Turn Back Around

This morning I thought of the Lucy Schwartz song “Turn Back Around”….the lyrics go:            I Turn, turn, turn, I turn back around,                                                                                                    And I’m eastern bound.

I’d been a little sad because things just weren’t working out for me to find cheap property in AZ, CO or NM. Oh, I could find cheap property, that wasn’t the problem, it was that all the cheap places also seem to come with sky-high crime rates! I was even offered some free property in Socorro County, NM but I checked all the towns in that county (they couldn’t remember what it was near) and both the violent and theft crime rates were in the 90’s out of 100! Apparently it’s a very poor county, with high unemployment rates. Well I’m just too old to deal with that kind of crap!

I have just been given a great opportunity to be a sort of minimal caretaker for some property back in Asheville, NC! My friends Cheryle & Jenni are moving to Washington state at the end of April and I am going to be camping under their huge carport to deter theft, and monitoring the pond levels, cleaning the pond filter, monitoring the chemicals in the swim spa, letting the yard guy know when to come, stuff like that. And also eating their strawberries, asparagus and blueberries!  I’ve posted photos from there several times; its kind of my “go to” place when I’m in NC.  If it doesn’t sell right away, the average high in July is 83 and with the roof overhead and electricity to run the A/C, I should be fine.

So I sort of feel like I’m starting over from scratch, going back to Asheville, where I started out! I lived in that area for 35 years before moving to Ecuador. If the house sells quickly I’ll head back up to northern Michigan for the summer and re-think the whole plan. Maybe I could grow to like Florida for winter??? It woudn’t be too bad a drive to bounce between Michigan and Florida twice a year.

On the home front, I’m still loving this campsite in Pine, AZ! I haven’t left the campsite since I got here on Friday afternoon but will need to go out and get a few groceries in a few more days. There’s a good bit of daytime traffic from people on ATV’s here but it’s very quiet at night, and the weather has been a perfect 74-75 degrees every day.  I probably won’t be heading back to NC until early April so I’ll need to make at least one more move before I go, maybe only 20 miles to Clints Well. I sure do love this area of the state, and wish I could live here, but the property costs are sky high..