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Very excited for you in your move! Let me know how I can be of help!
Lived here all my life and although our lakes don't have many boat up restaurants, we do have virgin shoreline, and oh yeah, boating season runs from about February through late January....... =)
Where are you at? That photo is beautiful. Looking very forward to boating down there. We're not moving formally until June, so we'll be there for the best of the "dry heat." We know how hot it can get - we've been visiting the area for years (my dad is in Scottsdale and lived in Prescott for a while) but we have never seen the lakes or been boating. Should be a new experience.
You will love all the lakes around AZ and almost year round boating, we normally go to Lake Pleasant or Saguaro Lake for day trips and Lake Havasu or Lake Powell for longer trips. It's a dry heat, just remember that on the hot days, but heck that's what the lake is for to cool down.
We will most likely be in the SE suburbs for work reasons, so my guess is we'll end up on Saguaro/Canyon/Apache lake somewhere. I'll be looking to have either a slip or storage somewhere very near the lake. I work from home (or wherever I like) and have always had a wet slip so I can go work from the boat from time to time. Having to trailer it constantly is not something I'm all that excited about. Happy to take any recommendations or stories you all might have about boating in the Phoenix area...
I have been boating in Arizona for 23 years, might be easier to talk on the phone one of these days than type it all out. All the lakes have pro's and con's. I too work from home or wherever I want, it is a nice freedom.
I'd be happy to...I'll PM you at some point. This week is all about getting some stuff done so we can get our house on the market ASAP. Thanks for the offer!
Thought I'd share this with the gang here, since it's official as of today.
My wife has accepted a position with a new company and tendered her resignation today. Since I work from home, I am mobile, so we had been considering a move for some time and the right opportunity happened to come up.
As of sometime in mid-June (so the kids can finish the school year) the new home state of the Wild Life Refuge, and her captain and captainess (as well as the three little mates) is...
Arizona! (the Phoenix area, somewhere in the SE metro, likely Gilbert/Chandler/Mesa.)
Yes - year round boating is in my future. Can't wait!
Thanks for the good wishes! Yes - this winter didn't help things at all, but we've been talking about heading south for years. I lived in NM for a while and TX for a while and loved both. We have young kids and decided that if we were going to go, it had to be sooner or we'd wait until they were out of the house. An opportunity came up, and boom...here we go...
In all fairness, MN is a wonderful place to live. We like it here a lot. But we never felt like it was a permanent home - the glorious midwestern summers just aren't enough to compensate for the long hard winters.
It seems like the Chandler/Gilbert areas are pretty popular and reasonably close to lakes and the airport… you will love the wilderness part of the lake (scenery). I got my first boat out there 13 years ago and frequented Lake Pleasant and Havasu….
It seems like the Chandler/Gilbert areas are pretty popular and reasonably close to lakes and the airport… you will love the wilderness part of the lake (scenery). I got my first boat out there 13 years ago and frequented Lake Pleasant and Havasu….
To be honest, while I do love the scenery, one of the things I will miss about our home lake (Lake Minnetonka) here in MN is that it's not wilderness at all - it's huge, for sure (17,500 acres as I recall) pretty much every inch of shoreline is covered by beautiful homes, four or five restaurants with boat-in service, some nice little towns with public docks, and so on. You can bar or restaurant hop on the lake. I will miss that very much - it can be a lot of fun. On the other hand, the solitude and serenity of the wilderness will be a nice change too.
We ARE very much looking forward to taking a trip to Lake Powell, etc., and doing a multi-day vacation. Maybe not right away, though...thanks for the comments. We are looking very forward to the move.
By the way, love Wichita Falls. Drove through there a bunch of times when I lived in the Dallas area and would travel up to some beautiful state parks to camp (Caprock Canyons, for example.) Used to stop there in town for lunch each direction. Cute little town. I remember them building a huge bypass for 287 right through town when I was driving through, but it wasn't done yet. Seemed like a mess.
Lake Powell is the singular reason I am regretting selling my boat. Well, let me say the most weighted reason...there are many reasons. But My bucket list still has Powell dead at the top.
Lake Powell is the singular reason I am regretting selling my boat. Well, let me say the most weighted reason...there are many reasons. But My bucket list still has Powell dead at the top.
Mel - I hear you...I've wanted to do the houseboat rental thing there for years. And we may do that first, or we may take the Yammie up there first to explore. Not sure. But we will absolutely get there.
@leeatmg Wichita Falls is quite a busy place now. The Flyover as we call it is awesome now. I am sure it was a mess to build. As for lakes, I can't say I have ever experienced a lake like you described with all of those conveniences. I can see how that would be loads of fun, especially if yo have a house on it. The thing I hate about North Texas is lack of water AND its still darn cold here. I need more boating season!!
@leeatmg Wichita Falls is quite a busy place now. The Flyover as we call it is awesome now. I am sure it was a mess to build. As for lakes, I can't say I have ever experienced a lake like you described with all of those conveniences. I can see how that would be loads of fun, especially if yo have a house on it. The thing I hate about North Texas is lack of water AND its still darn cold here. I need more boating season!!
Yeah - Lake Minnetonka is spectacular. A whole different kind of boating. It's actually about 28 separate bays that interconnect by short channels. All total it's actually 14,500 square acres and about 125 miles of coastline, with 17 cities fronting it in the west suburbs of Minneapolis. On a summer day, you will see 42' and larger yachts as well as tons of small boats. There is a 4th of July fireworks show that has an airshow over the lake, and the boats throw out anchor and sit all day and watch the airshow and then the fireworks at night. There are so many boats anchored that you could almost walk from one side of the bay to the other - probably 2000+ boats. It's a pretty awesome place to boat. If it wasn't frozen solid for half the year...
There's three main bar/restaurants, which seat hundreds and have live music most evenings and weekends in the summer, plus all the cities, and a few state park islands which you can beach at. The rest is all homes - many of which, in the right areas, are multi-million dollar estates.
If you are ever up here, it is worth making time for.
