Another Refugee From SB...Living In NE Arizona

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Patchouli said:
I don’t blame anyone for wanting to leave Texas for one reason, okay there are more, but there are so many newcomers.
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Along with his taxes going up appreciably each year he hates the demographic shift where he lives outside of DFW.
 
Looking down on my place from the mesa to our north.
To the horizon it is AZ State Trust lands so will never get built on.
Unfortunately, below and to the left (out of sight) in that picture is where my new neighbor from TX is planning to build his place. Though i lased it and it is still 735yds from my back door

Xlbzq6e.jpg


Our 1452 sqft log house

OcopEfL.png


OrvmoAP.jpg
 
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Steve_In_29 said:
Looking down on my place from the mesa to our north.
To the horizon it is AZ State Trust lands so will never get built on.
Unfortunately, below and to the left (out of sight) in that picture is where my new neighbor from TX is planning to build his place. Though i lased it and it is still 735yds from my back door

Xlbzq6e.jpg


Our 1452 sqft log house

OcopEfL.png


OrvmoAP.jpg
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Love it!
 
sonya123 said:
hello, I think I remember you from SB....welcome, this is a much nicer forum, hope it stays that way LOL

Your livingroom looks a lot like ours except much nicer, we have all wood also but ours is 80 some years old and needs help
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Thank you. I saw the notification and wondered because the name sounded familiar.

The walls are the inside of the logs you see on the outside pictures.
 
Hey Steve, great to see you!

l really enjoyed your intro, what a life. I hate myself for not moving there before prices skyrocketed. Maybe a little, (LOT) closer to town though. I hope you'll start a continuation of your awesome homestead thread here. Now that the heat wave is over for a few days, it's cooled off here to a nice balmy 115... :(

OK, see ya around.
Dusty
 
Something I forgot to mention in my intro is that living in AZ (or anywhere in the lower 48) was a compromise between my Korean born wife and I. She had actually wanted to move to Alaska and live off grid at first.

I explained about the costs and work involved in doing that, along with how we were now on a fixed income and no longer spring chickens.

So I found her a place away from people as much as I could, As the more time we both have spent around people the more we realized how little we wanted to be around people.

One thing that hampered my search was that she refused to live in a "trailer house" as she refers to modulars. Which are the norm in many rural areas. We got really lucky when I found this place with a log house after it had only been on the market for 2 weeks. It helped that it was 2017 and pre-antifa/BLM/covid where they almost couldn't give away places out here in the boonies.
 
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UserNameTaken said:
Hey Steve, great to see you!

l really enjoyed your intro, what a life. I hate myself for not moving there before prices skyrocketed. Maybe a little, (LOT) closer to town though. I hope you'll start a continuation of your awesome homestead thread here. Now that the heat wave is over for a few days, it's cooled off here to a nice balmy 115... :(

OK, see ya around.
Dusty
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I don't think I will do the "Living in AZ" thread over here, as it would be picking up 7 years after I started the one on SB. So a lot of context would be missing. I am keeping the one on AKFiles going though.

My thermometer on back porch said 102 today but it didn't feel that hot.
 
Tommyice said:
Welcome from New Jersey and sometimes so far upstate NY that you can see Canada from the front porch. Upstate is a log cabin too. My folks built it from a New England Log Homes kit in the late 80's. Our fire hydrant is the St. Lawrence River.
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Thanks

Upstate NY is nice country but unfortunately is ruled by the idiots in the City.

NJ is the only state that I get a shudder down my spine every time I say it. As a kid I spent some time in Patterson living with an uncle after our home in PA was flooded out by Hurricane Agnes in 72.

My brother currently lives outside Trenton, where his wife works as the CEO of a company. He does consulting (lots of travel) so didn't care where they lived.

Her requirement was to live no more than 15 minutes from her job and after he found their nice suburban place and moved in he realized he could have gone 15 minutes the other direction and been living in PA instead. Where he wouldn't have to pay stupid property taxes and deal with the draconian gun (and other) laws.
 
havasu said:
Since I am currently looking at property in Northern Arizona...
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Finally we could maybe get to go to the Range together sometime! :D We shall see, but you'll Certainly be Welcome / Congratulated for 'Escaping in Time' before our Lovely old GF Cali finally sinks into permayhem! o_O

@Steve_In_29 Great to see ya posting again, Chief.. :cool: Always been keen on the 'Eastern AZ Chronicles'.. 👍

jd
 
Amish Heart said:
Welcome from Kansas
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A guy I know on another forum just relocated to small town Kansas to escape the Dems in OR (might have been WA) and is really loving it there.
 
Steve_In_29 said:
Hello from another refugee from SB and I recognize some names here from over there.

