During the last quarter of 2025, my husband Mitch was going to be turning 65 and after 40 years of working REALLY hard in the retail marketing industry in a variety of display and print advertising areas. he was thinking of retiring.
We had heavy financial burdens with maintaining a bed and breakfast, a restaurant, our farm and a vacation rental that we never saw any more due to our work, and he asked me if we could change our lives.
I had been practically killing myself running a restaurant I didn’t even take a salary from because the profit wasn’t there and down to 105 pounds and honestly, I WAS EXHAUSTED. Sounded good to me so over a period of 4 months, we purged, cleaned out, donated, threw out and sold just about everything.
We had a 28 foot truck filled with everything we would take of our earthly possessions and loaded our 2 dogs and three cats and us plus many guitars into a rented RV in the middle of a huge snowstorm and left PA and our old lives in the dark.
While the trip was fraught with issues regarding towing the side by side on our trailer and we ended up sleeping with really no heat in a Walmart parking lot somewhere in Ohio on a 10 degree night, once we fixed those issues and got further west, things started looking up.
Mitch had taken a trip to Bisbee Arizona to look at some properties for us and with lots of videos and facetime calls, we settled on an off-grid house in the Southeast high desert corner of Arizona. I had never before purchased a house without stepping into it first.
At this point I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the ROAD leading to our home. Primitive is a nice description and pretty accurate. The good news is, considering how long it takes to navigate the canyons and something called caliche covered road that would take us to our new home, we would NEVER have to worry about someone robbing us or coming to do us harm. It is impossible to make a quick getaway from here so safety was going to be a non-concern! I will blog about the whole road situation at a later time. Let’s just get there, which we did.
Once we arrived and unloaded everyone, all of the animals and we actually felt like we had moved to a different planet. The terrain was COMPLETELY different than the grasses, meadows, streams and big trees that I had known for almost 58 years. We had wells before, but never solar and a seemingly useless windmill to power us and it was 60 degrees in DECEMBER. And it felt so DRY. My hair and skin immediately said FEED US. This all would take some getting used to, but we were all excited, well maybe not the pets. Us humans were ready for a change.
Since it was the holidays, our moving company moved our stuff nowhere for three weeks until AFTER the new year, so we borrowed a mattress to sleep on the living room floor and set about painting and putzing outside while we pondered our new digs and town. I ordered rugs and things I know we didn’t have off Amazon, we frequented the local Ace Hardware store for paint and supplies, and we watched movies on our laptops. We ate a lot of beans and tortillas with cheese and borrowed a few pots and pans and knives and such so I could feed us. We were glamping in our cool house while I decorated all the walls and rooms in my little mind. I LOVE nesting. I had given careful thought to what we could bring here and I couldn’t wait for our stuff to arrive, so I could set us up!
Regarding the house, we learned what needed fixed immediately and went about making those improvements. When I am in need of comfort, I retreat to the bath. As the song goes from the Little River Band Cool Change, “I was born in the sign of water, and it’s there that I feel my best…..” Marsha NEEDED to poach in the tub to get used to all this change.
Well, the water took a while to heat and only gave me a few inches of hot water before it went COLD. I was not amused. Turns out the instant hot water heater hadn’t been desclaed probably since it was installed so needed tending to. AMAZON again to the rescue. After two flushings, I had enough hot water to sink down to my neck and try to feel normal again. GRATEFUL for a handy husband and chemicals that helped. In the meantime, the dogs kept giving us the WHAT IS HAPPENING looks and were a bit clingy.
Time passed, our stuff arrived, we started venturing out to meet the people and I’m happy to say, we have really settled into our completely new life. Old habits die hard so I am starting to cook for the American Legion, an organization like All of them, who needs help.
We have a really cool radio station and Mitch, and I are now DJ’s which is SUPER Fun and we are making all kinds of new musical and artistic friends. This town houses 5000 people which is truly small and the more we go out to enjoy a WORLD CLASS band we see the same folks again and again and many are becoming friends.
I’ve joined multiple groups and organizations in town that are doing good things, and we are completely ensconced in this hippie life that we LOVE. It is not unusual at all to meet people that came here in 1970, 80, 90 for a visit and NEVER went back. They had their stuff sold and money sent and they set up a new place in the desert.
This is a very unique environment, and I look forward to telling the tales of our desert adventures!!!
