by Tom Blair
Columnist

I don’t like being single, I hate dishes, housework, and loneliness, and besides… we love each other and can’t go on living in sin. Darlene and I are getting married again. By the time you read this, we will have tied the knot and headed out on an extended honeymoon. Where? Arizona, of course! We love it down there, even though you keep saying, “Do you know it’s over a hundred degrees for three months straight?” To which I answer, “Up here it’s nine months of unpredictable weather, cold, rain, wind, mosquitoes, storms, tornado threats and overpriced housing.”

 Let me tell you a few things about Arizona. Arizona has 3,928 mountain peaks and summits—more mountains than any one of the other mountain states (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming). It isn’t all dry desert; it has unbelievable green beauty. There are 11.2 million acres of national forest in Arizona, pages and pages of interesting history, beautiful scenery and tons of things to see. Arizona’s disparate climate can yield both the highest temperature in the nation and the lowest temperature in the nation on the same day. You think it’s all dry wasteland? There are parts of Arizona that get 30 inches of rainfall per year in the mountains, while some of the desert gets three inches; it doesn’t need any more. The hottest temperature ever recorded in Arizona was 128 degrees, while the coldest was 40 degrees below zero. More copper is mined in Arizona than in all the other states combined, and there’s gold and silver waiting to be found. Arizona grows enough cotton each year to make more than one pair of jeans for every person in the United States. When England’s famous London Bridge was replaced in the 1960s, the original was purchased, dismantled, shipped stone by stone and reconstructed in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where it still stands today. Arizona has the largest privately-owned ostrich ranch in the world outside South Africa. South Mountain Park/Preserve in Phoenix is the largest municipal park in the country, and northeastern Arizona contains America’s largest deposits of petrified wood. Things to see? Kartchner Caverns, near Benson, Arizona, is a massive limestone cave with 13,000 feet of passages and two rooms as long as football fields. At the aircraft graveyard near Tucson, there are over 4,000 planes in storage, and it is awesome! Do you want fishing and boating? There are plenty of beautiful lakes and rivers within 50 miles of the Mesa area… and FISH? You can catch huge catfish, bass and 2-3lb. crappies that will cover your dinner plate. You can even catch big fish in the canals that run through the towns. We’ll be thinking of you – chuckle, chuckle!

Tom “Road” Blair
Website: www.tomroadblair.com