My first clue should have been the prevalence of water-filling stations. Since we have come to southern Arizona, we have seen small kiosks selling water—not in bottles, but from a spigot so people can fill their own bottles. And we always see people using these kiosks. One RV park, the one we stayed in at Yuma, even had these kiosks located around the park.
Our next clue should have been the stacks of salt at the entrance to each grocery store we entered—salt for water softeners. That usually means people don't like the way the water tastes.
Still, we were drinking the tap water until we came here. The monument gets is water from the City of Coolidge. Not only does it taste awful, it even smells bad. After one week, we bought some water at the store—at 89 cents a gallon. When we discovered we could refill those bottles at 15 cents a gallon at the far end of town or 25 cents a gallon closer to our RV, we bought a total of four gallon bottles and we use the purchased water for drinking, coffee, to mix our orange juice and to make ice cubes. We are aware of the bad taste even in ice cubes in a glass with bourbon. That tells you how awful the water is.
Here John is filling our bottles.
I drink the water directly, unfiltered and untreated, out of the river that crosses my land. It is pristine. The water is cold and great tasting. It also is wonderfully soft to wash you hair in. This river comes out of the Temagami Wilderness area. it is fast moving and travels over rock and sand and gravel over it's length. I consider it a precious and increasingly rare privilege to be able to drink such water.
ReplyDeleteI also would not be afraid to drink the water from lakes in this area.
Because of "beaver fever" I always take tablets to treat the water when traveling in the remote areas as you do not want to be far away from medical help if you are infected.