Thinking of moving from Silicon Valley to Flagstaff-What am I in for?

[AZDesertBrat]

Originally Posted by George Tirebiter

As the other folks here stated the big challenge here is jobs. It's a 'right to be an indentured servant (I mean right to work') state, so low wages and vamployers galore. If you have jobs you may be over that hurdle, but if you're not used to significant amounts of snow, it could be a shock. 12 feet of snow a year is not uncommon. Also 75 in the summer may sound great but being at 7000ft elevation that leads to rather cold winters and less than ideal temps (compared to Silicon Valley) during spring and fall.
In Flag you're also a long way from many conveniences you're used to in Silicon Valley. It might be a novelty initially, but a nuisance fairly quickly.
It is a beautiful area though around Flagstaff although Flag itself isn't much to look at. Spend as much time as you can in Sedona where it gets about 12 inches of snow a year and is usually at least 15 degrees warmer in the winter. When we lived in Sedona we only went to Flagstaff on the days in the summer when it was hot. Otherwise it was too cold, especially after coming from Southern California.
My suggestion would be to spend a week or two in Flag in the dead of winter and see how it feels to you.

Since when does Sedona get 12" of snow a year??? It MIGHT, if they have 12 snows of 1". lol

I've lived in Flagstaff and the ONLY thing I didn't like was the winter weather. I never had a problem finding anything I needed at any time.

[temp00]

Originally Posted by caryberry

Flagstaff is a great "little" town...but as other have stated in reply to your post - WORLDS away from S-Valley on so many levels. My mother-in-law suggests "never being further than 20 miles from a Costco...there is a reason that they are there. The rest will work itself out."

Arizona is a very, very, very conservative Red state. Did I mention conservative?

In general yes but Flagstaff is the most leftist of all AZ, plenty of green/environmentalists here.