[gemmidog]

I've been thinking about Utah alot lately and the AZ forests are filling with trash thread is making it easier on me to move. They have beautiful scenery, and a life style that looks clean, cleaner than what we have here. But i also did some digging on Utah and know that SLC has a pretty big gang problem, there are complaints on illegal dumping in forest land, and lots of vandalism. Although i don't think (or know) that they have more than Arizona. I hike mostly in the Verde Valley since i live in Cottonwood. I always carry a bag and pick up what i could on the way back. Yes it gets annoying sometimes but it dosn't bother me like it used to. My problem is not feeling welcome on the Reservations with the graffiti and huge amount of road litter, the illegal immigrant situation where redd roxx informs us on illegal trash on nearly every hike down there. Pot growing in the forests and gun battles. Although i've read CA, WA, OR even utah have a big problem too. And the amount of trash in the forest. I'm curious if all the negativity about Arizona has worn thin on people? Would you move to another state because of this? Is the grass greener on the other side. Or am i making this bigger than i need to? I'm trying really hard to keep positive about Arizona but it keeps getting harder. I could not read these threads but i would only be closing my eyes. I don't want to jump ship but Utah seems like the place if i do.

[dysfunction]

As I said earlier, it's not just Arizona. I wouldn't move JUST because of this issue, simply because you'll find it everywhere. It was true in the midwest, east coast, west and mountain west in my experience. Heck, I even picked up trash on National Trust land from time to time (although not a lot really). If you dig UT, by all means move there, there's a lot to love. But I think you'll be irritated by the trash situation there too, well cept less immigrant related trash for obvious reasons. The grass IS always greener, and when I leave it'll be for a wetter climate - just for the change.

[sirena]

Would you move to another state because of this?

I hardly think Arizona has the market cornered on inconsiderate people who trash natural areas.

[allanalxndr]

I've been thinking about Utah alot lately and this new thread is making it easier on me to move. They have beautiful scenery, and a life style that looks clean, cleaner than what we have here. But i also did some digging on Utah and know that SLC has a pretty big gang problem, there are complaints on illegal dumping in forest land, and lots of vandalism. Although i don't think (or know) that they have more than Arizona. I hike mostly in the Verde Valley since i live in Cottonwood. I always carry a bag and pick up what i could on the way back. Yes it gets annoying sometimes but it dosn't bother me like it used to. My problem is not feeling welcome on the Reservations with the graffiti and huge amount of road litter, the illegal immigrant situation where redd roxx informs us on illegal trash on nearly every hike down there. Pot growing in the forests and gun battles. Although i've read CA, WA, OR even utah have a big problem too. And the amount of trash in the forest. I'm curious if all the negativity about Arizona has worn thin on people? Would you move to another state because of this? Is the grass greener on the other side. Or am i making this bigger than i need to? I'm trying really hard to keep positive about Arizona but it keeps getting harder. I could not read these threads but i would only be closing my eyes. I don't want to jump ship but Utah seems like the place if i do.

I don't really remember the last time I was out in the forest and was caught in the middle of a gun battle. Nor do I recall stumbling across a pot field operation. If you look I'm sure you will find things like this in all states. The issues may be different, but there will surely be issues. Unfortunately, these incidents over shadow all the others that are good. People remember the bad things over the good and many times haven't experienced them for themselves. I don't know your history but I would say you are making a bigger deal out of it than it is, but that's just my opinion.

[joe bartels]

I don't really remember the last time I was out in the forest and was caught in the middle of a gun battle. Nor do I recall stumbling across a pot field operation.

I haven't either however I guess te-wa has practically been shot at on the rim and has run into a grow area in the mazzies but that doesn't mean Arizona is over characteristically worse than anywhere else. It was just idiots out shooting in the woods, you'll probably find the same on the rim or the lower Four Peaks on any given weekend. I'm pretty sure he has or will hike in the mazzies again too.

Back in the 70's when I was a kid in NE out at the farm, one of our neighbors answered the door one night and a kid tripping out on some drug blew his head off point blank for no reason. This was a very small community where the newspaper calls you weekly to get the news. Isn't NE one of the safer places to live? Then in OK in the early 90's our neighbors kids doused a retarded boy with gasoline and then burned his pumpkin. OK probably isn't the safest place on earth. They went to school the next day, if you had a problem with it you best shut up. The law in those communities is who you know, it has nothing to do with what you do. Heck you live in what most Phoenicians consider a meth town, I think but I'm not really up on that stuff. I live in central Phx where most probably avoid at night. Yet I know one thing, when we call the Police they arrive quick and in numbers!

Anyhow... I'm not moving

[azbackpackr]

I think moving to another state is a big ol' adventure, and I have done it twice: from CA to Hawaii, then from Hawaii to AZ. (I moved to Hawaii as a single person, lived on the Big Island for 8 years. I married there and had three kids. We moved to Arizona with 3 toddlers in 1986.)