After a heavy handed Mod over on SB perma-banned me for daring to disagree with him, when he was posting in a non-Mod capacity I was invited over here. I was a member over there (same screen name) since 2012 (iirc) so new to this forum but not new to the subject.

California native "Class of 59" but moved to PA halfway through 6th grade after dad retired from the Air Force. Left for the Marines 4 days after HS graduation in 77. Where I spent the next 17+ years traveling all over the world to meet exciting people, in exotic lands and exchange gunfire with them before getting out on a Medical in 95. While I was a Radio Tech most of my time was in Grunt battalions where I did 7 deployments and got to jump out of perfectly good airplanes and rappel/SPIE rig from helos.

During that time I visited 13 countries and sailed all the oceans except the S Atlantic. Have been from Key West, FL to Adak, AK and above the Arctic Circle to almost the Antarctic. Also did two years of long hair/civilian clothes (I can tell you but then I'd have to kill you) with JSOC, Where I met my Korean born wife and we have been together ever since (43yrs together/41yrs married). Which reminds me, we both forgot our anniversary last month...again LOL

After working a further 19+ years Civil Service for the Marines in 29 Palms, where I helped support units training for war. I bought my military time back and retired at the age of 56 in 2015.

After a multi-year search which started while I was still working that included MT, TX, ID, etc we bought our log house on 36 acres in rural NE AZ in 2017 and picked up the adjacent 36 acres a year later. Property is on grid power (rare) and a well. The power line we are connected to wasn't run out here for people. It was put in place (long before the advent of solar) to power an aircraft navigation aid that sits a few miles further down the road. When it was put in the land here was literally just open range for cattle.

Open range that got sold off to developers who split it into "ranches" (subdivisions). Ours is named "River Springs Ranch". There is a small river passing through a couple of the 250+ 40 acre parcels but no springs. The ranches are kind of a land scam (come retire in sunny AZ with easy monthly payments) but if you know what they are and aren't and can find a property that suits you they are ok.

After spending two years splitting our time between CA and AZ we moved here full time in 2019. Leaving behind 34 years of 29 Palms desert living. The property sits at 6450' so summers are cooler than most of AZ (and definitely cooler than 29) but flip side is winters can get below zero. Those winter temps tend to keep the riff-raff away though. With most lasting a single winter before moving on. 99% of the roads here are dirt and can become impassable during monsoon season. Last year a local rancher reported seeing over a dozen vehicles temporarily abandoned in the mud after one heavy storm. One person I spoke with couldn't get off her property for a month,

Our property is 10 miles down a dirt road from a small city of 3400 people that doesn't have a single stop light. Despite being the county seat of a county, that at 11,000 square miles, is bigger than Massachusetts but with a population of just 70K, Most of which is up on the Rez, It is the poorest county in AZ and sparsely populated.

In the square mile we live in there are just two families (8 people) to include my wife and I. There are three washes that cross that 10 miles of road and if any of them are running it is literally a case of, "you can't get there from here". My well guy once spent 14 hours in his truck on the wrong side of a wash (not one of those 3)

Shopping here consists of a Dollar General and a small market/Ace Hardware. The closest supermarket is 40 miles (each way) from our house. As is the closest urgent care, hospital and McDonald's. We do have a small Clinic (8-5/Mon-Fri) with one doctor in town. The closest big box stores (Walmart, Home Depot, etc) are 60 miles in another direction in a city in the next county over. Absent a medical appointment, we make the 120 mile round trip to that "big city" (pop 12K) roughly once a year when the kids come to visit.

No one here (even in town) gets mail delivered to their house/business but UPS and FedEx deliver out to our property. I make a weekly trip to town to collect mail and shop for perishables.

We have pretty much zero expectation of timely response from Sheriff, EMT or Fire. The Deputies do NOT patrol down the dirt roads and the closest could be 50 (or more) miles away when needed. There isn't even a Deputy on duty in this area after 21:00. A few years ago, when a Deputy was asked by some new residents about how to protect themselves from trespassers, etc, he replied, "you got guns right?". There are a LOT of guns out here. LOL

We live in a log home so Fire Dept would arrive in time to roast some hot dogs or make S'mores as they watered down the ashes.

I have seen the ambulance wandering back and forth trying to locate the road to a property. When my wife had her stroke in 2021, I threw her in the truck and set a record getting her that 40 miles to the hospital. Which then flew her down to Phoenix.

I'm looking forward to a long term interaction with this forum and already became a supporting member.

I can be a bit gruff and don't suffer fools (or Dems) lightly but as my long term work partner used to tell people who asked how he could stand working with me, "If you don't want Steve to tell you you are stupid, don't do stupid things".
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Welcome Aboard Brother , im not permabanned yet on SB but its probably coming . its way different over there now. ive been there since 2008. Semper Fidelis Bible and Sword.
 
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