Home

Retirement Talk for Boomers, Seniors and Retirees

                                                                                                                                            What to do with the Rest of Your Life?
logo

Episode 113 Road Trip Part 6: RV Park in the Mohave Desert

Hope, Arizona consists of an RV Park, a restaurant, and a church. It is on a lonely stretch of road at the junction of highway 60 and highway 72. Highway 60 is a great way to go if one is headed east to Phoenix from Joshua Tree National Park: very little traffic and wide open expanses of pure desert. Some where along the way we got a great photo of a single tree filled with perhaps a hundred pairs of shoes. There was a short fence that ran beside the tree and the fence also had shoes tied together and strung across the wire. It is the kind of things that make us slam on the breaks and go back for another look and a photo. We would have left a pair of shoes to join those of other passersby, but we didn’t have any extras.

This is Retirement Talk. I’m Del Lowery.

Hope, Arizona popped up right at lunch time. Here is a little clip from our lunch stop:

(Insert audio clip)

I failed to get an interview at the restaurant. Everyone had finished their meal and left before we did. We drove across the road to the church parking lot where Brenda took out her sketch pad and started a drawing. I took a short nap and then wandered off in search of my first interview on the trip.

(Insert audio clip – I found a guy about 80 years old sitting next to his RV. He had been coming to Hope for over 15 years.

Here’s where I panic. I must apologize to my listeners. I was nervous; I didn’t trust my recorder to be doing the job. I fiddled with it as he spoke. The screen appeared blank in the light. I pushed the wrong button. The rest of the interview was lost. I promise to practice and do better in the future.  I’ll have to give you a brief synopsis of the rest of my visit with the RV’er.

He liked the place because it had good drinking water. He liked it because of the warm weather. When I asked him what he did with his time the response was something like, “Well, we talk to neighbors. Some folks play golf. I don’t. Some ride dune buggies across the desert. I don’t. We have lots to do down at the hall. There’s cards and bingo and almost anything else you could ask for. There is always something going on”.

I asked if he had a television. “Oh, yes,” he responded enthusiastically. “We all have our dish” I kept looking around for someone else but no one appeared. The place was quiet and empty. He had a wife who must have been inside; perhaps taking her afternoon nap. He had a little green indoor/outdoor carpet spread out by the trailer. On it were little plastic figurines, a couple of small tin men like out of the Wizard of Oz were standing there, a few plastic birds and colored balls filled out the yard.

What was retirement like for this guy? It was to travel to a warm climate every year. It was to sit back and talk to a few friends. It was to take life easy. It was cheap to live. Well, he picked the right place. He said that if he wanted to go to a store there was one just 60 miles east and another just a hundred miles away. Mexico was just a 120 miles away and he could go there if he wanted. But he didn’t.

I don’t know about this type of living. Some people, people like him, find it fulfilling. I’m not exactly sure why, but I guess it depends on your expectations and your idea of what life is all about.

He liked to talk. I had difficulty tearing myself away. I don’t think he sees a lot of people, especially strangers. If you are looking for a place to, “get away from it all” and I mean, “All”, I would think Hope, Arizona would be a great place to be.

As for me, I was ready to shake the dust from my boots.

 

This is retirement talk.