We took a day off due to having the cheapest hotel of the tour that is any good (and the whole driving 360 miles on the day before. It is actually cheaper for us to live at this Econo Lodge in Mesa than it was to live in our flat in Brighton at $41/£26 a night with tax. Mesa is part of the greater Phoenix area.
We didn’t do much at all the first day, but the second day in Mesa, we ventured out to do some shopping and check out another model home. We learned that even though Chandler, a suburb of a suburb really (Mesa is a suburb of Phoenix), is on the edge of the metropolitan area, Intel is there, so it is still a good place to live if you are in tech. This is good news as it’s a fantastic looking area with some great housing.
We learned from a woman who works for the show home we went through that there are few bothersome insects here, but that there are scorpions, though this is somewhat controllable by spraying your yard for crickets, which is their main food source.
We also saw that most yards here are like the ones in New Mexico, that is, grassless due to it being expensive to maintain grass in a desert. This could be a pro, as mowing a lawn doesn’t really look enjoyable anyway. Pools also seem fairly common here in the same way they were in Florida as it’s never that cold here.
The woman at the show home seemed to really love living in Arizona and said many people from other states, in particular, California, had been moving here recently due to the good weather and low cost of living.
Something similar to New Mexico is the charming art on the sides of the highway:
I don’t think it’s native to the area, but palm tree seem both popular and thriving:
Most of the housing was in light desert tones that look quite lovely really:
The show home itself was quite impressive, even having a pool, which we’d quite like:
Arizona is definitely in the running and we’ll be staying here for a few more days to really see the area properly.
Here’s the video: