Viva Las Vegas - Help me, Tabs

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Originally posted by speeder
Just a friendly reminder: It's out in the middle of the dessert.

Whoah. SWEET!

[dd74]

You know where I really want to go? I want to go to Roswell and see what the hell is up over there?

I mean, is there an alien (or aliens) in that place or what?

[JavaBrewer]

Originally posted by dd74
David: how far is Rancho Santa Fe from downtown San Diego? We're all going down for the Comic Con later this month, and would like to check out the community.
Thanks.

About 15 miles North. Take the I-5 freeway to Lomas Santa Fe Exit at Solona Beach. Head East. Plan an hour or two to drive the area - lots of little roads winding in through the canyons. Stop by a realty office in downtown RSF for a road map.

I believe Pelican member Kurt Starnes lives in RSF. Perhaps you can PM him for more info. Good luck.

[ted]

If it were not for irrigation and air conditioning Las Vegas would not exist.

So Cal home owners dream of using their equity leverage to buy the affordable new dream home. They settle for desert regions and reason they’ll live in a new and larger home and tolerate these extreme conditions.
Seems like a completely material decision.

I like a nice home but I can't understand people that sacrifice their environment for a dwelling that is larger or newer.

I'd rather have a medium size home in a climate I could survive in outside. Then I could spend more time outside, not trapped inside surrounded by desert heat.

I lived in the desert for 2 years, I found the summers intolerable. You just rush from one air conditioned building to another. In the mid day summer sun your car's door handle, steering wheel and interior get too hot to touch.

Hey tabs cheap water bill, is your new back yard landscaped?
Did you get a nice colored rockscape in the front?
Pool maintenance in the desert brings new challenges too. Like extreme water and chemical demands and changing the pool water frequently due to high total dissolved solids.

You could have found a place in So Cal with a well and paid nothing for water.
Then sold a couple hundred dollars worth of water to your neighbor each month.
Is there a single shade tree in your new tract home development?
A/C bill as cheap too?
Bummer, but it’s a dry heat right.

[dd74]

Jeez, Ted: sorta' hard on the 'ol Tabby, eh?

It's more than just climate, I think. Lower property tax, no income tax, lower, if any state tax. Less people. Less traffic.

It makes sense when/if you 1) Can't afford the taxes on your house when living in So. Cal (add that in with the triple increase in car registration; 2) Can't get home to your house because you spend hours in horrible traffic and 3) the smog doesn't give you lung cancer.

Otherwise, the climate here is great! When you can and when it's safe to go into...

[nostatic]

don't try and make the I5 trip to/from North County during morning or afternoon. Even weekends are bad.

So sad being a 3rd generation San Diegan. It was an amazing place in the 60's (and the stories/pictures from my parents were mind boggling). It still is beautiful, but Corky McMillan and others have ruined it. Hopefully the Marines will never leave Pendleton, otherwise it would be concrete from Santa Barbara to TJ...

[dd74]

That's for sure.

Todd - goin' to the Comic Con? You seem like the humorous type.

[speeder]

I agree about San Diego, I've only been going there since the '70s, (moved to L.A. in '82), but even in the period between 10-20 years ago it has grown horribly. As recently as the 1980s one could drive from L.A. to S.D. and there were unpopulated areas along the way. The problem w/ all growth is that nothing interesting has been built in a loooooong time, it is all just more of the suburbanizing of America. Yuk.

[Moneyguy1]

Well, I am a desert rat as well, 100 miles south of Phoenix (and yes, I CAN see the fire from my back yard). For the majority of my life, I lived in Upstate New York; shoveled more snow that I ever care to see again, watched helplessly as every car I bought turned to rust before the warranty was over with, and watched as the economy tanked. So, when early retirement was offered, I took it without a second thought and began a methodical search for an area of the country that would offer a reasonable standard of living, an acceptable climate, and no snow. So, after travelling to places like Athens, Alabama, Lubbock, Texas, both north and south California, and even Roswell New Mexico, we decided to move to Tucson. The weather here is 5 to 8 degrees cooler than Phoenix, the winters are mild, and I was able to buy a 2400 square foot all brick (no verneer) on a quarter acre lot for less than 125k with property taxes of under $1,500. There is a lot to do, plenty to see, two rainy seasons a year, close to things like Phoenix for major league sports, Rocky Point for oceanside recreation, there is a classical orchestra, a lot of observatories, (unlike some other places, you can actually see stars here), hiking trails, 10,000 foot mountains, the list goes on. Compared to where I used to live, this is paradise. I have friends in California living in the suburbs of LA and I do not understand how the average individual can afford a house there, much less how they can stand the congestion. Sure, the ocean would be nice, but like they say here in AZ, after the next big quake, folks will be buying up oceanside property on the Colorado!! (just kidding) Seriously, folks should live where they feel most comfortable socially, economically and environmentally. I am sure if money were no object, there would be places I would have also considered, but desert living suite me just fine. Oh yes, it was 102 today at 4 in the afternoon after a morning low of 70 at 8. I was out in the workshop (no a/c but a big fan) fabbing some new kitchen cabinets for my wife. As long as I am in the shade and have a water bottle with me, the heat is not a problem. Cold, on the other hand, like the mid 50s would be very hard to take. Jacket weather.

Tucson is odd since it still has the feeling of a small town in a lot of respects. Someone once said "Phoenix is manicured, Tucson is lived in". But, we like to keep it to ourselves. So, keep thinking of it as a backwater, too-hot dump of a place in the desert. We encourage that kind of thinking...

Cheers!!

[dd74]

So correct, Speeder! So correct!

It all changed, in my view, in 1984 after the Olympics. Traffic in L.A. increased substantially. I was a courier for a time then, and had the forethought to get the heck out of that business because suddenly it started getting real crowded everywhere.

Plus, I was tired of burning up brakes and blowing engines on my Honda Accord, rest its soul.

[Doug Zielke]

Originally posted by tabs
I'll be the guy wearing a mascot outfit with floppy ears and plush tail, screaming I'm #1 in the R GRuppe ..yeah

OK, tabs....we'll be hanging around the Venetian, if you drop by in your "outfit".

[tabs]

I visited Tucson right after 911...went up to Canyon De Chenelle..saw the whole middle and eastern part of AZ over the weekend. The only thing I didn't like about Tucson is that there is no Grass.

[Moneyguy1]

I got a backyard full of it..Bermuda..Needs very little water, and feels like a thick carpet under your bare feet. Most of the grass is in back yards!! Phoenix has more grassy areas because those folks don't seem to remember they live in a desert!!!! The slogan in other areas of AZ is "Conserve water...Keep Phoenix green".