Moving Here · October 13, 2026
What my San Diego friends ask me about Peoria
The two questions I get every time: what's the weather like, and what is there to do. Honest answers to both.
The weather question first, because it's the one everyone's nervous about. Yes, it gets cold. The first time I felt a negative-number windchill it cut me to my core. You buy a real coat, you learn that your neighbors will shovel your walk before you're awake, and you get on with it.
What is there to do: a downtown on the river with the Peoria Riverfront Museum and the Caterpillar Visitors Center, touring shows at the Civic Center, Chiefs baseball at Dozer Park in the summer and Rivermen hockey in the winter.
The thing nobody asks about, and should: the people. We expected to be the weirdos. Instead the neighbors brought food, mowed our lawn, and showed up with a snow shovel. In California our neighbors filed fake HOA complaints. Here they wave.