It is beautiful in the summer. It gets too cold for me in the winter.
A salesguy where I work had to make a lot of trips recently to the Fruitland area.
He surprised me when he said he saw a lot of meth-heads (”tweakers”) hanging around there.
So I guess the Moral of The Story is ... stay away from Fruitland. Or at least the areas where he was.
I spent 6 glorious years in the Panhandle about a half hour from St. Maries, ID. That was in the early and mid ‘70’s, though. Couer D’Alene to Sandpoint would be an area that might support your employment needs.
Well if your looking out West, South Dakota has the natural gas boom right now and along with Wyoming, they have no State income taxes.
There's just the little matter of dealing with insanely cold winters.
Well, that pretty much opens the door to anywhere but Death Valley -- Lol!
Seriously, Idaho is a beautiful state (especially the northern panhandle) but the state income tax rate in Idaho is more than double that of Arizona's to the average earner.
Something to consider.
Move to Fort Worth, Texas.
Jobs here are available. We get snow on Christmas eve year before last.
No state income tax!
Mountain Home. Not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.
The “American Redoubt” includes Idaho.
http://www.survivalblog.com/redoubt.html
Pastor Chuck Baldwin recently moved to Montana from Florida.
Visit first. I considered ID when I fled CA about 8 years ago. It didn’t fit for us. We are pretty much rural/suburban people. I like to live by farms, but be able to drive into a real city within 30-45 minutes. I like to be at the supermarket and some other shopping within 10 minutes.
I’m going to mostly tell you the downsides, but really Idaho is a great fit for a lot of people. Every state will have its + and -, and everybody needs to find what fits. These are pretty much all the reasons why, even though we thought ID would be perfect, we didn’t move there.
Boise is isolated from other large cities. There are not a lot of great job options, even in the best of economic times. It’s just not big enough, so unless you work something with jobs everywhere (retail, restaurants), you are stuck. I don’t know how old you are or how many careers you’ve had yet, but remember that what you are doing right now is not necessarily what you’ll be doing next year. A layoff means you have a good chance of needing to move cross-country again. You also have to drive a really long time to get to museums and things that a larger city could offer. The upside is that Boise is really beautiful and has kind of a “small town” feel for a city.
If you want to move to a small town, be sure you don’t choose one that is mostly Mormon, unless you are also Mormon. You’ll be excluded, and Mormons will generally not patronize a non-Mormon business when there is an alternative Mormon-run business.
Rural areas can be a big shock for “city folk” who think “country folk” are all nice and “quaint.” You can run into some really bad people in the country. There is entrenched poverty, and there are meth issues.
Bluntly, the ID suburban areas look “poor” compared to other areas of the country. I drove through the surrounding areas to Boise, and one of the other “large” cities in ID, and there just wasn’t much to offer us.
Too many Californians. (lol)
The weather is really cold in the winter, but seriously, get a jacket and learn to layer. With modern AC/Heating, modern cars, and good snow removal, winter weather is no big deal (for me).
I have lived in Boise for 5 years and love it here. We have two young kids and this is a very family friendly area. Tons of parks and outdoor activities. The weather is actually great. Our downtown area is fun. I couldn’t recommend Idaho more. I’m not sure about the job situation for you though.
Buttes. Columbia River. It's all amzing.
However, it's 25 years hence. I've come to know some people who live there, part time. It's apparently become a bedroom community to west coasters, complete with all sorts of idiotic forms of "entertainment," the sorts of which appeal to vaporous space taker-uppers. However, largely conservative, even in those ultra-plastic wilderness-burbs. Or as conservative as such a thing can be.
Like any other place, I guess -- if you can deal with the transplants -- or better yet, avoid them completely -- you might actually be able to appreciate its historic and unique character.
“It is beautiful in the summer. It gets too cold for me in the winter.”
The winters are very close to NY, and the summers are hotter than NY but dryer.
In southern Idaho you’ll still live in the desert... Though it doesn’t get much over 110 in the summer, it’s still enough to kill you.
I have lived in Boise for 25 years, and I never buy snow tires in the winter. Oh, and they also rarely plow the snow here on the side streets, but they use de-icer at the intersections.
ping
I want to live in my own private Idaho.
Try southern Oregon - Roseburg or Klamath Falls area. The area is a bit depressed right now, but that means you can get pretty good buys on houses. If you’re able to start your own business you should do okay. I’m in the Willamette Valley, & it rains lots, but no snow (or only rarely). You might get some snow in the more easterly areas, but it is beautiful. And you’re not too far from mountains or ocean. S. OR is also a very much more conservative area.
Spokane County (Washington) and Kootenai County (Idaho) are now one very large Metropolitan Statistic Area (MSA). We have lived in Coeur d’Alene (ID) and Liberty Lake (WA). The winters are unpredictable, some years mild, some moderate and one in ten somewhat harsh.
Jobs are cyclical. The economy is skewed towards government, healthcare and services with some very light manufacturing and some legacy extraction (mining and timber) jobs. Cost of living way less than the urban southwest, cheap housing, water, power and very high quality of life.
Few minorities, not a lot of “culture” but some, and Seattle is a 45 minute flight.
Religion - heavily Catholic, moderate LDS (Mormon) and Seventh Day Adventist as well as a fair smattering of Lutheran and other old school protestant chapels. A lot of newer “New Life” type chapels that confuse me to no end.
Have a job in hand or a lot of money in the bank. Hiring is by word of mouth more so than help wanted adds.
Just drove across ID a couple weeks ago. It is pretty dry and rocky down south but beautiful and Conservative. Speed limit is 75 and has a few no ethanol stations. Nice state.
Pray for America
Chubbuck in the Pocatello area. Ammon in Idaho Falls. More new construction happening in the IF area. The INL site often has work as well.
I live in SoCal but do business in Boise several times a year as well as Pocatello. It’s definitely cold up there, but beautiful. More Mormons than I had thought, but makes sense when you consider the territory.
If I could convince my wife to do it, I would definitely buy a vacation home there and perhaps move there, but she’s a So. Cal girl and doesn’t want the cold.