. Just on the other side of the Hoover Dam, we saw the Welcome to Arizona sign.

It was a cool, clear, blue-sky morning. The Mojave Desert spread out before us. The Black Mountains, the River Mountains and the McCullough Range lined our route and provided an interesting contrast to the bleak, flat desert land. It's easy to see how this area was once the bottom of a warm inland sea millions of years ago.

We passed by a couple of small stops along the way … Rosie's Den Cafe, usually a lazy, convenient stop on US93 on the way to Grand Canyon, was inundated with cars and serpentine lines extended to the far reaches of the parking lot and into the desert.

We turned off the highway onto Pierce Ferry Road and headed east about 5 miles to Dolan Springs. There were a few cars, but not all that many. A bus was heading towards the Grand Canyon. Dolan Springs proved to be a one-horse, one road kind of town, just what you'd expect in the middle of the desert.

We pulled into the Wishing Well Saloon and Restaurant, touted on FB just hours before as an outlet for PowerBall tix and a great place for breakfast … selling tix from 6am-midnight. This had been our Dolan Springs destination. The empty parking lot and the big CLOSED sign on the door was a surprise and a disappointment, to say the least.

Luckily, across the street was the town's only other restaurant, the Canyon Cafe. A much-harried waitress told us to find a table wherever we could and handed us menus. The service was slow; the food was mediocre and pricey; and they did not sell lottery tix. Conversation with a couple of locals, however, pointed us to the only gas station in town which did sell PowerBall tix. We finished breakfast and headed to the Dolan Station, just down the road.

We hadn't even noticed the station on the way past earlier, but the lines and full parking lot caught our attention this time. Comparatively speaking, the line wasn't all that long; but it was growing. We weren't really sure of the rules of play, but veteran players were happy to give us pointers. Quick picks ... computer-generated numbers … were easy. We had a couple of “custom” orders to fill for friends which required blackening dots on a lotto card which were then fed into the PowerBall machine by the counter attendant. We waited in line.

We found lots to entertain ourselves while waiting. We chatted with other folks. We took turns standing in a Western miner themed“face in the hole” board. That took up 5 minutes.

I'd noticed a fun mural on the side of the nearby Double D Market and popped out of line long enough to get a photo.

After about 40 minutes, we finally stepped into the general store. Once inside, there was all sorts of interesting stuff to check out.

There were rubber band guns with extra ammo, dream catchers and coyote ceremonial headdresses ($225 … Do not remove or put on!). There was Indian jewelry and cactus candy, gold nugget gum and tequila lollipops complete with encapsulated worm. We bought nothing, but appreciated the amusement value of the local souvenirs.

Finally, it was our turn. We bought our tickets, convinced that they were the winners, and walked proudly back out of the store. We noticed the line had expanded and stretched quite a ways further back. Timing is everything.

We waited with bated breath for 7:59pm Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday evening. We watched the balls drop and the numbers immediately displayed on the screen. The bad news? Hard to believe, but we didn't win… nada … nothing at all, but someone did! The good news? Luckily, we've saved ourselves a trip back to Arizona to cash in the winning ticket plus all the angst and aggravation associated with having to figure out what to do with all that money. Whew!