Where would you rather live?

[Jim]

I may have asked this before, but I don't remember and can't find it. Still, I'm curious so I will ask again.

Where would you rather live? Where you currently do, or Flagstaff? If neither, where is that?

I live in Flag, yet after todays weather, the high rent I pay, the low wage job I just left today, the really irritating train, and many other things, I would much rather head to warmer and drier towns. I like the middle elevations of 3000' to 5000', especially since the 115 of Phoenix is not a sane temperature to me, and neither are -15 and -8 degrees (last years and this years low temps in Flag).
Still, I'm returning to school for a second BS degree, so I'm stuck here for 3 more years.

How about you?

[te_wa]

anywhere on the south island, but Queenstown is great.
or Iceland.

[joebartels]

I'm pretty happy in the valley. I enjoy visiting other places. I'm one of the few that "enjoys" the heat.

Trains have that effect on people. I used to cross paths with one by McKemy and Beck in morning rush hour. It never failed, I only saw it when I was running late. Believe I could write a book on train anger

[chumley]

After ditching work for the afternoon today, I commented to a friend that if there was a storm like this once a month, the summer in PHX would become tolerable. Just two days with temps in the 50s and 60s every few weeks would make all the difference.

While I'm not a huge cold-weather guy, Flagstaff seems to have a great climate. Sure, it gets stupid-cold once in a while, but it lasts for a day or two. I can handle anything in short doses.

With that said, climate-wise, somewhere like San Diego is pretty much ideal. Its the people and the traffic (and the cost-of-living) that make it undesirable to live there.

[big_load]

I'd pick Flagstaff over my current home, although I currently live within walking distance of about 100 miles of trails. The cold might get to me eventually, but I prefer cold to hot.

[DarthStiller]

I passed thru Phx in 1990 on a college spring break adventure, and then spent 9 years trying to get out here. After grad school, in 1999 I finally made it from Pgh, and never looked back. I've been here 8.5 years now and wouldn't pick anywhere else for anything. I could have moved anywhere and chose Phx. Every time I do a hike (which I never got into in PA), it solidifies how much I know I'll stay here until I'm dead.

As far as the heat goes, after spending 30 years of dreary, grey, 6 month long winters, I welcome the heat. Every time it's 112+, i just take myself back to those cold, miserable, pre-dawn January mornings (at about 6am) when I had to scrape the ice of my windshield before i could go to work. I wil NEVER, EVER miss that. To this day, I refuse to scrape ice off a windshield.

The last time I was in PA, we left pre-dawn in October and it was that cold, incessant rain that just goes right thru you. As I was loading the car with our luggage, I had to laugh to myself remembering the voices of the people who I talked to the previous week asking me, "But don't you ever miss it here?" NO!!

[fricknaley]

As far as the heat goes, after spending 30 years of dreary, grey, 6 month long winters, I welcome the heat. Every time it's 112+, i just take myself back to those cold, miserable, pre-dawn January mornings (at about 6am) when I had to scrape the ice of my windshield before i could go to work. I wil NEVER, EVER miss that. To this day, I refuse to scrape ice off a windshield.

Beautifully said Stiller. Replace Pittsburgh with Northwest Indiana, and Phoenix with Tucson and you took the words right out of my mouth....especially the part about scraping the stupid windshields. :yuck:

[Jim]

i just take myself back to those cold, miserable, pre-dawn January mornings (at about 6am) when I had to scrape the ice of my windshield before i could go to work. I wil NEVER, EVER miss that. To this day, I refuse to scrape ice off a windshield.

The last time I was in PA, we left pre-dawn in October and it was that cold, incessant rain that just goes right thru you. As I was loading the car with our luggage, I had to laugh to myself remembering the voices of the people who I talked to the previous week asking me, "But don't you ever miss it here?" NO!!

I spent just about every morning from December 1st to April 10th or so scraping ice off my windshield at 650 am. In January and February it was extremely thick and hard to scrape. We had enough single digit and below zero mornings in January and February to make the ice so hard and thick that I started thinking about how nice it must be to live in Phoenix. Ice is nearly un-scrapable when its below 10 degrees.
You mention the cold rain that cuts through you, well thats been the last 3 days here in Flag, and possibly one more day. Its funny I had never been to Flagstaff before I moved here, and I don't know I ever would have come here had I not moved here. I had wanted to move to Tucson for several years, but came to Flag because it chose me (grad school). It can be very nice here, but since September we have only had 4 nice days. They were in the last 7 days, I'm left wondering when they'll come back. Last May thru July was great, when will it be nice again?

