trailscape
Explorer
Best place to making a living, or to live it up?
Best place to live?!?!
- Thread starter Skkeel01
- Start date
Just my .02 and I LOVE Texas, but Dallas & Houston are great places to live (jobs, housing) but not somewhere to visit... I want to move to AZ but the wife loves Texas and her role at work requires her to be at their headquarters in Dallas. I am from Florida and lived in Oregon for a while, but for me nothing beats the desert... All the public land out west is hard to beat... I want to be able to have the truck packed Thursday night and ready to roll out Friday afternoon, weekend trips outside of the Texas hill country are hard to find... It's 10 hrs to get to our only national park in Texas, while my favorite, it is still a haul, also mostly private land for the rest of the state...
cbckidatheart
New member
We love Utah. I've lived in Arizona and Florida for multiple years as well but Utah fits us well. It's near impossible to beat the amount of excellent trails, and there is a lifetime of places to visit. The state has a solid economy and is very affordable. Good schools as well. Close to other great places to explore with CO, NV, AZ, NM, ID and WY all within a few hours of driving. Weather is decent, the winters are cold but not NE cold most days sit in the mid 30s.
Depending on the location you get snow nothing crazy but close enough to the mountains to enjoy the snow when desired. Summer's are hot but no humidity. Fall and Spring are short.
People love the outdoors so you can find friends easily who enjoy your favorite activities.
Depending on the location you get snow nothing crazy but close enough to the mountains to enjoy the snow when desired. Summer's are hot but no humidity. Fall and Spring are short.
People love the outdoors so you can find friends easily who enjoy your favorite activities.
quickfarms
Adventurer
I have lived in Southern California for half of my life
I grew up in a small town on the jersey shore.
I have a love hate relationship with Southern California
I love the
Weather, not to hot or to cold
The fact that I can get anything locally
The fact that I am an hour from the beach or mountains and just slightly longer to the desert
My short commute
The wages
I hate the
Endless suburbia
Too many people
Traffic
Cost of property
Liberals
The Bay Area is worse than Southern California in my opinion
I grew up in a small town on the jersey shore.
I have a love hate relationship with Southern California
I love the
Weather, not to hot or to cold
The fact that I can get anything locally
The fact that I am an hour from the beach or mountains and just slightly longer to the desert
My short commute
The wages
I hate the
Endless suburbia
Too many people
Traffic
Cost of property
Liberals
The Bay Area is worse than Southern California in my opinion
XJSuperman
OhIOWAn
Well, Id say stay outta northeastern Ohio...lake effect, cloudy all the dang time, and ohio taxes.
I spent 4 years in Iowa and loved it. People were amazing, some of the best people Ive ever met live in central Iowa. It similar to my home in Ohio in terms of climate, cept its a little drier, and its sunny much more often, with no lake effect. Hope you're ok with a little wind though. Plenty to do, see, and explore. Their neighbors to the north are pretty sweet too, regardless of what a native Iowan tells ya dontcha know. Minnesota is fabulous when it comes to the people and the outdoors, but watch out in the summer when the lakes bring in the people like flies to ********. And stay outta the cities there, fun for a bit but thats all.
Winters are good and cold, no in-between slush and mush crap. Summers are nice and warm to almost too hot. They like guns, trucks, and beer, but don't spend as much time in the hot sun as Texans lol. Joking...
Im heading back soon, gotta get out of Ohio.
I spent 4 years in Iowa and loved it. People were amazing, some of the best people Ive ever met live in central Iowa. It similar to my home in Ohio in terms of climate, cept its a little drier, and its sunny much more often, with no lake effect. Hope you're ok with a little wind though. Plenty to do, see, and explore. Their neighbors to the north are pretty sweet too, regardless of what a native Iowan tells ya dontcha know. Minnesota is fabulous when it comes to the people and the outdoors, but watch out in the summer when the lakes bring in the people like flies to ********. And stay outta the cities there, fun for a bit but thats all.
Winters are good and cold, no in-between slush and mush crap. Summers are nice and warm to almost too hot. They like guns, trucks, and beer, but don't spend as much time in the hot sun as Texans lol. Joking...