But there is no paradise. You take the good with the bad. I would even move back to California (Oceanside or Santa Cruz) if I thought I could make it out there. Or to Oregon (double digit unemployment right now, aargh!). Not to Utah, though. I like visiting there very much. I very much doubt I would want to live there. I live in Eagar already, and that's enough to know I don't fit in very well with the dominant religion. Those folks are generally very, very nice, and they are by far some of the best neighbors I've ever had, but they also tend to be very, very conservative. So I don't talk to them about very many of the things I actually believe in, nor do I generally make close friends with them. My husband and I are kind of getting tired of not fitting in. He's looking for a very hip smallish town with a very creative, (improv, avant garde, and Shakespeare) community theater (no boring old "South Pacific" or "It's a Wonderful Life" please!) and I'm just always looking for outdoors fun, plus I want to live in a university town. Santa Cruz has the above: university, several actors' theaters, and great outdoors fun: hiking, surfing, sea kayaking, mtn. biking, etc. It's also very expensive. I'd take Flagstaff, too. Hubby is not so sure. We move very slowly on these things, and likely will still be talking about it two years from now! And now we own this big old rambling crumbling house, which may or may not be hard to sell.

[Rob del Desierto]

It takes a special sort to live in Utah if you are not Mormon, in my opinion. Nothing wrong with Mormons, as I've got several good friends who are Mormon here in Page, but Utah is something else. I lived there for a while, in Price, and got along fine with all my neighbors. Salt Lake is generally nice too, and accepting. However the small towns can be quite clannish and not very open/welcoming of outsiders. In some cases they can be downright resentful and mean of "damn outsiders". Coming from Arizona you'd probably be in better shape than if you were moving to small-town Utah from California, but things can be rough.
Don't like ATVers zooming everywhere? Gun-toting militia members? Uncaring locals tossing trash on all the public land they can find? Don't want to be shot at while hiking? Well moving to Utah won't solve your problems, because all of those things happen there too. Often times they are combined - I've encountered armed militia members on ATVs riding up the Paria River who threw trash onto the sand bars and into the river. I've been shot at by ranchers in Utah and drug runners in Arizona. It ain't any better, and in some ways I would say it has some problems that are bigger than you'd find in Az.

[joe bartels]

Almost forgot, my father was a ranger at the State Park in Silver City for two years back in the 90s. In protest of garbage collection fees the locals would dump regular household garbage at the park. Scratch NM off the list.

[writelots]

I agree with the folks above. I've lived in Arizona my whole life - so I can't speak well to other places. But the problems here are issues of basic human nature, and that's going to be the same everywhere. Utah is beautiful, but it's a unique sort of place, and it takes special folks to make it up there. And it's having much the same problem with population influx from California that Arizona is, only (and I hope I'm not offending here), the Californians moving to Utah are even more annoying and stubborn than those moving to Arizona.

Besides, we've got saguaros. We win, hands down.

[BobP]

We win, hands down.

[jeffmacewen]

If you continue to take things like this to heart the way you do, you are likely to find monsters hiding under the bed wherever you go.

[big_load]

you are likely to find monsters hiding under the bed wherever you go

I don't worry as much about the monsters under my bed as I do about the ones outside my tent.

[writelots]

I suppose this is sorta on-topic. Do you all remember the book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day"? One of my all-time favorites. Kid has a bad day (even had lima beans for dinner. He HATES limb beans). When bad things happen, he keeps threatening to move to Australia.

At the end of the book, mom says "Some days are like that, even in Australia".

Sage advice that has stayed with me to this day. Amazing how one book can effect your whole life. I still face ugly days by reciting that line...

[Al_HikesAZ]

. . . I don't want to jump ship but Utah seems like the place if i do.

Reminds me of Groucho Marx - "Hello I must be going" - from Animal Crackers

(Spaulding/Groucho)
Hello, I must be going,
I cannot stay, I came to say, I must be going.
I'm glad I came, but just the same I must be going.
La La.

[hikeaz]

Only 3.2 beer....

[Rob del Desierto]

Only 3.2 beer....

What better argument could there be for staying in Az?!

[fotogirl53]

In all my years of hiking in Arizona, I've never run across pot farmers, aggressive people or tons of trash. I figure that if I pick up some cigarette butts or cans, my "trail karma" improves just a bit. The only major trash issue I have come across was a bunch of climbers at Sycamore Falls/Paradise Forks with a church group from the Valley that was preparing to leave bags of trash next to the pit toilet. I politely informed the one who appeared to be the leader that they had to haul away their trash; he just kind of looked at me like he'd gotten caught. I then took out the camera and took a picture of his van with the license plate and the bags of trash. I returned a few hours later to find the trash and the van gone.

[SuperstitionGuy]

Way to go fotogirl! A photo trash trap!

[gemmidog]

Thank's for the comments, they were all very good. Reading all these made me step back and realize to take the issues seriously but not to heart. I'm Italian and alittle on the emotional side. I know 99% of these things (exept illegal's trash) happen everywhere. After logging onto Utah's newspapers i soon found that out. I was just letting off steam the wrong way by being too negative. I can tell you guys are on the positive side and don't let the negative bother you that much. Just want you to know if you see a white Chevy Astro Van on Sycamore canyon rd, Fossil creek rd, Cherry rd. (by out of Africa), and various other places picking up litter thats me. I also do alot of hiking around here. also your comments really helped, thanks.

[azbackpackr]

Well, stick around, we have some interesting discussions here!