[DarthStiller]

Flag reminds me of PA alot, only without the lightning bugs. the infrastructure up there is older too, like back east. its nice to up and spend a weekend, even in the winter. my wife and I went up there in March 6 years ago. we hiked in the snow for a weekend and then on sunday, we were back in the sun with shorts and t-shirts. when I told people back in PA about that , they would reply "You can do that?"

[Jim]

Its funny you should say that Flag is very eastern. I have felt that myself, and I only "developed" that idea after someone from Prescott said the same thing. The roads are definetly in bad shape and older than other parts of AZ, and I agree in general about the infrastructure. If you take a ride down Milton Rd or head east on old Rt 66/ US 89 towards the mall, it becomes appearant that much of the town is quite old and unmaintained, and the RT 66 part just looks dumpy. For expensive as it is here, you really don't get very much to look at. The Peaks are great, but you can see them from miles around, say 100, and get to them very easily from Camp Verde or Prescott, if you live there.

[azbackpackr]

I like a lot of towns in AZ. I could do Flag, Prescott, Havasu City, Parker, Payson, Williams, Jerome, etc. etc. Even some of the less desirable towns have some charm or attraction, such as Globe with its historic district and old houses, or Kingman with its nice desert climate--a little cooler than either Tucson or Phoenix. Or Safford with its innumerable hot springs and its proximity to Mt. Graham, the Gila Box kayaking area and the Gila Wilderness. Bisbee is interesting, but I wouldn't want to live there. Douglas is too close to the border. Sierra Vista is growing too fast. Tombstone has weird people, but the area is nice. Willcox is, well, it's Willcox, what can you say? Portal is awesome, but there are no services there--it's very remote. Wickenburg is too close to Phoenix, but is nice. The Valley/Phoenix area is just way too big for my tastes, and is like a cancerous growth--one does wonder how big it will eventually get. I do still love Tucson, where I lived for 13 years, but it has grown too much and the traffic is terrible. I'd move back, though, if hubby would. He doesn't want to, though.

I'm from San Diego originally and lived in Kona, Hawaii, also, for 8 years. I was recently visiting in North County San Diego. I wouldn't mind living there for a year or so, but not much longer than that. Surfing is fun, and I miss that. Plus, my grandbaby is there!

We stayed in Yuma for a couple of months last year and plan on going back this winter. Our climate here in Eagar is almost exactly the same as Flagstaff's, and my husband can no longer tolerate the cold. Yuma is the place that Arizonans love to hate, boy do they hate Yuma! However, most Arizonans have spent no time there, or if they have it was summer and it was a business trip. Yuma has great desert hiking, a big river to canoe, a neat area to live outside of town called Foothills, that is funky in a fun way, without being too crime-ridden. We rented a very comfortable, very roomy place there for $500 a month, we had nice neighbors (who were all from Canada and Montana!) The town itself is not very pretty to look at, but you get used to that. I came to appreciate the big sky feeling it has. It has a great enormous swap meet and great roadside vendors, due to all the farms--dates, citrus, melons, strawberries, etc. There is a good community college that offers kayaking, rock climbing and other fun classes, and there are also two bicycle clubs, which do both road and mtn. biking. There is no lack of stuff for an outdoors person to do there in winter. And for me, a better job market than here in Eagar.

All that being said, my fantasy is to have no large possessions that need to be stored in a house. I dream of a motor home or fifth wheeler, and a peripatetic lifestyle, traveling around, staying here or there for months at a time, hiking mountains and running rivers. With the cost of gas nowadays it would be very hard to do for us.

My other fantasy would be to have 500 acres of woods and creek near here, with a cabin on it. Now that really is a fantasy, although I do participate in the lottery pool at work!

I have already done back-to-the-land, no running water, no electricity, no phone. That was fun when I was young, and it was in Hawaii, too. Built my own cabin, lived in it for awhile, birthed a kid in it, too. The whole hippie thing. Great memories!

No one has said in this discussion that the Phoenix job market may be partially why you are there. This is okay, but just for a minute, try to think outside the box--(the "box" being your job.) What if you didn't need that high-paying job, or were retired? Many smaller towns in AZ offer plenty of services, but are much more relaxed and less harried, have less crime, etc.

I have stuck with talking mostly about AZ on this topic, because once you start talking about other states, well, you could go on and on and on.

[Jim]

Well, on that note, if I could live anywhere I wanted it could be any of the following: Sedona, Payson, Globe, Silver City, NM, or just south of Tucson. If a job was no object.

[azbackpackr]

I didn't mention Sedona in my list, for a reason. Although the area is beautiful, the honkiness of it makes me very uncomfortable--all that pretentiousness, those ostentatious houses sticking up everywhere, all that conspicuous consumption. I prefer older towns with some history, with regular people living in them. I personally feel that one of the greatest travesties in AZ history is that the entire Sedona area was not purchased by the Federal government many years ago to be made into a National Park.

