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Everyone is running away from something these days looking for a better place to live. Myself, I cannot bring myself to leave my home area. I have lived in a few places but have always had that connection to my home area. I live in the very north eastern part of California with Klamath Falls the closest city to me in Oregon. I grew up logging and farming and love the rural life. I hauled a lot of logs into Southern Oregon back in the late 80's. Work has me living an hour or so from my home town. I have property in my home town area that has a well and septic. I have no plans to leave my home area as I don't want to be a transplant anywhere. Ideally I want to develop my property further and retire there in a few years but as I age the hardships of living in the rural area are getting real for me.

Where I am currently is a little lower elevation and a little closer to civilization. It's a nice balance but the summer heat is killing us. The trade off would be the summer heat for the winter cold and snow. Everything I own is paid for but trying to maintain two properties, one for summer and one for winter, is a full time job when you have animals like we do. It's also not feasible to let one property sit vacant while we live on the other as no matter where you are some knucklehead is going to mess with your stuff while you are away. I will most likely never have the funds to make the vacant property secure while we are living in the other.

Changing states is just delaying the inevitable....the cancer of the left will always creep into other areas with the mass migration of people. One of my co-workers is very much conservative and will be leaving Ca. once he retires and he wants a conservative place to live. One day he was telling me he might stay put in the same town we both live in. He said it was really almost perfect. He just wished we had a big box hardware store and big grocery store. That is when I hit him....wanting those stores is what brings more people and more people bring liberal ideas with them. I have fought this my entire life....folks move to the country for its beauty then want to change it....they want street lights, sidewalks, stores......all that brings ugliness to a rural setting, the setting you fell in love with. Rural life means leaving all that in the city and you traveling to get services.

My hometown is shrinking, jobs are scarce and businesses are not growing. Retirement folks moving to the area are 50/50 on who makes it two winters. They all see the first winter they live there as an anomaly and the winter won't be that bad again.....then the next winter hits and they realize they don't like living the snow and cold for half the year. They sell out, after building a giant home they can't afford to heat, to the next retiree and the process starts over.

For now I am maintaining both properties without sinking lots of money into the one without a house. I'm playing it by ear and just living my life. We have everything we want right here. My wife and I can get on our horses at the house and ride into a very large park for hours. We can trailer 20 minutes and ride thousands of acres and do it year around. Everything we need is right here.....I'm not going to move to another place and start over as a transplant. Stay and fight!
 
We made that move last year - we're in an extreme suburb of Houston, in a very conservative county (not a single dem on the county ballot last year) and we live just outside of a nice small town that reminds me of what Hillsboro was like when I was growing up.

The weather is amazing, if you can tolerate a few months of oppressive heat. Walking around in shorts and a T-shirt in January, catching largemouth bass year-round with regularity is never going to get old. The people here are friendly - at least when not on the roads (Texans are pretty scary drivers, but not really worse than Seattle or Portlanders)

There are a lot of small towns where the real estate prices are still very low.

IF we were to go anywhere else, southern Utah - the St. George / Hurricane area would top the list. NW Arkansas would be up there too - very beautiful with streams and mountains that would look like they're in the coast range.

I'm just over cold, wet climates so as beautiful as the PNW is, or the northern states are - I wouldn't live in any of them again. Warm & wet I can do. Cold & dry I can do. Cold & wet? Hard pass.

Texas' gun laws aren't as good as Oregons *were* before the last election, but they're still pretty good. We have permitless carry - though there are some restrictions imposed on permitless carry that don't apply if you have a CHL. IF you get a CHL you don't have to mess with NICS checks - your permit IS your check. "No guns" signs DO carry weight of law here - at least if they conform to the specific language in the law. Prior to permitless carry, you could still carry concealed in a vehicle without a permit. That law is still in effect, but kind of made mute by passage of permitless carry now.

Housing prices have ticked up this year, mostly because of other out-of-staters fleeing the liberal states for greener pastures. Still not near as bad as on the left coast price-wise. A brand new construction house just went up for sale in our neighborhood - 3 bedroom, 1/4 acre lot - $275,000. We got out place last summer - just under 3 acres with a 4 bedroom 2400 sq foot house for $212,000 but its an older mfg home vs site-built. The value is in the land moreso than the structure.

