The Arizona Desert from a Different Perspective

We've been hanging out near Salome, AZ with a good-sized contingent of Way North Idahoans. Since we bought our boondocking site up north of Bonners Ferry, ID, it's been fun to hear all the stories they tell of parents and grandparents who homesteaded the region. We've been feasting on wild game (especially elk) at pot luck, dutch oven dinners, fishing Alamo Lake, hitting the farmers markets and thrift stores, and exploring the AZ desert wilderness in a way that's new to us.

There's nothing like a dutch oven pot luck meal

But Jake prefers the minnows.

Most of the people from Idaho who come down here in the winter have been exploring the wilderness areas of this region for decades. They go back up into the mountains for quail hunting, fishing, rock hounding, finding old mining camps, and to just enjoy the scenery. We've always been limited in our explorations by how far we could drive into a 4WD road and then how far we could hike in a day (no more than 15 miles). Well, everyone down here has a 4WD quad ATV of some kind, and that means much more accessibility to the backcountry.

As boondockers looking for quiet, we've always been leery of the weekend ATV'ers who show up near our campsite, unload their noisy vehicles, and race through the desert. So we were sceptical when the gang said we had to borrow one of their quads and join them in a backcountry jaunt.

Unlike the usual weekend ATV crowd, our group was an early rising, look for a seldom used area kind of group. In our full day excursion, we didn't see any other groups of any kind. That was unexpected, but part was being able to experience far more terrain and carry a wider array of gear than we ever could before. After about 15 miles, we arrived at a junction in the canyon where we had lunch. Instead of the usual fruit and nuts, we started a small fire in an existing fire ring and grilled some brats. That along with the ice cold drinks and smoked oysters, set us up for the three mile one way hike up a desert wash that was still alive with spring water.

The site was once busy with mining activities 100 years ago.

 It's always fun to find water in the desert. This old dam was probably built before WWII to provide water to the mining camps. It has filled in with sand, but still had spring water filtering through it and into the canyon.

We found this endangered desert tortois in one of the washes. It was about 14" long and must be pretty rare because it was the first of it's kind that anyone in our group had ever seen outside of a zoo. 

There are old mines and veins of minerals everywhere out here.

 Magnesium vein.

We found a bat cave up one wash that had big powder blue/gray bats flying around inside it. There weren't any other footprints besides ours inside.

 There was a fortune in guano fertilizer inside!

This was a great experience. We were able to access an area that couldn't be reached by jeep, mountain bike, or day hike and wasn't in any guide book. We were able to get in a nice six mile hike in a remote, historic area. We were able to enjoy a nice lunch and cold beverages. We were able to explore some old mines and see an endangered desert animal that is almost never seen outside of a zoo. We were the only group out in a wild and remote part of the desert. Overall, I don't think we've ever been able to pack so much into one day. We definitely need to alter our view of outdoor exploration.

And just for our buddy Boonie, who is our favorite intellectual RV fulltimer blogger, some postcard pictures of the ridiculous sunsets we have every night.

Affordable Care Act: The Verdict is In

Back in August I did a blog posting about The Real Healthcare Scam. At that time, I was withholding judgment on the Affordable Care Act until we could see what the impact of the law would be. It's pretty clear that we can declare a verdict at this point...and it's not good.

The good news is that my wife and I are now able to buy a healthcare plan with a $500 deductible. The bad news is that the annual premium is $10,200. before the ACA, we could have purchased a plan with identical coverage and a $3,000 deductible for an annual premium of $2,400. So we're paying an additional $7,800 per year to buy our deductible down by $2,500. Not a great deal.

Now before you say that you can't judge the ACA by just one family's experience, I'll say you're right. However, consider the following:

1. My wife and I are poster children for who the law was intended to help. We are two people without employer healthcare coverage who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid and who had to use the infamous Healthcare.gov website exchange to obtain coverage. On this score the law has failed.

2. The law was supposed to "bend the cost curve" and solve most of the issues associated with spiraling healthcare costs in this country. On that score the law is an epic fail, and I'll explain why.

Take a look at this article House Democrat Slams Obamacare After Retiring

"12-term Virginia Rep. Jim Moran, an Appropriations Committee member who said this month that he will not seek re-election in 2014, said that not enough young people are signing up for Obamacare coverage to make the law work."

“I’m afraid that the millennials, if you will, are less likely to sign up. I think they feel more independent, I think they feel a little more invulnerable than prior generations. But I don’t think we’re going to get enough young people signing up to make this bill work as it was intended to financially,” Moran said in an interview with WAMU American University Radio."

“And, frankly, there’s some legitimacy to their concern because the government spends about $7 for the elderly for every $1 it spends on the young,” Moran said."

So isn't that convenient? Jim admits that he attempted to financially screw young people, but they didn't go for it and without them going for it, the law can't work.
Therefore, it will blow up. Another quote from the Congressman:

"I just don't know how we're going to do it frankly. If we had a solution I'd be telling the president right now," Moran said.

