Arizona Peas - Tell me about living in your state

I actually live fairly close to the base, in an area called Old Litchfield Park. It's right by the Wigwam Resort. I love love love this area.

The heat in the summer bites. Yes. Other than that, I have no complaints. Lots to do for families. The schools right here are really good. I could PM you more.

I am a native.

Lisa

I've only lived in AZ for about 10 years, all of that time in the East Valley. So I can't speak to Peoria at all, nor can I comment on family at all because we don't have kids-- but I can give you some general info about AZ and the Valley.

-- The summers here are similar to winters on the East Coast-- most people tend to stay indoors, like you would stay indoors during the winter somewhere cold. The fact that it's a 'dry heat' with very little humidity really DOES make it not as horrible as you'd think. Yes, once it hits 110F+ it's HOT, true, but 90-100F here IS really not bad. You just have to make sure you drink water during the summer if you're out and about.

-- The Valley is large, very spread out, and there's a lot of urban sprawl. It was not 'planned' very well-- most of the suburbs started as separate towns and sort of 'grew together' so the roads / highways aren't always straightforward. You can be driving on one road and when you cross into a different suburb, that same road changes names. It's not hard once you figure it out, but it's a quirk.

-- It rains VERY infrequently here, except for during monsoon season in the summer and sometimes there are winter storms. People here (I'm generalizing) do NOT know how to drive in that type of weather mostly because it happens so rarely. When it rains traffic problems and backups get worse and accidents happen, just because people freaked out by having to use the windshield wipers, it seems. Flooding can also affect traffic depending on where you are-- the rain can't soak into the ground quick enough so certain areas / roads can flood; it's really odd to see a highway of 6-8 lanes each way totally shut down due to having more than a foot of water on it! So getting places can sometimes be tricky during bad weather due to those issues.

-- The public transportation system isn't set up as nice as back East (I'm generalizing again). In my opinion, you really need a car to get anywhere, and traffic can be VERY bad-- afternoon rush hour starts about 2:30 pm and goes till after 6. They've put in a light rail system, but in my opinion it isn't nearly as efficient / easy as the Metra system in Chicago was, for instance. The light rail lines follow the existing roads; there's not a dedicated track for it. And from what I hear, I don't think the bus system is very good, at least in terms of the routes and numbers of buses.

-- The landscape is very different than the east coast / Midwest; it took a good few years for me to get used to the lack of green. If you want green grass, etc. then you will pay dearly to have it (the water bill for irrigating it). In my opinion the desert / mountain landscaping is 'striking' and not exactly inviting, but it does have its own sort of appeal. You do have to be okay with the fact that we live in the desert; depending on where you are, there can be scorpions, there can be rattlesnakes, there can be black widow spiders, there can be coyotes... and it seems like most plants are set up to hurt you, lol-- pretty much every native tree / cactus / plant has spines or stickers to protect itself.

-- You can get to a lot of different places / climates within a day's drive from the Valley: California, Mexico, Las Vegas, up into the mountains for pine forests and snow skiing... the mountains make the area very diverse.

-- I know the word used to be that it was cheaper to live here than back in the Midwest, but honestly, we haven't found that. The real estate crash did make housing prices drop like a rock there for a while, but gasoline, groceries, etc. are pretty much the same prices we saw in Chicago.

-- I think wages are less here than back in the Midwest or East Coast; apparently the thinking is (so I've read, anyway) that people aren't supposed to mind being paid less in this part of the country because we live here to enjoy the climate. I know I took a giant step backwards in my pay grade for comparable jobs when we moved from the Chicago area.

-- The state / area is conservative, overall. There are a lot of older snow birds and retirees; that may help it lean more conservative (?? not sure).

All that being said (it feels like I wrote a lot of negatives), I do enjoy living here now-- it's nice to be able to call my family on Christmas and tell them that we're sitting on the patio wearing shorts and a tee shirt, lol! There are a lot of opportunities to learn about the Native American culture, travel to amazing historic sites, national parks, the mountains and landscape is gorgeous, etc. This turned out to be longer than I thought it would; hopefully some of it is useful to you; I really don't mean to sound overly negative, if it comes across that way-- just realistic.

We lived in AZ for five years, and central Texas for eight. As another hater of heat and humidity I'd far prefer AZ over Texas (or any other humid state) in that respect. The dry heat in AZ was much more bearable, and we really enjoyed our time there overall .