My daughter worked at Ross store for 4 years in Flag (she now works in a pharmacy there, and still attends NAU, by the way). She says you could tell a Sedona woman from a mile away, from the minute they entered the store. Their attitude of superiority, their snobbiness, and the fact that they always would try to get something for even cheaper than it already was, all of these things were very noticeable to her. Do you really want to live amongst that sort of people? I could not abide that. I cannot abide people who feel the need to flaunt their wealth. I don't mind that they are wealthy, but lemme tell ya, if I had that kind of money I would still try to blend in to the general population--ordinary car, ordinary clothes, normal house, etc. Why make yourself a target for ridicule, petty envy, and also crime?

I grew up in Point Loma, my dad was a lawyer, and when I was a kid we had to ride around in a great big shiny '57 Cadillac to visit my dad's slum properties in the black neighborhood. I hated everything about that conspicuousness--that car, etc. My dad was not a bad person, but he was from the Depression era.

I like Silver City to visit. My husband wanted to move there. Everyone I've ever known who lived there who had to work (who wasn't retired) has hated that place. Apparently the locals don't like new people moving in there and getting their jobs. I often wonder if Globe would be similar.

Well, all towns, no matter how nice, have their drawbacks. You just have to list the pros and the cons as they pertain to you, I guess. One thing I've learned living here in Round Valley is to be very flexible as to employment! This is a hard place to make a living.

[Jim]

I know what you mean about Sedona. I actually avoided it until this winter. I only started to like it because it was warm down there, while Flagstaff had 2 feet of snow on the ground and would barely crack 40 most days. I don't know any of the "local" people, and I probably wouldn't based on what you told me. I feel this way about Sedona, its a beautiful area, the town is actually attractive, and there is a lot of stuff to do in the area, but the only way you'll ever enjoy it is if look past the traffic, the tourists, and the pretentious outlet stores in Uptown. I agree that there probably should have been a Red Rocks National Park, or Monument.
Thats sad to hear about Silver City. I doubt I'll ever move there, but it makes sense given that its economy is mining based and that is pretty much dying.

[fricknaley]

I love living in Tucson. The proximity to all the sky islands is sweet and people here are fairly laid back.

[Dschur]

I don't like living in Payson so no one else move here. ;)
Even though we live here we can't work here. We have been driving to the valley to work for 18 years now. I love the seasons here and just enough snow to say it is here but I think we only scrapped the windshields this last winter only a couple of times. The snow melts off fast too. But in the summer time it is hot too. Before the monsoon it can be over 100 degrees. We have no air conditioner so it is a good thing half of the house is under ground keeps about 75 degrees downstairs. That is one of the reasons why we have a cabin in the Happy Jack area as well as the dark skies.

[tonyp]

If money were no object, I'd live in Strawberry, a little cooler than Payson, but not buried by snow like the towns on top of the Rim.
But you need to be independently wealthy to move there at this point.

Prescott is wonderful as well, except its all priced like California, and they're going to suck their water table dry.

I've always liked Camp Verde or Cottonwood, which may be the last reasonable economies left at the 4-5000 foot level.

[Hoffmaster]

I've always liked Camp Verde or Cottonwood, which may be the last reasonable economies left at the 4-5000 foot level

Recently, I have given this area very strong consideration as a place to move to. Seeing as how I am doing something outdoors every weekend, this area seems like a no-brainer. It's close to everything.

f you take a ride on old Rt 66/ US 89 towards the mall, it becomes appearant that much of the town is quite old and unmaintained, and the RT 66 part just looks dumpy.

How funny! My brother and his girlfriend just spent the last 10 days here in AZ visiting me. On Wednesday we were rock climbing and camping near Winslow. The weather got really miserable so we broke camp and went to Flag. I was telling them how much they were going to love Flag. As we were driving down 89 towards the "old town", I could see the looks of "what the heck is he talking about" on their faces. I assured them that we were in the dumpy part of Flag and that much of the rest of it is better. They ended up loving the gear shops, Beaver Street Brewery, and the proximity to other places such as the Grand Canyon. On Friday, we went bouldering at Priest Draw off of Lake Mary Rd, and that left them speechless.

Before too long, there may be two new residents of Arizona and it's all my fault.

[PaleoRob]

I've always liked Camp Verde or Cottonwood, which may be the last reasonable economies left at the 4-5000 foot level.

We're at 4300 feet here, and have plenty of water! Plenty of employment options....

[joebartels]

A great location for hiking for sure! However it's to far away from a city, all the whiners can't admit it scares the hell out of them to truly be separated.

Strawberry is intriguing. The lack of any water table and the fact it should really be named Weed, AZ (by FDA standards) takes from it's allure.