As I covered in that August blog post, there is a solution.

1. Scrap the Affordable Care Act because it is all smoke and mirrors. It does absolutely nothing to improve the root cause of our nation's problems.
2. Remove all exemptions from the Sherman and Clayton Acts from any health-care connected firm (insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, device makers, etc.), period, including but not limited to international exemptions.
3. Prosecute each and every person and company that violates those acts.

Do these three things and the cost of health care will drop 80% overnight.
For the truly wonky, Google research on this done by Pew Research Foundation, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Wharton Business School. For a more "layman" explanation, the best mainstream media article I have ever read was written by Steven Brill for Time Magazine (Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills are Killing Us). It may still be available online HERE

Yes, there will be some medical options we can do now that you won't be able to obtain (at least in the short term).  That's part of the price.

However, if these solutions are implemented, not only will you be able to afford to buy health care for cash, but catastrophic insurance (true insurance) will be available at a few hundred dollars a year instead of thousands.

At the same time Federal, State and Local budgets will also have their deficit problems disappear.

We will have to accept a short-term economic dislocation to do this.  But that which is spent on ridiculously-priced monopolistic health care now will be reallocated to other, more-productive areas of the economy within months, and the US will become one of the most-competitive places to do business, if not the most-competitive place in the world.

Unfortunately, this will never ever happen. The most financially lucrative lobby in the world is the U.S. healthcare lobby. In dollar terms it exceeds every other lobbying interest (yes....bigger than the Wall Street lobby, bigger than the Defense/Military lobby, bigger than the Fossil Fuel lobby, bigger than all of the Labor Union lobbies combined). Both parties rely on this cash stream to stay in power. Insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, nurses, etc. will scream bloody murder...and they would win. As a result, our healthcare system can practice financial rape because our politicians have made competition in the sector a felony. That's not only backwards, it's extortion and it's tyranny.

So we will not have these solutions and all of the existing health care scams/"protections" will remain in place. Instead, we will continue to put lipstick on the pig and continue to screw the people of this country "just a little more."

The Mystery of the Swastika Bridge

The U.S. government has engaged in numerous civil engineering projects along the nation's waterways. The Colorado River has been the object of these projects almost continuously for more than 120 years.

We're camped now on Mittry Lake, one of the wetland ecosystems created by the damming of the Colorado River near Yuma, AZ. This project has allowed the desert around Yuma to be irrigated extensively creating an agricultural oasis that grows various crops including 90% of the country's leafy green vegetables during the winter months each year.

Civil engineering projects are old around here. So we were a little taken aback one day while exploring when we ran into this bridge adorned with swastikas cast into the concrete rails.

The bridge has the acronym USRS cast in concrete as well. That would be the US Reclamation Service. It was established in 1902 as part of the US Geological Survey. By 1927 the USRS had been split out of the USGS and renamed the Bureau of Reclamation. During this 25 year period, the USRS had developed more than 30 projects in the Western US. This bridge and the irrigation canal it crosses were part of one of those early projects back in 1907.

So now we know this bridge was built more than a 100 years ago, but what's up with all of the swastikas?

It turns out that the swastika has a history that pre-dates Nazi Germany by about 5,000 years. The word swastika comes from the Sanskrit svastika, which means “good fortune” or “well-being." The motif (a hooked cross) appears to have first been used in Neolithic Eurasia, and is thought to possibly represent the movement of the sun through the sky. To this day it is a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Odinism. It is a common sight on temples or houses in India or Indonesia. Swastikas also have an ancient history in Europe, appearing on many artifacts from pre-Christian European cultures.

The symbol experienced a resurgence in the late nineteenth century, following extensive archeological work such as that of the famous archeologist Heinrich Schliemann. Schliemann discovered the hooked cross on the site of ancient Troy. He connected it with similar shapes found on pottery in Germany and speculated that it was a “significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors.” In the beginning of the twentieth century the swastika was widely used in Europe. It had numerous meanings, the most common being a symbol of good luck and auspiciousness. However, the work of Schliemann soon was taken up by völkisch movements, for whom the swastika was a symbol of “Aryan identity” and German nationalist pride.

So this bridge was adorned with a popular symbol long before Hitler's Nazi party made it a symbol of hate and genocide. The Yuma Proving grounds are located a few miles north of this bridge. Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers were trained on that site from 1942 through 1945. I wonder if any of them came across this bridge during training and were curious about the forty swastikas cast in concrete across its length.

