Beautiful Phoenix here as well, although just moved here in July. Born & raised in middle-of-nowhere foothills of CA and spent the last 16 years in Seattle.
As for local shops, there seem to be quite a few here. My wife and I just started vaping about a month ago and things are a bit tight financially for us right now so we haven't been able to check them all out yet. HiTec is pretty close and that's where we got all our startup gear. They seem nice enough; their juices are a lot cheaper than other B&M shops ($10/20mL iirc) and there are a couple I really like (cowboy and trifecta.) A lot of the others . .eh, not so much. Vape Escapes was a really nice store also with really nice people who are more than willing to chat and educate even with minimal or no purchase. Had a nice selection of gear and good tasting setup. Juices seemed really high quality and have burned real clean but are pricier.
I stepped into another shop . .Vape Central I think? . .briefly in search of replacement coils (which they had). Just opened a month or so ago apparently; didn't seem to have much in the way of hardware; didn't seem interested in talking. Had a rather confusing array of juices all in black print labels and all available in different sizes at different prices. Seemed unnecessarily confusing - like one flavor was in 10mL for $15, another in 15mL for $20, another in 8mL for $10 . .or something. Didn't really have time to hang and figure it out but I didn't really get the point. May swing by again if I'm in the area.
And I also don't know why anybody would move to Barstow, on purpose, from anywhere =p