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What It’s REALLY Like Living in Cottonwood, AZ

[00:00:00] One of the things that is interesting about Arizona are a lot of the things they don't tell you about Arizona until you get here. Today's video is gonna be my sharing. Some of my surprises that I experienced when I moved to Arizona and that are unique to living in the Arizona state.

One of the first things that I learned about Arizona that really was surprising to me coming from the Midwest was that it's not just a desert and cactus here. Before I moved here, I remember talking to someone and they were like, yeah, we have snow. We have ski resorts. And I thought they were kidding.

I thought they were pulling my leg. Honestly, I did, but they have. Ski resorts here. We have gorgeous mountain ranges that go on and on the spring. Flowers are phenomenal. There are certain areas that are very green, like the Verde Valley has water [00:01:00] running a lot of underground water, so it's very green. It's just very surprising the diversity of climate, that you have here in the state.

It's not just desert and cactus. So that's one thing I like about it, and it's not always just hot. Again, I've said it's very temperate in Cottonwood and the Verde Valley. Another thing that I learned very quickly, and, and you're gonna notice this when you come here to visit even everywhere you go. If you go to a restaurant, they ask you, would you like a cup of water to go?

If you go to an office building, immediately they ask you, would you like some water? It's constantly being offered to you, and I'm like, oh, okay. I'm good. I'm good. And if you leave, they're like, you need to take some water with you. Do you have any water? And I'm like, no, I'm good. And you very quickly find out that in Arizona you always have water with you because it's very dry.

The air is [00:02:00] very dry, even where it's temperate up here in Cottonwood, I always make sure that I have water with me and not just a little, like as I was sharing with someone earlier today, I said I, if I'm gonna be gone for the whole day, I will carry at least 40 ounces of water. With me for the day and I'll drink that and then some.

So always having water with you, and always being asked if you need water is very common here in Arizona. Not so common if you're coming from the Midwest, especially Minnesota Land of 10,000 lakes where there's water everywhere. I'm laughing because this next one is monsoons. I honest to goodness, didn't understand monsoons.

I didn't understand the concern about water. Again, I'm from Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes. We have water. It rains all the time, and they're like, oh, no, no, no. If it's flooded, if the street's flooded, which in Minnesota, whatever, um, [00:03:00] you drive through it. Here because the water comes down literally in buckets.

I'm like, oh my Lord, I've never seen anything like it. It literally comes down in buckets and it can go from no water on the streets to literally inches of water and because the sand is packed and my best explanation for people, and this was shared with me, with somebody that I worked with when I first came down here, I go, I don't get it.

Why doesn't the water absorb into the ground? And again, if you're from the Midwest, the east coast, where it rains and the water is absorbed, this is a great explanation. He said it's like taking a glass, filling it with sand, packing it in there, and then putting water on top. He said, where's it gonna go?

It's not gonna absorb right away. It's gonna gradually absorb. And I'm like, oh, I get it. And so when I first drove down here, when I first [00:04:00] moved down here, I experienced monsoons. I'm like, oh yeah, no big deal. I went to drive in it and my car started to float. Scared me half to death. I thought, I am gonna die.

My car was gonna float away. So quickly went back to my original destination and stayed there until the water had again dissipated. So, uh monsoons are quite an experience and once you've been here a while, you get used to it. But yeah, that whole water thing is a whole new experience for people that come from the Midwest, the east coast, maybe even the southern states where when it rains, the water absorbs.

So anyway, monsoons was a whole experience. The heat, oh my goodness. It's hot, the sun is hotter here, because we're closer to the equator and, so, and it's hot, it's sunny all the time. And so there are funny things that you're gonna notice that people do because of how hot it is. [00:05:00] One, you do not go outside and walk on the sidewalk without putting shoes on.

Because the sidewalk can burn your feet. The other thing is, steering wheels get really hot. Door handles get really hot, and you'll see that a lot of businesses may have things that look like pot holders wrapped around the handles. Well, it's so you don't burn yourself when you grab the door to open the door.

Same thing getting in your car. Um sunshades are everywhere and people throw towels, they throw blankets, they throw everything on their cars. Over the steering wheel, over the seats, to protect their cars. So they, when you get in, especially in the summer when it's hot, you have shorts on, you have a tank top on or something, and you will literally.

He burned by your car and you'll be driving with two fingers, you know, trying not to touch the steering wheel because the steering wheel is also very hot. So the heat, how hot it is, is something that you've [00:06:00] got used to, and that's true across the whole state of Arizona. Again, the heat, the sun is closer to us.

It's just really intense heat. Oh yeah. The next one, I, I kind of alluded to it with the heat. You always have to have something on your feet. I can't run outside and get my dog when she doesn't respond for two reasons. One, I have a rock yard, it's rocks. I don't run well on rock. I don't run well on rocks.

My dogs don't really like the rocks either, but low maintenance, desert landscape. So you have to have your shoes on, you. Slippers, shoes, something flip flops because of the heat. If you run out on the sidewalk or the pavement, you've got to have something on your feet. Uh, the yards are often rock, so you don't wanna run across rock in your bare feet.

And also, and I haven't dealt with this, thank you Lord, but uh, a lot of people are concerned about stepping on scorpions and things. So again, you want to always have shoes on of some kind, some foot protection besides socks or bare feet. [00:07:00] Uh, and that was something I never really thought about. My cousin did tell me about that when I first moved down here 12 years ago.

