Patagonia - a future home?

As we travel and explore, we're ever mindful of places we might want to settle permanently, or choose for summer or winter homes.  We travelled to Lake Patagonia, just north of Nogales and the border, to have a place in southern Arizona to sail my kayak.  Bodies of water are in short supply in southern Arizona.  We found a lovely lake, perfect size for my sailing kayak, and possibly up to a 15' sailboat, a low mountain terrain, that keeps the summer weather here in the 90's, and still pretty decent weather in winter, good biking, hiking, excellent birding, and a quaint, artsy, small town than strongly appeals to us.  We'll definitely be back.

This is Lake Patagonia, viewed from the peak of Red Mountain.  It is fed by Sonoita Creek, which winds down to the town of Patagonia, and is mostly protected bird sanctuary for the subtropical birds that live and migrate through here.  I'll be posting some of the bird pics in a following blog.  I had a couple of nice sails in the lake in my Bo-nano Boat

Also from the top of Red Mountain (my first "big" hike of the new year - 1600' elevation gain), looking down on the town of Patagonia.  The terrain is a lot like mountainous New Mexico - mesquite, juniper, cat's claw, rolling hills in the 4-5000' elevation range.  Sonoita creek accounts for the green ribbon

Another view of the countryside from Red Mountain - lots of hiking and biking trails, including the major Arizona Trail that the Catholic missionaries travelled.  We boondocked out here, several miles out of Patagonia, and had wild turkeys and a large brown bear for company

A few of the stores on the 2 main commercial streets.  The commercial part of town is 2 streets, about 8 blocks long, if you include the schools.  Next to the Patagonia Market, the brown building is the Velvet Elvis Italian restaraunt, actually a pretty classy place, and it has the 3' x 4" black Velvet Elvis for which it is named

One of several art galleries in town, that also hosts weekend movies.  There's also the Patagonia Opera House and Theatre where music groups come in, and they have community theatre - which Jean and I might both be interested in working with.  It looked like a nice venue, but I failed to get a photo - probably the nicest building in town

The Patagonia Visitors Center is hosted by locals doing 2 hour a week shifts.  We met several fun local residents there.  The former lumber store is now a Pilates studio, which is also in keeping with the town.  There are several health and new agey type retreats in the surrounding burbs and foothills, as well as some nice B&B's

The former railroad depot is now the courthouse and museum.  We met The policeman, and he seemed a nice enough guy.  His office is a mobile home next to the visitor center.

The Gathering Grounds was our favorite place to eat, several vegan and vegetarian options, and they actually knew the difference between the two.  Easy to meet the community here.  I think the feel of this town is somewhere between Guffey, Co, Florence, and a smaller version of Sedona

Amazingly, in a town this size, they have a natural food store with a pretty good selection

The only thing less than ideal here is the RV space.  But the space in the back of this 3 space park could easily be fixed up with bamboo fencing, a new shed, and a cactus garden.  It was very inexpensive, and a 2 block walk to the center of town.  We'll definitely do a month or more here next fall?  spring?

This back space is the one we would take, replace the shed, put in privacy fencing.  Has a nice shade tree.

Finally, a couple of pictures of my hike up Red Mountain, to the Forest lookout station and AT&T antennaes on top

We had thought about being fire watchmen at one point.  Books and nature and no neighbors would have been fine with us, and especially now with the internet.  It was not a bad little setup up there - I peeked in the windows

I've always wanted to climb to an antenae tower.  Jean's brother Kurt may remember a couple of our magical mystery tours attempting to do that in the late 60's - on the Lowry air base air control tower and in the suburbs of Denver following the red blinking lights at night.