Why I Moved From Ohio to Arizona

I grew up in Painesville, Ohio — Lake County, about thirty minutes east of downtown Cleveland, in a house on Balboa Street. Winters meant snowmobiling, skiing, and sledriding — my family belonged to three different snowmobile clubs, so there was always somewhere to be and something planned. When the weather turned too bad to even get out the door, we'd switch to puzzles or game nights with friends instead. Ohio weather never fully cooperated, so you learned to always have a backup plan.

Summers stretched even wider. We spent days at Mentor Headlands, sometimes off a friend's boat, sometimes just camped out on the sand. There was bowling, fishing, and camping trips, plus plenty of nights in Geneva-on-the-Lake — bars, restaurants, go-karts, arcade games, wineries. For years my RV sat permanently parked at Kenisee RV Resort in Harpersfield, right in the heart of wine country, where we'd take golf carts from one winery to the next. The Grand River ran past Kenisee too, and we'd canoe it whenever the mood struck. Saturday nights meant Painesville Speedway, watching my brother race on a fifth-mile track billed as the shortest NASCAR ever ran on.

I loved the seasons — genuinely. But at the end of the day, the lack of sunshine, the lack of real warmth, and weather that constantly ruined plans wore on me. I wanted a place where I could be outside and active year-round instead of building my life around backup plans for the next storm. That's what brought me to Chandler in April 2014, and it's the same reason I still spend as much time outdoors here as I did back home — just with a lot fewer contingency plans.