I was born and raised on the east coast. I lived in Phoenix for about 3.5 years when I was newly married. It never really felt like home to me. It just felt like a place I was living, if that makes any sense. The environment is vastly different from the east coast. It had a lot to do with the reasons a pp listed. But dh, who is from CA, loved it there. It was so similar to CA that he was comfortable there - but I was not.

I don't know if you're an east coast lifer or not, but that was my experience...

They are military and I suspect they are more used to adapting to their current surroundings than most families are. I know we are. We've always believed that every duty station is as good as you think it is. You could be happy or miserable anyplace, just depends on how you look at it. I had a friend try to complain to me about being in Hawaii and I had to tell her to step back and listen to herself for a minute. She was whinging about living (for a limited tour of only ten months!) in a place some people save years to spend a week in. So shut your piehole and go down to the beach, look at the ocean, and try to tell me again how awful it is.   

Adapting is just part of military culture and I suspect they will do just fine. Semper Gumby! 

ah, compwalla reminded me of another thing that's quite different here than what we were used to:

Depends on where you end up living, of course, but builders tend to squeeze every lot / house out of the available space that they can. This means that yards are quite small for the most part, unless you live in a more expensive / more upscale neighborhood, golf course community, etc.

And in most neighborhoods (unless you're in an older area where the houses were built earlier than 80s-90s), the houses are ALL separated by 6 ft cinderblock walls. There is no 'visiting with the neighbors' over a backyard fence, at all. The front yards are quite small, and typically not used as 'living' space, just landscaped to look nice from the street.

People seem to keep to themselves more, at least it seems like that to me. Because of the block walls, maybe, and the way the houses are so separated?? (again, we don't have kids, so that probably makes a difference.)

And, one more thing: There are very FEW houses here that have basements. Typically houses are built on slabs and basements are a higher-end homebuilder option only. Because of that, there is VERY LITTLE storage space in most houses! You have to store your "stuff" in a closet, spare bedroom, garage, etc. Some people can't even park inside their garage due to all the stuff stored in them... But you also have to be careful with what you store in the garage because the heat can damage things.

ETA for weather info:

Yeah, be prepared to have your eyes opened during the first full summer you're here, for sure.  We visited here in Feb/March and it was gorgeous!! We moved here in October... so the first real summer was awful for me, because I didn't know what to expect.  Everything was so drab and brown! (or so I thought)   I literally cried when we went back to Wisconsin to visit family because it was so green there, and so (seemingly) dead and lifeless in AZ.  The desert isn't dead; it's just a very different kind of beauty with subtle shades of green, gray green, sage, etc. instead of the bright greens and bright colors of the flowers elsewhere.   Summers can get long;  about Sept. / Oct. I start getting antsy for the weather to cool down kind of like I got sick of winter in March back in Illinois.

And believe it or not, I sometimes actually get BORED with having sunshine day after day!!  Any change from the sunshine is an event that gets talked about-- cloudy all day long, cooler than normal temps, etc. are all topics for conversation.  And a monsoon storm? That's an occasion! When it storms we sit out on the patio and enjoy it, because it happens so rarely in the area where we live. (the mountains affect the weather systems; not many of the storms actually cause rain at our house.)

They occasionally do news stories in the summertime about 'is it hot enough to fry an egg?' and I have heard that when it's hot enough, if you put a cookie sheet of cookie dough on your dashboard they will (sort of) bake after a couple hours.

I have never lived in AZ but a friend who lived near me in CA moved there over 20+ years ago and was completely freaked out by the scorpions.

Yup ladytrisha and @trezmom that's why I told DH it was MUST! Actually I think the dogs get more use out of it then we do! LOL! Pia goes for a swim almost every morning. Almost never cares what the weather. Once I'm in it , I don't want to get out.. Although they don't like the storms.

You would be surprised at the houses that are there for lease options. I think that became more so after the housing crash. We have a had a few in our area that are rentals and DH's cousin is in one thats how she got hers. They are south of us between Gilbert and Chandler.

THIS!! I couldn't live without fencing either - preferably block walls high enough that someone can't poke their heads over. Thanks to your post today, I'm able to visualize living there, having a pool, the dogs and the kid finding a new life balance.

We have a 24 year old who is trying to find his path and he can't even dream of having his own apartment in So. California on what he makes here. And he LOVES sports and sports stats so I'm thinking more and more he might find his home there too. My boss just paid $800,000 for a 1200 sq foot condo ... just boggles my mind.