Why Settle in the Desert?

This was the question posed by a reader who commented on this post.  It's a good question.  Obviously if you want to be completely self sufficient, the last place you would want to stake out a homestead would be in the middle of the desert, but in our situation, Vegas is, for now, an ideal location.  Here's why:

• I have no desire to be completely self sufficient.  It is a nice ideal and I admire people who are far along the path to complete self sufficiency but at this point in my life, that is just way too much work for me personally.
• We were looking for a home base as we travel often and Vegas fit the bill--cheap housing, quick access to a major airport, low cost of living, etc.
• I was thoroughly tired of the weather in Seattle.  There's a reason a big group of people from the Pacific Northwest have become "snowbirds" who flock to the south (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, etc) as soon as the weather turns.  The reason is the weather.  Nine months out of the year the weather in southern Nevada is excellent (the other three months it is hot as Hell here).
• This may not be permanent.  Like our decision to sell nearly everything we owned and hit the road to travel for a couple of years, this is yet another experiment in living.  It may last for a year or it may last for a decade.  We shall see...
• Living in the desert presents some different challenges for the prepper.  And I am looking forward to determining what these challenges are and meeting them head on (water and evacuation being my foremost concerns at this point).
• It also presents some interesting opportunities.  I have always been fascinated with solar power so that will be something I will try out here.  Gardening in the desert is something else I will delve in to.  
• As I have pointed out before, I am not a hard-core survivalist.  I believe that everyone should be prepared for the vagaries of life but I dedicate maybe 10% of my time to prepping and waiting for the sky to fall, the other 90% of my time is spent enjoying life.  If I was a hard-core survivalist I certainly wouldn't be living here.
• It's a good idea to shake things up a bit, that is how you learn.  It is one thing to be rooted in a place and complacent with your life.  It is a different--and to me, vastly more interesting--thing to live in tornado country, then move to hurricane alley, then head over/down to a third world country where simple day-to-day living keeps you on your toes because you don't know if lax building codes will make your home fall down on your head before or after you are visited by corrupt law enforcement officials...you get the idea.  I like to shake things up every now and then.

So that's the reason(s).  There was no grand scheme where settling in the desert would directly or indirectly impact our survive-ability during a disaster.  This choice was made for a variety of mostly non-prepping reasons, yet I think that it will add greatly to my (and in turn your) survival education.