Im heading back soon, gotta get out of Ohio.
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ColoDisco
Explorer
I have lived in Colorado since I was a kid in 1980. More specifically Golden. If you look at the cont. US on where I have traveled it is predominantly the western US. I love where I live, weather is generally good. Rocky Mountains are beautiful in CO. 300 days of sunshine per year. If it gets to hot in the summer you can drive up into the mountains and cool off. Off-roading is amazing, dispursed camping. Skiing/snowboarding. Moab is in our backyard. The only thing I miss is the ocean.
Well have been in Colorado since the 70's. Then it was mostly a conservative / libertarian State. The only place to reject the Olympics. State Representative Bob Jackson from Pueblo said in 1972 “We ought to say to the nation and the world, ‘We’re sorry, we are concerned about the environment. We made a mistake. Take the Games elsewhere.’” Pueblo Democrats are pretty conservative. Ask Mayor Bloomberg who recently lost a gun control battle, costing the Democrat Party 3 seats. He referred to Colorado as "Roadless and Rural". The governor from 1975 to 1987 was Democrat (Lamm) but also was the Presidential candidate for the Reform Party (Ross Perot).
Recently we have experienced many CA liberals leaving the nest they fouled for CO. Most settle along the Front Range which is now experiencing some stress. They also try to bring with them their misguided politics. The first wave were evangelicals. The second wave were hippies. Resulting in the following issues. Ridiculous Denver apartment and home prices (they will correct) and high cost for mountain residents whose income is much lower.
Housing costs soar in Denver; legislative effort to reduce cost fails
Colorado mountain residents struggle to pay for health insurance
Residents say medical costs can rival mortgage payments
Overall I still think Colorado has many pluses relative to Where to Live. The outdoor activities are well documented. Just stay away from Denver.
Recently we have experienced many CA liberals leaving the nest they fouled for CO. Most settle along the Front Range which is now experiencing some stress. They also try to bring with them their misguided politics. The first wave were evangelicals. The second wave were hippies. Resulting in the following issues. Ridiculous Denver apartment and home prices (they will correct) and high cost for mountain residents whose income is much lower.
Housing costs soar in Denver; legislative effort to reduce cost fails
Colorado mountain residents struggle to pay for health insurance
Residents say medical costs can rival mortgage payments
Overall I still think Colorado has many pluses relative to Where to Live. The outdoor activities are well documented. Just stay away from Denver.
schaefer21285
Observer
I live in Paraguay. The cost of living is cheap here, the people are nice and you can get barbecued steak everyday! You can build a nice home for about $10,000 and that includes labor! There are tons of offroad trails here (actually they are not trails, they are the roads)!
sourdough
Adventurer
Northern California native. Love California but it's expensive and has to many people. I love N.Eastern Washington. Lived in Spokane for 24 years. hunting/fishing, off-loading and unlimited outdoor activities. Jobs are tough but if you have a living wage, it's a great place.
I've moved around a bit in the past and worked in every state except three. This gave me a decent exposure to where I want to settle down and I chose NM. Everything is a compromise of sorts so I picked what I can put up with. However, I grew up in NV so I'm not a big fan of large bodies water as I like the brown, dry high desert! In the process, I gave up the golden handcuffs but my nine year old daughter gets to go wheeling/camping and appreciates the great outdoors. She gets down right cranky if we don't go camping and I can do all this without going broke in the process. Sometimes I air down the tires at home then go wheeling while she drives my 4x4 in 4Low for hours and hours.
Good luck with your endeavor.
Good luck with your endeavor.
Sorry folks, Colorado is closed to anyone that likes Obummer, Bernie the Socialist and Hillary the criminal. You won't like it here, it can get really cold here and we like to carry guns into grocery stores, museums,while hiking and just about anywhere else possible. This might frighten you. Again, not a good place for you to live. You will prefer Detroit or Chicago.
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Didn't Magpul bail on Colorado because of some ridiculous firearms laws they passed? Not bagging on the citizens but it seems their like for carrying firearms about didn't stop their gub'ment from leaning the other way.
