Archive for the ‘Google Earth’ Category

Maybe it was always the new sense of adventure, but we have moved a lot since we got married. Of course, the biggest move was Vermont to Phoenix….in retrospect we probably should have gone to California, but we thought housing was too much. 36 years later, hmmmm….. So we loaded the U-Haul truck the last day of school, got married that night, and headed to Phoenix in the morning. We spent a few months in an apartment on Camelback – seemed the height of luxury, with a pool and spa. We had a fun time looking through all the home developments. Seems like we could always tell when a house was over $50,000….

Oh my goodness. I just looked on Google Maps….you definitely can’t go home again on this one…..

We spent HOURS on the landscaping for this house. All desert, lots of trees. Look at the junk cars, and that seems to be a police car out front……We lived here for nearly 10 years, poor as church mice, but we had a really nice front yard and two beautiful cottonwoods in the back. We were close to Metro Center, and we watched the west side of Phoenix develop over the years. For a few  years we could still smell the orange blossoms until all the orchards became housing developments. )shivers….)

From here we moved to Maryland, and we had a fabulous townhome, with lots of room, and about the same rent we are paying now……right across the street from the local library. We really enjoyed Ellicott City. We got there just before Christmas, and on Christmas Eve we drove into “downtown” historic Ellicott City during a snowfall – it was a fairy land.

There was a lot we loved about Maryland, including Sunday drives, which in Arizona……not so much……We were there for two years before heading back to Vermont. Then we really started moving around: Pine Street apartment for a few months till a fire, the Brown Motel for a few months because of the fire, and then down on Lake Champlain….a townhome about a quarter mile from the lake. Great bike paths, and one summer spent swimming a few times in the lake.

From there it was a townhome in Underhill (lease ran out) for two years, and then a small basement apartment in a house in the back woods, as we were planning on moving back to Arizona.

We’re in the lower left for the townhome. I loved walking the road along the Brown’s River, named for hubby’s family.

 Loved being in the boonies, except for the year before we left and our first true mud season…..

Then it was back to Arizona, Tucson this time. We’ve been here almost 18 years: Mona Lisa apartment (limo parked below us that had a car alarm that went off ALL the time, especially at 2 AM), Wilmot North apartment (the first time until we bought our house), our house on Nastar (for 5 years, until the neighborhood started really deteriorating), the rental on Paseo (which we loved because of all the space, especially for a studio, but way too expensive), Wilmot North again (until the major drug deals and Section 8 housing), Pantano apartment (obnoxious children upstairs), townhome on Esperanza (barking dogs and drug deals across the street), Carondelet apartment (NOISE!), and now finally this townhome. I think we can safely say no more apartment living for us. And…no more moves for us. We see some place around the country that we like, we’ll just visit and keep Tucson as our base.

However, I can pack and unpack a house in no time. Those are some definite skills, but this last move was a killer in terms of physicality. We are too old for all this packing up and moving around……