And I was like, what? And then I experienced it and I knew I never do that again. Run out on the sidewalk without putting shoes on in the middle of the summer. Um something else that's really cool, which kind of gets back to my first point is. The mountains. I absolutely love mountains and there are mountain ranges everywhere.

Uh, Phoenix has mountain ranges, Tucson has mountain ranges. We have mountain ranges here in the Verde Valley. Cottonwood has the Mingus Mountain range. So no one obviously has the Red Rocks. There's the San Francisco Peaks up in Flagstaff. We've got the Mongolian rim, uh, running from here up to Payson.

We have mountains everywhere. And so driving in the mountains can be a little interesting switchbacks, Kirby roads, deep drop offs on one [00:08:00] side. So, but the views are phenomenal. And the valleys are big, so that's something that you have to get used to living in Arizona in particular when you live up in the Verde Valley and further up north, because you can't get away from the mountains.

In Phoenix, it's pretty flat. A lot of it's so you don't have to drive in the mountains, you don't have the switchbacks as much, but mountains everywhere. There's mountains everywhere. And I love that. Oh yeah, back to the heat again. I always wondered when you get to a, okay, so your car is sitting in the heat and people do this.

No matter where you live, in the state of Arizona, everybody does this. Again, the heat's very intense. The sun's very intense. And so in the summer, even up here in Cottonwood, when you pull in a parking lot, you're looking for the spot of shade because you know there's not gonna be much shade and your car's gonna get hot while you're shopping, while you're at the movie theater, [00:09:00] while you're doing whatever it is you're doing.

And so those spots with shade are very coveted, and it's kind of funny. I didn't really realize that. I mean, people will park as far out as they have to to be in the shade, whereas there, everybody in Minnesota tries to park as close as they can, especially in the winter. Because it's so cold. It's sort of the opposite here.

And another thing that's different again between Midwest and say the East coast where we get very cold weather, we turn on our cars in advance to heat up the car here, you turn on your car in advance to cool it down. You're coming out, you've got the little auto button to turn on the air conditioning.

You turn that on and let that sucker run for five, 10 minutes before you get in the car. Or it's like a car, it's a car sauna, and you literally can't breathe. It's so hot. So the windows are open and you're trying to blow out the heat. That was something I'm like, why are you turning your car on? Oh, the air conditioning, not the heat.

[00:10:00] So again, it's a little different, just a little twist. Another thing that I find very interesting here, and I finally kind of figured it out and I don't wanna offend anyone, but there are a lot of words in in Arizona that I did not know how to pronounce, and then I sort of started to realize that there are three, at least three languages, ba you know, so we have English.

That's one language that things are named, and we have Spanish. That's another thing that things are named. And then we have Native American and we have more than one, one Native American language down here, so it gets a little confusing. As to how you should pronounce something. And a lot of people struggle with ro, which is the cactus, our state, whatever.

It's protected. And ak, that's up in Sedona Yavapi, that's the county that Cottonwood is in and that I work in primarily. Just things like that. It's like, [00:11:00] how do I pronounce X? And then you just kind of go, is it English, is it Spanish? Is it a Native American language? And so many people struggle.

And then we always have the unique Prescott, not Prescott, Prescott. Don't ask me, but we always know if you're from out of town because you say press cut instead of Prescott. So it's Prest, not Prescott. Okay. So, it's just little weird nuances that every state has, but these I'm sharing are some fun ones here in Arizona.

Diversity and culture, it's very interesting here and I love being here. Because we have a lot of diversity. We have a lot of Native American cultures here. We have Hispanics, we have, uh, English speaking people, but we also have just, again, diversity in the English speaking. So we have a lot, a mix of culture and diversity and religions.

And we have everything from a Buddhist temple up by Williams. An [00:12:00] ash fork to, I know we have, Muslim temples, Jewish temples, every denomination of the Christian, um, religion. It's just extremely diverse living here, and that is something that I enjoy. I come from the Minneapolis Twin Cities area and they're both very diverse as well.

So, uh, just know when you come to live here, it's gonna be diverse, however. I, I will say we do not have a lot of African Americans. We have some, but we have a lot of Native Americans. Hispanics, we have a lot of, more Asian population. But in the, in the valley, there's more African Americans up here in Cottonwood, not as much, but it is still a pretty nice and diverse community.

I like that. Also the last thing, and I cannot. Say this enough, and I know this isn't true for everybody, but my sense of Arizona has been very welcoming. Everybody is welcoming. They talk to [00:13:00] you, they, they smile at you, they wave, they ask you, can I help you? I just find that it's a very welcoming community.

Now, Cottonwood itself is amazingly friendly. I mean, I feel like I am like been here my whole life because everybody welcomes you. Everybody's friendly. They smile, they wave, they ask how they can help, they welcome you into the groups. It's an extremely welcoming community. So even for introverts, it's a great place to live because you are gonna be welcome no matter what.

Again, these are the things that I found out about Arizona partly that I didn't expect, and how some of it's really good and some of it's a little weird and, some of it's a little unusual, but it's part of living here. And I just want people to know before they move here that there are some really unique little features and characteristics about the Cottonwood, Arizona, Arizona, in and of itself that you should know about and be somewhat [00:14:00] prepared for.

Again, watch the top 10 Reasons to Move to Cottonwood, Arizona, and my other videos about the Verde Valley and some interviews with my clients that have worked with me and bought and relocated to the Verde Valley. I.