Life In The High Desert - Two Months after Relocating to the High Desert

Backstory: Moved from Lancaster, Pennsyvlania where both my wife and I had mediocre jobs. Recently married, no kids, minimal debt, good chunk of savings. She didn't care for her organization, but liked her industry. I like my company and my income, but felt the urge to experience life someplace different. I didn't get enough vacation to really "truely" experience places. I always felt like a tourist, which I hated. Only other place I had lived outside of my home county was Erie, PA where neither of us really wanted to settle down. We moved back to Lancaster in 2010 and after two years there started looking.

In late 2014 she got an interview in Orlando Florida and the prespective employer flew her down. Unfortunately, no offer ever materialized, making us wonder if employers were nervous about her low pay and my unemployment in a new city affecting her ability to feel satisfied in a job. Neither of us felt like we were in fields that would pay relocation fees or high salaries.

We knew salary was going to be an important factor of a potential cross country move.

We had a set criteria for potential places to move. While there were plenty of jobs in the North East and Upper Midwest, we didn't want to be somewhere cold, flat, or dreary. My search was limited to cities between 50,000-200,000, in relatively close proximity to lots of public land. Greenways, green belts, state parks, etc. Orlando would have been a bad choice by our criteria. Asheville, Chattnooga, Tampa, Tallahassee, Austin, Santa Fe and Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, Boulder or Fort Collins, Tucson and Flagstaff, Vegas and Reno, Salt Lake, Redding, Ashland, or Medford were part of weekly routine of checking for jobs in our fields.

In April 2015 I saw a vacancy pop up for gas utility mapping analyst in Flagstaff, AZ. The job description matched my current job. The position title and location were an upgrade. Salary was unknown. I applied, just for the hell of it.

A week later I got a screening call. "Why are you applying" "Why Flagstaff?" etc. Another week went by and I got a call for a phone interview. Bah, I hate phone interviews. It went ok, despite me missing the first call. I thought I was done. Nice try. A few days later, the department manager called and asked when the soonest I could visit was. I replied with "I need to know my chances before I ask off two days at such short notice." His reply "well, we're willing to hire you but not sight unseen." Ok, what about Skype? "Ok, we'll try that." We did a Skype interview that lasted 1.5 hours and I was offered the job.

The salary, a considerably increase. Sign on bonus, 10% of yearly salary. Every year we get a bonus that is up to 4% of year salary. 3 weeks vacation to start, plus holidays. They'd give me a month to finish out my current job and move. It was a near perfect opportunity.

The move went relatively smoothly. We gave away a ton of stuff. Lots of stuff I had just bought, too. I took 3 week in between finishing one job and starting the other, so we'd have approximately 4 weeks to pack and load a container, and another week to drive across the USA. With cat.

I was lucky enough to find a 3-month sublet. The place is a dump. I'm glad we're only here for 3 months.

My wife stayed home for another month to earn more money and cover the cost of finishing out our lease. That went smoothly as well.

Areas of concern:

Housing. Fighting with college students and lack of options.

Wife's employment. 3 interviews so far and no offers.

Cars. No inspections, sweet! But Craigslist has slow turnover.

Other than that, I'll update more when I have time.

Good luck! Drink plenty of water!

Sweet! Pictures? Shouldn't there be rough-but-rust-free American V8 cars everywhere just for the taking?

You're not kidding when you say 'high desert' -- Flagstaff is at 7,000 ft! Have you had to do anything to adjust to the altitude?

I was just in Vegas...it was HOT, I imagine Flagstaff is hotter, but there is a lot of awesome outdoors stuff to do there.

I like the Flagstaff area. Hey, for entertainment, go down to Sedona. The place is crawling with peri- and post-menopausal women walking around with bags of rocks.

I'm glad you were able to find something to temporarily satisfy your desire for new experiences. Sounds like you had one hell of an opportunity. I would love to move out of the midwest and go to the proper west (wait a second, I am in Germany!) Congratulations! That area gets a ton of snow though doesn't it?

A former supervisor moved out there to work for W.L. Gore. She loves it there. But, jobs are not prevalent and housing is expensive (by east coast standards).

In reply to Cotton:

IDK, Flagstaff's high today was 82 with 15% humidity. Our high on the coast of SC is 99 with 80% humidity. I'll trade.

