If you're looking for a quiet place to hide your stuff away while you travel, Prescott is a good town. If you expect to be able to go grab a half-decent dinner out at 7pm on a Tuesday, look elsewhere. Amazon Prime is practically mandatory—not only is this a small town with limited resources it's also well off the beaten path, far from any proper highways, and not on the way to/from anywhere. It took a few years for it to sink in just how isolated this place is, no one is ever just "passing through," it's either a long deliberate detour or never happens. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you want at the moment. It was great for the first few years, but as a creator I've felt stiffed lately. It seems like I've shot every possible angle on every single tree and boulder in this place, and travel is about the only thing keeping us sane.
On the travel front the location is actually quite good, probably as good as it gets while staying in a town so small and quiet. Socal beaches, Colorado Rockies, and Moab are 7 hours out; the middle of the Mojave or Death Valley are a mere 4 hours; all those epic locations around Lake Powell are 3 hours away, as is Vegas; Grand Canyon and the Navajo only 2 hours. Hiking/biking/hunting/camping in some very beautiful country is 15 minutes from downtown. The routes are interesting too: you can shortcut across Death Valley to reach California's 395, and across the Sierras to reach SFO; Salt Lake City is about 9 hours of scenic two-lane Highway 89.
All the negatives said, things may change in the next few years as more business has been moving here and many, many more houses continue to be built (like, entire neighborhoods in the last year). Regular flights in and out of PRC are actually a thing now too...I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing the bigger airlines begin offering connections. What remains to be seen is if business hours and infrastructure will expand to keep up with our now 200,000 and growing population. Dani and I have been shopping new cities for relocation in the mean time, we're giving Prescott a few more years to get their **** together, and if they don't we're gone...
Flag is crowded, noisy, expensive, and full of hipsters. Yes, it offers solutions to most of what I hate about Prescott, but it's also ~1,500 feet higher and gets a bit chilly. Prescott rarely goes below 30* or over 90*, just enough for four seasons.
