-the funk, yes folks we live upwind of an enormous cattle yard.
-the train tracks a few miles from our house that transport the funk. I never lived so near railroad tracks and at first it was annoying always hearing the train blaring its horn especially in the middle of the night. But it's kind of fun seeing a train speeding by in your everyday life and at least we're a few miles from the tracks. Some houses are built literally next to them. As I was writing this I remembered Ithaca had a very slow moving train, but I feel like I rarely saw it, certainly never heard it at our house.
-basically one road in and out of town
This I still find odd. If you haven't looked up Maricopa on a map here it is. To get to the southern suburbs of Phoenix (Interstate 10) we have to drive a empty 15 mile stretch of highway through the U of A and Native American Reservation desert land. Now this wouldn't be a big deal if Maricopa was self-sustaining, but it's not.
-Maricopa is not self-sustaining. People are always shocked when they hear Mike has a job in town, because most everyone has to commute up into Phoenix and its suburbs. Despite that Maricopa's population has exploded in the past 10 years from about 1000 to almost 40,000, the city hasn't done a great job of keeping up with the pace of growth. The new home builders certainly have though, because probably 95% of the homes in Maricopa are less than 5 years old. But in regards to commerce, Maricopa has a center street (the road in and out of town) lined with about a mile of strip malls with 2 grocery stores and then on the other corner of town is Wal-mart. That's it for at least 20 miles. No Target, no hospital, no movie theater, no Thai food, no specialty shops, nowhere to buy clothes except Wal-mart, nowhere to buy soccer cleats the night before soccer practice starts so you have to make an extra 50 mile roundtrip trek to Target since you try to be organized and do it only once a week, no WEGMANS! I could go on, but I'll refrain.
So this is just part one sharing the quirkiness. Part two will be about why that quirkiness kind of makes me like living in the 'copa and some things about living here that are just nice and not so odd to me.
3 comments:
Oh my gosh, this sounds so much like Roseburg!!! At first it was hard to live in such a remote area, where we were an hour from Eugene (aka decent shopping,) but Roseburg quickly grew on me and we met wonderful, wonderful people and it became one of my favorite little places in the world :) I think these small towns have a charm of their own. I think part of what's endearing about them is that they seem so remote from the rest of the world, but the people don't even care. In fact, that's why many people choose to live in these little towns. Life is peaceful and people are kind and you learn to find hobbies and make friends that you wouldn't otherwise ... I could go on, but I think you get the point! Great post. Thanks. I'm glad you're enjoying it more ... I knew you would! ;)
I heard a story about Maricopa on NPR a couple of weeks ago. It was talking about the boom in construction that created the town, and how Arizona is trying to create other ways to build the economy that aren't construction.
Maybe a Wegmans is in your near future? Or perhaps sitting on city council to help influence these decisions!
We can't wait to experience it for ourselves.
P.S. - I love the girl's costumes. Ramona looks so grown up.
I can handle the other stuff. But no Wegman's? Oh dear.
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