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Consistently nice weather. Beaches galore. Safety. It ain't too touristy. The pace of life is reportedly way laid back. Pepe Mujica (the former and most celebrated president) is a practitioner of voluntary simplicity. They really have their values in order in ways that I admire -- renewable energy, healthcare, and enjoying life.Quote:
Originally Posted by gimmethesimplelife
And I am sure I could do some fishing too.
My son's best friend's family was deported back to Uruguay. The friend said the country is not doing well and once she was old enough she made her way back to North America, as have her two older siblings. And she did not face the language and cultural barriers most Americans would. The grass is greener indeed.
We downsized to a condo in Pasadena. Grocery store across the street, light rail one block away that will take us along with other lines to the major areas in Los Angeles. I like rural, but that would get boring to me after a while. I love variety and getting around without a car
We moved to SW Florida three years ago. We looked at many places and this looked the best. It is hot in the summer, but we just take vacations then. We thought about doing the snowbird thing, but it looked like to much trouble to me.
I lived in Kirkland/Redmond for 42 years . !4 of them was in Bridle Trails . I had a cute 1900 sq ft house with a small barn on one acre. DH and I moved to Chehalis in 2003 . I just was up there a bit ago to ride with my friend who still lives in Bridle Trails. I nearly needed a GPS to find my way around. I was shocked to see how many of the horse properties have been subdivided. My house and three others next to it was bought last year and was bull dozed to make way for a housing development . I looked up on Zillow and was shocked for what the developer paid for it.... 1 million... I should have stayed thereQuote:
Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
DH and I are at a decision point for change. We have lost two sets of friends here in our neighborhood and soon we will lose two more. Our neighborhood organization is barely functional because no one volunteers anymore, the computer crowd only knows how to type things on a keyboard, Apparently. I am tired of constant race politics in this town. Oddly, crime doesn't bother me much, and it is hard for me to know if crime is up here or if there's just a lot of noise about it. The murder rate going up here doesnt affect me much.
It would be hard for me to give up a city or even a town of size. I won't live in the country, I will not drive every time I want to go someplace.
I don't like warm weather places. I want four seasons (and I was horrified by the traffic in Florida when I visited there. ) We don't need mountains or oceans, and honestly, we are flatlanders. We like agricultural potential. Mountains and oceans are pretty, but we can visit them on vacation.
I wrestled with buying a second house in tiny Hermann, MO and decided against it, it would be just too much work and would be hard on our marriage. Hermann is very German, neat and tidy. no protestors, no riots! Haha. But most importantly it has the civic organizations I require: garden club, historical society, library, festival committees. We could easily throw ourselves into these volunteer efforts and keep busy. But it still isnt big enough to live there full time, not enough cultural things and I would have to drive too far to get to St. Louis for activities of my garden club.
So, we have to decide if we will stay here or move. We had better start cultivating new friendships if we are going to stay. While we know a lot of people, we arent terrifically close to them. And if we stay I will have to buckle down and work for our neighborhood organization in a bigger way. i have been on the Board several times but that was decades ago.
Yeah--a million dollars sure doesn't buy what it used to. :help: Bridle Trails is/was lovely. Really, I'd be hard-pressed to find an area on the Eastside that isn't outstanding. But I'm biased.Quote:
Originally Posted by boss mare
I'm pretty happy where I live now, on one of the larger islands in the San Juan Islands, which are right on the US/Canada border on the West Coast.
~22 years ago, my wife and I intentionally sought out a community to raise our daughter in. We had a complex spreadsheet looking at a variety of parameters. Important to us were a temperate climate; access to oceans, forest, and mountains; a community of involved people; low crime rate; isolation from cities/crowds but with the possibility of accessing them within a few hours' travel; local agriculture and food production; and a dozen other things.
We spent a few years investigating places - top contenders were areas in the Pacific NW, parts of California near Monterey, Montana, Colorado, Hawaii, and overseas.
We arrived here to spend a month investigating carefully the dozens of habitable islands in the county, but the day after we arrived, the ferry from the mainland crashed into the ferry dock, disabling it for a month or more, so we were sort of stuck. Watching how the community reacted to this disaster - the near-elimination of their lifeline to the mainland - quite impressed us. We bought a house here during this time, with the intent of moving here with a year or so afterwards. In reality, we moved back in just 2 months later.
We haven't regretted the decision. There are some significant problems here, as there are in any community, and the community has changed over the ~20 years we have been here - and not always for the better.
Recently we have been casting our eyes towards the Nordic nations, or just across the border to the Gulf Islands in Canada or Victoria/Vancouver BC, as some of our parameters have changed. Further-off contenders are the Channel Islands, but I have to do more on-the-ground investigation there. I would love to live in Iceland or Norway, or Canada.
As many of you know, the Green Mountain State is calling my name! Specifically, I love Burlington. It's so walkable, vibrant, lots of community, the Intervale (a huge community farming network--it was profiled in The Omnivore's Dilemma), sunsets on Lake Champlain, great restaurants, airport just 15 minutes from the center of town with sleepy TSA agents who are just WAITING for someone to come through to give them something to do, lots of things to do outside like hiking, biking on the city bike path, and thanks to Bernie, it has a beautiful city waterfront park.
Plus three of my kids live there. Who could ask for anything more?
If not Burlington, Southern Vermont is also beautiful.
I think one would certainly have had to travel more then I have, to make any kind of informed decision. I remember saying something to Sparta about the traveling bug, as we really didn't when I was a kid. (one trip to Iowa, gave my allergies and asthma such fits, I changed the trip)
Other then jaunts into KS and AR, I haven't even been to most of this state, let alone others.
A friend asked me the other day, how long have I lived, where I live. I told him and his jaw dropped, as it was my age. I've been to other area's of the metro, and know even in the good area's, bad things happen and a lot of times people have no idea what is going on around them. So I may very well, just end up back here, if I did travel, out of comfort.