Their weather looks very appealing to me.

Toyman01 wrote: In reply to Cotton: IDK, Flagstaff's high today was 82 with 15% humidity. Our high on the coast of SC is 99 with 80% humidity. I'll trade. Their weather looks very appealing to me.

I was just the opposite then....the high while I was in Vegas was 109! I'm with you, their weather does look very appealing.

Our weather is awesome. The seasons are a bit delayed, says the locals. It gets warmer later in the year, and stays warmer later as well. They say I should expect days in the 70's in October. We'll see.

Precipitation is usually fast and furious, but it dries/melts quickly. Mud is rare around town.

The ability to drop in the valley is awesome. When its cold here, it's perfect down there. When its hot there, stay at home in Flagstaff.

Elevation took me about a solid 4 weeks, but I was also spending a lot of time on the bicycle. Being active as soon as you hit the ground helps.

Housing is rough. I just can get over not only the lack of options but the sour attitude of rental property owners. This town needs rental permits. Some of these places are health hazards charging $950 a month.

trucke wrote: A former supervisor moved out there to work for W.L. Gore. She loves it there. But, jobs are not prevalent and housing is expensive (by east coast standards).

Were you close? My wife would love to work at Gore.

Dr. Hess wrote: I like the Flagstaff area. Hey, for entertainment, go down to Sedona. The place is crawling with peri- and post-menopausal women walking around with bags of rocks.

I was surprised. I thought Sedona would be more of a hippy enclave. It's more a yuppy enclave.

tuna55 wrote: Sweet! Pictures? Shouldn't there be rough-but-rust-free American V8 cars everywhere just for the taking?

There are, but with gas being around $2.85 in town, and my interest in sleeping out of my vehicle, I haven't really looked.

The other dynamic here is that cars get driven ALOT. Older vehicles may be rust free, but they've also got 250k. 100k of that is probably driving on rough washboard roads.

Am I the only one who is going to point out it took PHeller like 5 years to get here with incessant posting on the GRM board?

Congrats on the move, gonna miss all of your threads

Well if all those threads taught me anything its that eventually there is nothing left to analyze and you've just gotta do it.

I'm not sure Flagstaff is perfect, but it'll satisfy our desires for the type of lifestyle we'd like to experience for a few years. Eventually that lifestyle will change and we'll move back east, maybe.

Someday our lives will change enough to allow us to move to Colorado like we daydream of.

Enjoy the ride out there, man.

I live in Vegas. I like to visit Flagstaff in the summer to get out of the heat. It's got a nice college town vibe. I dunno that I'd want to live there, but there are worse places to live!

I hear it gets cold and even has had blizzards.

Cold and Blizzards I'm ok with. Especially because I can retreat to Phoenix for a weekend if neccesary during the winter. Also, even after large snowfalls the snow melts quickly and the earth dries out fast. I hated how back in the northeast "winter" would end in April but the mud lingered until June.

I'm jealous. I visited Flag on the way back to Tempe after going to the Grand Canyon. I was very close to moving out there at one point, but I doubt it's possible now. Anyway, I loved the whole area.

I just drove through Flagstaff about 2 weeks ago. I headed to the Grand Canyon from Phoenix. It was nice up there. The temps dropped almost 15 degrees from Phoenix to Flagstaff.

Left Phoenix at 3 pm and was back by midnight. We got to see the sunset over the Canyon - that was cool.

What are the popular motorsports? Im sure Offroading/rock crawling are big. Any tracks in the area?

Cotton wrote: I was just in Vegas...it was HOT, I imagine Flagstaff is hotter, but there is a lot of awesome outdoors stuff to do there.

at 7000' it shouldn't be … but I don't know squat about the SW

I do know that one July (90°+ day … many many yrs ago) a buddy and I decided to leave Asheville on our motorcycles and ride up to Mt Mitchell (6600+ ft … highest point east of the Rockies)

we being dumbbutt 20 somethings we were wearing cutoffs, and tank tops … we didn't get 3/4 of the way before turning around, shivering so badly we had trouble holding the handle bars …. it was already down to the mid-50°'s …. like I said … mid-July, clear and sunny