Orson Adams House, last house standing from the old village of Harrisburg, which died when the river was re-routed

Life proceeds apace out here “on the strip”. The part of Arizona between the Grand Canyon and the Vermilion Cliffs is known as the Arizona strip. It’s called a high desert because on the Colorado plateau, so the altitude is 5,000 feet (just like Denver).  There is only one road, going East-West on the south side if the Vermilion Cliffs. Every trip involves going through either Kanab to the east or St. George to the west.

A Red Cliff

This weekend we went west to the Red Cliffs area. The area is managed by BLM (just like the area the Bundys were acquitted of seizing). There’s a tent campground (no RVs permitted). We took an easy walk to some Anasazi ruins. Some people say they should be called “Ancestral Puebloans” or “The Ancient Ones” because the word Anasazi is a Navajo word that means “ancient enemies”. The scenery was nice enough, but the ruins weren’t all that much to look at. We found two men from OK finishing up their work of installing new signs, which was as interesting as anything else.

Anasazi area sign, ready for mounting

I wrote earlier that just before we left, BoA (Bank of America) decided we had to have new credit cards and they had to be activated. The new cards were identical to the old ones, except the new card had “World Traveler” printed on the front. After a long phone call, I got the bank to send additional cards overnight so we could activate them before leaving on our trip.

2 Guys from OK. They’ve been working out here for a month. They go home next week.

BoA did it again. I’ve been downloading transactions to Quicken for years. It’s an easy way to keep track of expenses. A couple of weeks ago, it stopped working. BoA pretends they know nothing about it, and they refuse to help. Still, it’s our major credit card and they give us 1% cash back with a minimum of gimmicks and hassles.

“Ancient Enemy” ruins

Then they issued a new credit card. Again. Our old cards were deactivated Tuesday. This time we are using an internet phone service. It’s OK for short calls, but the sound quality is not good and it keeps on fading in and out. I wasn’t up to a long phone call with BoA. We let the card expire and tossed them in the trash. If we get new cards and if BoA lets us activate them, we’ll keep the account. Otherwise, we’ll be looking at Chase or Capital One after we get back home. In the mean time, our backup Visa card is now our primary card. I didn’t like it because it doesn’t support downloading into Quicken and the rebates are full of gimmicks. On the other hand, we got new cards from them, forwarded to us in Pipe Spring. And we were able to use the old card until the new cards were activated.

Yesterday I realized I had set up our medical insurance payments for the rest of the year using our BoA card. I don’t know what the website is to change that. (Those records are at home.) Life is full of fun little surprises.