Does the Red River actually have a valley? And is Wichita Falls in that valley?
I have no idea.
All I know for sure is the Red River, and Oklahoma, are about 20 miles north of my current location.
That and that dry HEAT of Arizona turned muggy from monsoon rain during my two week stay. whilst rain-free North Texas seems to have developed dry HEAT, hotter than Arizona.
In other words, when I exited the Wichita Falls Airport on Saturday, rather than being slapped in the face by a wet blanket of cotton, such as was the case a couple months prior, this time the Texas HOT air felt good.
Refreshing.
And not all that HOT.
My vehicle's temperature monitor indicated the outer world was 115 degrees HOT when I ventured to Walmart in the late afternoon of Sunday.
Anyway, back to Arizona.
In the photo above you are looking at Sister Jackie being Miss Daisy's driver. With me in the back seat enjoying the scenery without having to follow Miss Daisy's driving directions..
Miss Daisy was directing a pre flying out of Texas lunch excursion, with one of the highlights being the restaurant location known as the Top of the Rock, where we did not have Wagyu Short Ribs, Alaskan Halibut, Arctic Char, Roasted Duck, Buttes Mac & Cheese or Herb Gnudi, but instead opted for Sweet and Sour Cashew Chicken.
Prior to the Top of the Rock, since we were in Tempe, which is close to my final Arizona destination of Sky Harbor Airport, I asked if Miss Daisy could possibly direct her driver to drive me by all the new corporate headquarters which have popped up in Tempe in recent years.
My favorite nephew, Jeremy, had told me all these new buildings were quite an impressive thing to see. And they were.
But first we checked in on Tempe Lake. I think that is the name. Sort of a 'town lake' made by damming, I think it's the Gila River. I have never seen water running in the Gila River, and yet somehow it provides a lake. And on the non-lake side of the dam the river is bone dry.
Above you are looking at one of the "signature" bridges which cross Lake Tempe.
I see things like this and it freshly reminds me of how pitiful Fort Worth, Texas is.
What with imaginary islands with imaginary signature bridges, stuck in engineering failure mode for years, bridges built over dry land, one day hoping to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island, crossing over a manmade cement lined ditch filled with polluted water in which the starved for entertainment locals regularly have River Rockin' Happy Hour Inner Tube Floats sponsored by an agency known as the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, more commonly known as America's Biggest Boondoggle.
With that Boondoggle currently sporting big wooden bridge supports which look like Paul Bunyan's abandoned teeter totters, which some locals have taken to calling the Yeehaw Seesaws.
Above is one of those new corporate headquarter's which moved to Tempe. I do not know which one this one is, but there were several buildings which looked like this and my woefully inadequate photography skills do no justice.
I think the above is an apartment type complex. There are multiple such things in the area of Tempe's new corporate headquarters.
I do not know if Fort Worth tried to lure any of these Tempe corporate headquarters when those corporations were in re-locate mode. Fort Worth regularly makes such attempts, offering multiple perks in hapless efforts to attract a corporation to town.
I have more than once wondered if those who try to lure a corporation to Fort Worth have visited those towns which win out over Fort Worth to try and figure out why no one wants to come to Fort Worth.
Fort Worth's pitiful attempt to attract Amazon's HQ2 was the most recent Fort Worth failure of which I am aware.
If Fort Worth sent a task force to Tempe, or Chandler, or Scottsdale, or any other Phoenix area town to which corporations have re-located their headquarters. they would find towns with good roads providing easy transportation. Parks with no outhouses. Streets with sidewalks. Paved trails all over town. Aesthetically pleasing landscaping in abundance. And just an overall location any corporation would be proud to call home.
In Chandler, Arizona one finds a HUGE Intel complex on Dobson Road. I do not know how many thousands Intel employs there. Every time we drive by this location Miss Daisy tells me when they moved to the Chandler zone all which is now Intel, and other high tech operations, was agricultural fields.
Fort Worth made a pitiful attempt to lure the Intel development which is in operation in Chandler. This occurred early in my Texas exile, when I lived in Haslet, in far north Fort Worth. Across the street from my then abode what were then acres of open land were slated for Intel. A new overpass was built over I-35 to access the land. Perks were offered. Fort Worth thought they had a done deal. But the deal fell through. Someone from Intel must have visited Fort Worth and decided no way are we building anything in that town.
How much money has the city of Fort Worth wasted over the years in futile attempts to get some company to re-locate to the town? Perhaps the time has come where maybe Fort Worth should spend some research money to identify all the town's elements which leave such a bad impression.
Slow motion pseudo public works projects, such as that which has become America's Biggest Boondoggle, that being the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, currently a badly engineered mess of slow motion, or stalled, construction, do not leave a good impression, or lead someone to think the town can get anything done within any reasonable time frame.
Oh, and above is that Top of the Rock restaurant in Tempe I mentioned multiple paragraphs ago before I slipped into my patented regularly scheduled verbalization of being appalled by the Texas town named after a fort, which was a camp, of tents, and which, unlike other Texas frontier forts, nothing remains of the Fort Worth frontier fort, except for a penchant for embarrassing hyperbole...
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