Whereabouts in the Albuquerque area? I'm seriously considering a move out that way and have been looking in the Tijeras area. I've got the wander bug again, and the wife is driving me nuts about the weather in Ohio anyway. She's a city girl from southern Japan and loves heat, and humidity, but hopefully she could deal with NM. We've got two young girls and if we move I want it done by the time they hit 7th grade, so clock is ticking.
LOL. So true.
And once again we had to turn political. And once again, it's the conservatives who are doing all the bashing. Why is that I wonder?
Note I did not state my preferences, but I will say there are 5 guns within 20' of where I'm typing this.
Back on topic, I promised to say a bit more about NorCal and the bay area specifically.
I've been here since '98 when I moved here from Indiana, first living on my boat in SF Bay (Redwood City) then buying a house in a 700-odd person river town called Walnut Grove about 30 miles down-river from Sacramento. There's a lot to be said for the area-
Great weather. OK, it can get a little hot up in the delta where I live (100 is common in the summer) but there's NO HUMIDITY, so our 100 feels about like your 85
Any recreation you could want within a couple hours. hiking-check; wheeling-check; camping-check; skiing (would you like water or snow?)-check; surfing (asphalt or water)-check....the list is endless. Pretty much you name it and we have it.
Very strong economy. We didn't get hurt as bad as the rest of the country during the recession and we're back at or above the pre-bubble days now.
Access to anything. While I wouldn't want to live IN the city, I like being NEAR a major city like San Francisco. San Francisco truly is a world-class city; one of the few in the US worthy of that description.
Multiple major airports for travel. OAK, SFO, SMF, SJC.
Sports (not that I give a rat's ***** about stick and ball sports). Warriors, Kings, Raiders, 49'ers, Giants, Sharks...probably some others I can't think of. And 2 major (plus other smaller) race tracks, Sears Point and Monterey.
Lane Splitting! If you're a biker, you'll LOVE this! We're the only state to make this legal.
The coast. The bay. The delta. The rivers. The lakes. The mountains.
Did I mention the Rubicon is in my back yard?
Of course, there are drawbacks too. Let's start with the astronomical cost of housing. It's one of the most expensive places to live in the country. Housing anywhere within commuting distance (and we'll call that 3 hours) of the bay area is brutal. Compared to Louisville, figure 2-3x to start. More closer to SF. Salaries are generally very high here, but you'll burn that and more trying to buy a home.
Traffic. Rush hour is more or less all day on some highways and the bay means you're often confined by the bridges so you can't easily take an alternate route.
Somebody mentioned the 'liberals' - yeah, it's a liberal area but not as much as you might think looking at it from the outside. If you're an uber-conservative right-wing bible thumping Tea Partier, you may have issues (not that we don't have those too) If you're a normal conservative, you'll be fine even if you're in the minority.
If you're a hard-core gun collector you may have issues with our gun laws. Normal guys don't have any huge problems. I have a variety of guns on-hand and although I occasionally find something annoying I haven't had any show-stoppers. Then again, I'm not a big collector, just a guy who likes to plink a bit.
Would I recommend you move here? Maybe, maybe not. Too many questions to ask first. But there's certainly a lot to say for the area.
Where else would I consider living? Utah or Colorado possibly - I've spent some time in both and like what I've seen, though friends who live in Salt Lake say it an be a little tough to live there as a non-Mormon. Portland, particularly up in the gorge area would be nice. I've traveled up there for work and recreation and like the area a lot. If I were to stay semi-local, I'd like to move up to the Placerville area here, but it's too far out for either me or the wife work-wise.
Where would I NOT want to live? Texas and Florida immediately spring to mind. I could do without either state for the most part, and since I make my living in the boating business to say I don't like Florida you can figure I REALLY don't like Florida! I can't go in for any state who's highest point is an overpass and who's best curves are found on an on-ramp. As for Texas, I can't get past the attitudes. Maybe I could stand the Austin area, but then again 'real' Texans always tell me Austin isn't 'really' Texas. I do however like the food
Otherwise I could pass on most of the mid-west and the east coast. I don't mind visiting, but I couldn't see myself living there.