The Quartzsite Trip

Quartz: a hard, crystalline, vitreous mineral, silicon dioxide, found worldwide as a component of sandstone and granite, or as pure crystals

Site: the place or plot of land where something was, is, or will be located; an event-setting

Quartzite: a metamorphic rock resulting from the recrystallization of quartz, sandstone

Quartzsite: a town in Yuma County, Arizona. Elevation 879 feet. Population 187 in summer, 1+ million in winter. Founded in 1856 as an important stagecoach station. Present-day location of the world's largest RV Flea Market & Show and Rock & Gem Pow Wow every January

Trip: a going from one place to another, a journey; a protracted hallucination induced by a hallucinogen; a stumble or fall; a mistake, blunder

The Quartzsite Trip: a classic novel of high school seniors coming of age on a trip to Quartzsite, AZ in the spring of 1962 where anything can happen; an annual winter sojourn for a subculture of millions of RVers of all types and persuasions where anything can happen

And so here we find ourselves on our own Quartzsite Trip in January, 2014.......

There were groups for Boomers, Boondockers, Singles, Nudists (really!), and Christians (just to add balance), as well as RV owners' groups like this Montana fiefdom 

The scenery was stunning and the weather exceptional, it's no wonder RVers forego water and electric hookups to participate in this annual event

No doubt that finding a place of peace and solitude would be challenging

Every piece of real estate is prime...

...but we managed to skirt the edge of the
BLM boundary and...

..."found our beach"
(complete with Corona!)

It's all about location, location, location...

...until the barbarians (guess who's term?) moved in around us!

But Karly and Jake didn't seem to mind

Hard to imagine that this lies on one side of Q (Quartzsite) Hill....

...and this on the other during this time of year
The main RV Show & Market is in the Big Tent...everything you didn't know you needed for your RV!

The January Full Moon only added to the Trip....

Is that a Saguaro pretending to be
a man???

Or an Indian squaw with a papoose??

                                   

Look, up in the air....

...now that's a trip

...and the Hi Jolly Cemetery dedicated
to a camel wrangler for the US Army
...now that's a site!

Balloons up high...

Remnants of a silver mine that represent Quartzsite of old remain as a backdrop to Q Hill

including its resident guard, Deputy Desert Dawg

No, it's not an illusion, they are
the only native palms in Arizona
at Kofa National Wildlife Refuge
about 20 miles south of Quartzsite

Are those palm trees in that canyon???

But a Kokopelli bush?????

We'll let you decide....

Did we mention the Full Moon???

The million or so snowbirders who flock to Q each year also come for the sprawling markets that pop up selling everything you can imagine you need and those items you don't realize you need yet. We made it out about $600 poorer but with about $1,100 in goods. So it was a pretty fair trade. We'll be back next year. We may even join up with a group to get into the full Q vibe........OK, that's probably never gonna happen! ;-)

10 Warning Signs That Something Evil This Way Comes

Finding useful sources for news can be challenging. For example, over the past week the leading news story in the U.S. has been about Justin Bieber. I find that a sad and depressing commentary on our country. That's why looking at news sources outside of the U.S. can be helpful for understanding what is happening in the world. If you get all of your news from the usual sources, here are a few news items that you probably don't know about. Ignore these stories (and others) in favor of the latest drivel offered by our U.S. media and you miss the big picture.

1. This week the 30-day/4-week T-bills were auctioned off at a 0% rate. After the auction, the rate went negative. Negative short term rates were last seen in 2008, right before the Lehman/AIG/Goldman collapse occurred. Negative rates only occur when very big investors are concerned about the return of their money rather than the return on their money. Something is spooking big money, possibly a massive risk of derivatives default just like in 2008.
2. The value of the Argentine Peso and Venezuelan Bolivar have collapsed leading to economic chaos, violence and looting in those countries. This is what eventually happens when you relentlessly devalue your currency.
3. The economic breakdown in Argentina and Venezuela appears to be spilling over into Brazil as their stock market crashes.
4. Political rioting in the Ukraine has that country coming apart at the seams.
5. It appears that a bank run is underway in China as their credit bubble collapses and the manufacturing sector contracts.
6. Unemployment rates in France, Italy, and Spain have all hit new all-time record highs, and the value of the Turkish Lira is collapsing.
7. The Baltic Dry Index, a leading indicator of international trade, has posted the largest decline ever over the past two weeks.
8. Chipmaker Intel has announced it will eliminate 5,000 jobs over the upcoming year. Sears, JC Penny, and Target are planning significant layoffs, hiring freezes, and store closings.
9. The U.S. stock markets have fallen and it is becoming increasingly likely that the peak of the markets is behind us.
10. The U.S. national debt (not including 50+ trillion in unfunded entitlement liabilities) currently stands at $17.34 trillion and the current debt ceiling will be reached in early February. It was originally thought that the next debate in Congress over the debt ceiling could have been pushed into May. (Less than six years ago, presidential candidate Obama correctly called the $9 trillion national debt accumulated under the Bush Administration "unpatriotic".)

There are many other items, but 10 is enough for this post. A global economic storm is approaching while our media and our citizens are obsessed with celebrity scandals and reality TV.