Our governor just EO'd that NO employer or "entity" shall compel their employees or customers to take The Jab, and called upon the state legislature to make that a priority during their special session to enact it as law. We passed a law that needs tested still allowing one to make & own suppressors so long as they're made and stay here in Texas - and part of that law (unlike say, Kansas) includes petitioning the state AG to seek relief in the Federal courts on your behalf. So far no one has petitioned the AG, or at least it hasn't made the news but someone will be the first case. You don't actually have to commit a federal crime before you get the AG to seek judgement for you - you petition them to take the case to the feds before you make your suppressors.

Most people around here are over the mask nonsense - there's a couple pockets of craziness - but again, the Governor EO'd a prohibition on subordinate governments from enacting mask mandates.

Life is about as normal as it can be in 2021 here.
Are there any forests within a couple hour's drive?
 
Are there any forests within a couple hour's drive?
Sam Houston National Forest is just north of town, maybe 60-90 minutes depending where at - but target shooting and hunting are heavily regulated / restricted there from what I've been able to garner. Texas has very little public / BLM lands, its almost all private.
 
Sam Houston National Forest is just north of town, maybe 60-90 minutes depending where at - but target shooting and hunting are heavily regulated / restricted there from what I've been able to garner. Texas has very little public / BLM lands, its almost all private.
As long as I can walk and ride quads there I suppose it will do.
 
As long as I can walk and ride quads there I suppose it will do.

There are places to do that. And of course you could befriend someone with acreage as well. Some good friends we made here took their kids riding a couple weekends ago with some other neighbors - they were driving the muddy trails and creeks - one of our neighbors realized his particular side by side had a fatal flaw... the air intake sat too low. He drove thru a puddle that was deeper than he thought and sucked water in. He said it took 4 oil changes to get the water out - thankfully it didn't blow out any of the seals.

There's other large parks for walking / flat land hiking, horse riding, or mountain biking. There's one about 30 minutes from my house - must be a couple hundred acres in size at least. Reminds me of any forested park in central Oregon - there's creeks & bogs that are clear water, and there's a few ponds I walk back and fish. You get the wonderful smell of a conifer forest, but with a mix of hardwoods too. There are miles of walking / riding trails in that park alone.
 
There are places to do that. And of course you could befriend someone with acreage as well. Some good friends we made here took their kids riding a couple weekends ago with some other neighbors - they were driving the muddy trails and creeks - one of our neighbors realized his particular side by side had a fatal flaw... the air intake sat too low. He drove thru a puddle that was deeper than he thought and sucked water in. He said it took 4 oil changes to get the water out - thankfully it didn't blow out any of the seals.

There's other large parks for walking / flat land hiking, horse riding, or mountain biking. There's one about 30 minutes from my house - must be a couple hundred acres in size at least. Reminds me of any forested park in central Oregon - there's creeks & bogs that are clear water, and there's a few ponds I walk back and fish. You get the wonderful smell of a conifer forest, but with a mix of hardwoods too. There are miles of walking / riding trails in that park alone.
Nice. Thanks!
 
We just sold our house in Reno and technically reside in the Flathead Valley of Montana. Trying to decide where to put roots. We are cruising around in our motorhome for the winter, but our family is all in the panhandle of Idaho and Flathead, so that is where I would like to be semi-permanently. I'm fine with wintering in the RV or a small house, or rental in Arizona or Southern Utah, but my husband wants to go the other way, having our primary residence in the south and summering in the north. I don't want to miss that much of my grandkids growing up, and my parents are quickly aging. 2-3 months a year isn't enough time for me. So, it's an ongoing discussion. The good news is we no longer have a house as an anchor. Whenever we decide, we can pull the trigger. We are also hoping housing prices will relax over the next year or two also.
 
Not counting on it. Just hopeful our cash will go farther. It will be interesting to see what happens. For every expert who says prices will continue to rise (usually in the RE industry), another one says the end is coming. I just don't want to have to get into bidding wars. We won't buy a property without inspecting it, and/or make an offer as soon as we see it. We like to spend a couple of days analyzing the investment. If we don't have time to do that, we won't buy.
 
