2022 Reroute!

Howdy, trippers! It's been a long slow few years, eh? Hope you all are surviving the pandemic. My big move was last year. I left Tucson to buy a farm house in Odin, Illinois, and hour and a half due East of St. Louis, Missouri. BANANAS!

Or is it?

• The drought will only get worse. Leake Meade (haha) can no longer service the Southwest, and the water table is often well below 500 feet on average. Yes, it depends on the time of year etc. etc., but it's not going to get better over time. In the 1980s, the Uiversity of Arizona Geophysics Dept determined tht the rainfall then, about 11" in the Tucson area per year, was at an 500 year HIGH. In 2020, Tucson got less than 2 inches for the whole YEAR.

• The fires will only get worse as it gets drier, and with the encroachment of invasive buffel grass, those fires are burning hundreds of degrees hotter than the native desert plants do. These fires are decimating the habitats and are even more dangerous to people.

So at the encouragement of a close family friend, I high-tailed it out to a place where the water table is 6 feet ABOVE my basement floor! I moved in in September 2022.

I lost one of the cushions this winter in a wind storm. It blew this whole couch set a number of feet sideways.

Merlin loves it!! Go Merlin go!

YES!! I have a barn -- and 3 acres! I can get horses!! WOOHOO!!

Why yes that is a 1970s landline phone with a curly 20 foot cord!

I'm repainting the kitchen.

AND we get snow!! About 6-8 inches per year!

Apparently this is a lake. The difference is that no one knows how deep a lake is without sonar or similar equipment. This could be a few hundred feet deep! This is on my neighbor's property. They own all the farmland surrounding my house. This all used to be a 70 acre cattle ranch.