BTW, SoCal is much worse than the Bay area (just had to add that as a counter to an earlier comment) How do you know you're in SoCal? If people start calling highways THE 101, THE 5, THE 405, etc, you need to head north right away!
Note I did not state my preferences, but I will say there are 5 guns within 20' of where I'm typing this.
Back on topic, I promised to say a bit more about NorCal and the bay area specifically.
I've been here since '98 when I moved here from Indiana, first living on my boat in SF Bay (Redwood City) then buying a house in a 700-odd person river town called Walnut Grove about 30 miles down-river from Sacramento. There's a lot to be said for the area-
Great weather. OK, it can get a little hot up in the delta where I live (100 is common in the summer) but there's NO HUMIDITY, so our 100 feels about like your 85
Any recreation you could want within a couple hours. hiking-check; wheeling-check; camping-check; skiing (would you like water or snow?)-check; surfing (asphalt or water)-check....the list is endless. Pretty much you name it and we have it.
Very strong economy. We didn't get hurt as bad as the rest of the country during the recession and we're back at or above the pre-bubble days now.
Access to anything. While I wouldn't want to live IN the city, I like being NEAR a major city like San Francisco. San Francisco truly is a world-class city; one of the few in the US worthy of that description.
Multiple major airports for travel. OAK, SFO, SMF, SJC.
Sports (not that I give a rat's ***** about stick and ball sports). Warriors, Kings, Raiders, 49'ers, Giants, Sharks...probably some others I can't think of. And 2 major (plus other smaller) race tracks, Sears Point and Monterey.
Lane Splitting! If you're a biker, you'll LOVE this! We're the only state to make this legal.
The coast. The bay. The delta. The rivers. The lakes. The mountains.
Did I mention the Rubicon is in my back yard?
Of course, there are drawbacks too. Let's start with the astronomical cost of housing. It's one of the most expensive places to live in the country. Housing anywhere within commuting distance (and we'll call that 3 hours) of the bay area is brutal. Compared to Louisville, figure 2-3x to start. More closer to SF. Salaries are generally very high here, but you'll burn that and more trying to buy a home.
Traffic. Rush hour is more or less all day on some highways and the bay means you're often confined by the bridges so you can't easily take an alternate route.
Somebody mentioned the 'liberals' - yeah, it's a liberal area but not as much as you might think looking at it from the outside. If you're an uber-conservative right-wing bible thumping Tea Partier, you may have issues (not that we don't have those too) If you're a normal conservative, you'll be fine even if you're in the minority.
If you're a hard-core gun collector you may have issues with our gun laws. Normal guys don't have any huge problems. I have a variety of guns on-hand and although I occasionally find something annoying I haven't had any show-stoppers. Then again, I'm not a big collector, just a guy who likes to plink a bit.
Would I recommend you move here? Maybe, maybe not. Too many questions to ask first. But there's certainly a lot to say for the area.
Where else would I consider living? Utah or Colorado possibly - I've spent some time in both and like what I've seen, though friends who live in Salt Lake say it an be a little tough to live there as a non-Mormon. Portland, particularly up in the gorge area would be nice. I've traveled up there for work and recreation and like the area a lot. If I were to stay semi-local, I'd like to move up to the Placerville area here, but it's too far out for either me or the wife work-wise.
Where would I NOT want to live? Texas and Florida immediately spring to mind. I could do without either state for the most part, and since I make my living in the boating business to say I don't like Florida you can figure I REALLY don't like Florida! I can't go in for any state who's highest point is an overpass and who's best curves are found on an on-ramp. As for Texas, I can't get past the attitudes. Maybe I could stand the Austin area, but then again 'real' Texans always tell me Austin isn't 'really' Texas. I do however like the food
Otherwise I could pass on most of the mid-west and the east coast. I don't mind visiting, but I couldn't see myself living there.BTW, SoCal is much worse than the Bay area (just had to add that as a counter to an earlier comment) How do you know you're in SoCal? If people start calling highways THE 101, THE 5, THE 405, etc, you need to head north right away!