Sam Houston National Forest is just north of town, maybe 60-90 minutes depending where at - but target shooting and hunting are heavily regulated / restricted there from what I've been able to garner. Texas has very little public / BLM lands, its almost all private.


I like Texas.
That one detail is what keeps me from looking any further than enjoying my time there as visitor.
Which i am okay with. Not everywhere is for everyone.
 
I like Texas.
That one detail is what keeps me from looking any further than enjoying my time there as visitor.
Which i am okay with. Not everywhere is for everyone.
Yep. If we didn't come here - we were looking hard at the St. George / Hurricane, Utah area. Good climate, tolerable cost of living, decent size town without being too big, only 90 miles from Las Vegas if you have to have "big city" - and there's a TON of public land around there to recreate on.
 
Yep. If we didn't come here - we were looking hard at the St. George / Hurricane, Utah area. Good climate, tolerable cost of living, decent size town without being too big, only 90 miles from Las Vegas if you have to have "big city" - and there's a TON of public land around there to recreate on.
We are there right now. Hurricane is a pretty nice town. St. George is a zoo. People seemed really rude. We got honked at for pulling out of a parking spot so someone could zip around and get the spot two down from us and also for pulling into the Camping World driveway and stopping (fully in the driveway) so a car could pull out of their space. The person who honked proceeded to pull into the parking lot, turn around and pull out, I guess a complicated u-turn? This was Monday afternoon around 4:00.

Also, it seems like it's always windy. Maybe we have just hit it at that time, but many of the trees are slanted from wind. We recognize this from Reno :) But the town of Hurricane is nice in my opinion. Good size, around 20K, and close to St. George for supplies.
 
We are there right now. Hurricane is a pretty nice town. St. George is a zoo. People seemed really rude. We got honked at for pulling out of a parking spot so someone could zip around and get the spot two down from us and also for pulling into the Camping World driveway and stopping (fully in the driveway) so a car could pull out of their space. The person who honked proceeded to pull into the parking lot, turn around and pull out, I guess a complicated u-turn? This was Monday afternoon around 4:00.

Also, it seems like it's always windy. Maybe we have just hit it at that time, but many of the trees are slanted from wind. We recognize this from Reno :) But the town of Hurricane is nice in my opinion. Good size, around 20K, and close to St. George for supplies.
It seems that "Hurricane" was aptly named :D
 
It seems that "Hurricane" was aptly named :D
It appears so. That is one of the reasons we left Reno. It was relentless. Every . . . .single . . . day. About 2 weeks in October free of wind, we always looked forward to the month, but they had an early snow this year. So glad we left.
 
It appears so. That is one of the reasons we left Reno. It was relentless. Every . . . .single . . . day. About 2 weeks in October free of wind, we always looked forward to the month, but they had an early snow this year. So glad we left.
Wait, you left Reno to avoid snow, or just the wind? And you moved to Montana? :s0108: I've heard of some nasty "Polar Express" storms that come in with wind and dump lots of snow. I used to dream of living in Montana because of the stellar fishing and hunting - but as I grew middle aged, I started hating cold & snowy weather more and more. We get 9 months of beautiful weather here (okay, so there's the occasional hurricane) and 3 months that make you melt (the man who invented Air Conditioning should be sainted) but it beats getting snow for more than a day!
 
Wait, you left Reno to avoid snow, or just the wind? And you moved to Montana? :s0108: I've heard of some nasty "Polar Express" storms that come in with wind and dump lots of snow. I used to dream of living in Montana because of the stellar fishing and hunting - but as I grew middle aged, I started hating cold & snowy weather more and more. We get 9 months of beautiful weather here (okay, so there's the occasional hurricane) and 3 months that make you melt (the man who invented Air Conditioning should be sainted) but it beats getting snow for more than a day!
We left Reno for numerous reasons, but the wind was a constant irritant. Some places are windy like this in Montana. Livingston and Ennis are two that I've noticed. Bozeman is in the middle of those two towns, so I assume it is as well, just haven't spent enough time there to know. Research I've conducted doesn't have it as bad as Livingston. That being said, we've spent a lot of time in the Flathead Valley and Missoula area. Wind doesn't seem to be a daily occurrence there.

Other than the wind, the weather in Reno is really nice. All four seasons and some snow, but it's usually gone in a day or two.
 

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