Mt. Wrightson

Mt. Wrightson has been staring us down since we first came into our boondocking spot near Patagonia in the Coronado National Forest. It's not the tallest peak in AZ, but at 9,453 feet it dominates the southern AZ landscape.

We thought it was time to check out the hike up to the top out of Madera Canyon. It's a 13.2 mile round trip hike with a combined elevation change of 8,600 feet (4,300 each way). Going up through a Ponderosa pine forest was nice after four months in the mostly treeless southwest desert. Even though we were in a pine forest, there was always a plant or two that would pop up to remind us we were still in the desert.

As we climbed we came eye to eye with the observatories on the adjacent mountain.

The craggy ridgeline that was our objective before climbing to the summit came into view but always seemed closer than it really was.

About halfway up the view opened up to the north and the alluvial plain spreading out to Green Valley and the old open pit copper mines in the distance.

The ice cold water of Bellows Spring about 3/4 of the way up was a nice refreshing treat.

Who says it doesn't snow in southern AZ not far from the Mexican border?

Finally above the observatories.

It was a hazy day. The views were spectacular, and the pictures don't do it justice. We couldn't tell if the haze was from dust, smoke from a fire somewhere, Tucson air pollution, or something else.

The walk downhill seemed much longer than the climb up. By the end of the day it felt good to have the peak of Mt. Wrightson in the rearview mirror.

Hikes like these do several things for me. They make me wish I was 20 years younger and 20 pounds lighter. They also make us more and more thankful that we were able to retire at 47 instead of in our late 50's or early 60's. There's nothing that says hikes like these can't be enjoyable in your 60's, but I'm fairly confident that they won't be as easy 10-15 years from now as they are today!

They Really do Believe We Won't Notice

Our natural defense mechanism as human beings is to deny reality. "These sorts of things happen to other people, not to us."

It’s this same defense mechanism that leads people to ignore the obvious fiscal realities of their home country despite overwhelming objective evidence. After all, debt-fueled collapse happens to other countries, not to us.

We go our entire lives being told that our country is different. We’re special.
We have televised ‘experts’ going on TV explaining why our debts and deficits don’t matter, and Nobel Prize-winning pseduoscientists (hello Paul Krugman) complaining that our debts and deficits aren’t big enough. But deep down you know the truth.

In the Land of the Free, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released its 2013 Financial Report of the United States Government

This is the government’s best attempt at an honest accounting of its books, and even though they use a different accounting system that gives them special advantages, the picture is still remarkably bleak.

We all know that the US government has racked up a substantial debt; as of this morning, total outstanding public debt is $17.526 trillion.

But it’s not all about the debt. Debt is not necessarily evil… and it’s important to look at the situation qualitatively in addition to quantitatively. Let’s drop a few zeros and consider this in terms of personal finance.

Assume you had $1.75 million in total debt. That sounds like a lot to most people, but if you had $3 million in liquid assets to offset the debt, plus $500,000 in annual income to pay interest, living expenses, and just about any contingency that could come your way, you’d be in great shape. It would be even better if that $1.75 million in debt financed a lucrative real estate or business investment which was generating a 25% cash-on-cash return for you.

But that’s not the case for the US government.

Despite the Obama administration touting a budget deficit of “only” $680 billion in 2013, the GAO’s more accurate accounting shows a total government cost of $3.8 trillion on total revenue of $2.8 trillion.

In other words, the administration wasn’t exactly honest with the American people...the deficit was more like $1 trillion, not $680 billion. 

But it gets worse.

The GAO added up ALL the US government’s assets in 2013. Aircraft carriers. The highway system. Land. Cash and financial assets. The total is $2.97 trillion.
The liabilities, on the other hand, total $19.88 trillion. This includes the official public debt, plus all sorts of IOUs and loan guarantees.

This means the net EQUITY of the US government is minus $16.9 trillion.

Moreover, the US government’s cash position is a mere $206 billion… roughly 1.1% of its public debt. This isn’t enough to cover net interest payments for the next year.

Unlike a savvy investor who borrows cheap money to purchase productive assets, the US government borrows money to pay interest and fool the population into believing we can spend without consequences for literally everything because everything is too sacred to be cut.

We have been able to create this financial doomsday machine because the US is in the enviable position of being the world's reserve currency and the basis upon which almost all petroleum transactions are cleared.

Our actions over the past 40 years have put us in jeopardy of losing this position.

Quantitatively AND qualitatively, the data point to an inevitable conclusion: despite all the propaganda and "official" government falsehoods, this is NOT a risk free environment.

Understanding these trends and consequences is absolutely critical to your long-term financial survival.

UPDATE 3/21/14: It appears that Russia and China could be close to signing a natural gas supply deal as early as May. Add to this bilateral trade denominated in either Rubles, Renminbi or gold, include Iran, Iraq, India, and soon the Saudis (China's largest foreign source of crude), and we could be waving goodbye to the petrodollar much sooner than anyone is reporting in the mainstream news.

UPDATE 4/2/14: I was wrong. Russian and China didn't wait until May to sign this deal. It was done today. The U.S. Dollar is becomming more and more irrelevant each day at an accelerating pace. Our government is already scrambling to try to find ways to kill the deal.

Alone again, naturally

Except for a brief stint in Las Vegas for the holidays, we've been boondocking in different locations all winter and haven't stayed at a campground. Because we've chosen to attend some popular events like the RV show at Quartzsite and the Fireworks Festival at Lake Havasu, we've found ourselves in the company of other RV'ers the entire winter.

The downside to this is we've had to put up with generators running at most hours of the day and campsites where we might only be ten feet or so from another rig. Even at Mittry Lake, in Yuma, AZ, where we were at least a quarter mile from our nearest neighbor, that neighbor had a loud and annoying generator we could hear loud and clear. That tends to ruin the boondocking experience for us.

So after 12 days at the Casino Del Sol in Tucson hiking, eating, and catching up with a friend, we decided it was time to get back out into the public lands where there are no neighbors, no road noise, and uninterrupted views.

We're camped now in the Coronado National Forest outside of Patagonia, AZ. All we can see are a few lights from the town at night. The forest road we're perched way above has almost zero traffic, and there are no man-made objects to obscure our 360 degree views.

Ahhh beautiful solitude. Tonight we grill Idaho elk steaks and drink Napa Valley merlot.

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.