Your sentiments about Flagstaff are so funny to me because my wife and I thought the exact same thing as we passed through from TX on the way to Las Vegas. My whole life (originally from New England) I thought Arizona was all desert, so when we wound up in Flagstaff in July to 60 degree rainy weather I was taken aback. I plan on moving there as soon as I wrap up things here in NV.
By the way unfortunately the tech scene being "less happening" is a bit of an understatement. I welcome it for the interim though.
When I looked around, they do have a small startup scene. So when I move up there, I'll be seeking them out.
NAU is not known for engineering or tech though. I walked around campus to get a good feel for it. The engineering building is a single building that covers all the engineering disciplines, including computer science.
What is big at NAU is forestry science. That makes sense. A lot of people come out there to get training to work as forest rangers, or in forest management. The forestry science building is larger than engineering building (in contrast with University of Washington, with that computer science edifice dedicated to Paul Allen). When I walk down the halls and look at the research projects of students, if there were computational projects, they were all geared towards forest management of one kind or another.
Northern Arizona is beautiful. The high desert there gives you a much better appreciation of this contrast between desolation and abundance. July was what the locals call "monsoon season". Both Sedona and Phoenix get hit by that during July -- but because of the presence of the San Francisco peaks, and being up around 7000 feet, you get alpine biomes around Flagstaff.
Add in the hipster culture and outdoorsy folks in Flagstaff, the people reminds me a lot of Seattle -- minus the passionate activism I see fired up in Seattle folks.
By the way unfortunately the tech scene being "less happening" is a bit of an understatement. I welcome it for the interim though.