Posted on 11/16/2021 8:13:24 AM PST by Kaslin
Fatigued from the punishing and arbitrary restrictions, we saw South Dakota like a man dying of thirst sees a glass of water.
I shut the car door and sighed. “I don’t want to go back,” I said, stuffing my mask in the cupholder. We were about to get back on the interstate as we wound our way through Montana toward Washington state, our home.
It wasn’t a decision, just how I felt. But saying it out loud set us on an unstoppable course. Just a few months later, we were traveling back across the I-90 to the Black Hills of South Dakota—and this time, we wouldn’t have to go back.
My angst about the situation in Washington had been growing for some time. By late April 2020, I was frustrated I still couldn’t go to church. By May, I was indignant enough to rip the caution tape off the playground. By summer we were less “closed” but the new, ever-changing rules somehow made even less sense.
My in-laws had to restrict their café’s dining space to adhere to pseudo-scientific diktats from unaccountable public health officials. I was ordered to cover my face any time I was indoors in public, even when I had a preschooler and a baby with me and wasn’t near other people. My family’s whole life hung on arbitrary and capricious edicts from a power-hungry governor who constantly gaslighted about a virus that wasn’t deadly to the overwhelming majority of people and wasn’t overwhelming hospitals.
By July we decided it was time to start looking at moving to another state. Washington was being strangled not just from COVID policies, but leftist ideology more broadly. Leftist control was affecting in everything from taxes to the explosion of homelessness and rampant drug addiction, to riots and defunding the police, to indoctrination in the public schools.
By contrast, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem had advertised her hands-off COVID policy and the natural beauty and business- and family-friendly climate of her state while Lockdown America was hurting in both economy and morale.
Rapid City, settled at the foot of the Black Hills in western South Dakota, looked appealing on paper: a smallish city with an array of shopping and cuisine, not too much traffic, and a police department that was fully funded. The landscape was gorgeous, and the unpredictable weather and above-average number of sunny days sounded like a refreshing change from the Northwest’s constant cloud cover. A road trip to the Black Hills to look around couldn’t hurt, could it?
The area surpassed our expectations. We knew it might just be lockdown fatigue making the region look rosier than it really was, but at this point, almost any red state was better than where we were. We had the savings and my husband had the portable work-from-home office job. We had nothing to lose by moving here except being close to family.
We wanted our kids’ grandparents, aunts, and uncles to continue to be a big part of our lives, though, so moving became a joint decision. My husband’s parents considered our proposition with surprisingly little pushback for a couple who’d built and run a local restaurant for five years. Two of their locations had been starved out by COVID restrictions, but they’d have to give the whole thing up to move (barring finding the perfect location in the Black Hills, which they didn’t).
After their weeklong visit to the Rushmore state, they were just as impressed as we were with Rapid City. It was settled. We were all leaving Washington.
We wasted no time in selling our houses and securing housing in our new home state. By late autumn, all 12 of us had made the final 14-hour drive to land permanently in the Black Hills. Our families were finally free of blue state COVID tyranny, although my in-laws’ once-thriving business continued to suffer for several months before being sold.
My husband’s grandparents had already made plans to join us later in 2021, but we had no idea that, over the next year, five other households on both sides of the family would decide they wanted in on the easy-going, wild-weathered, picturesque area of the free state of South Dakota, too (although for some, it was even more important to be near the rest of their family). Four of those five households would come from Washington.
We shouldn’t have been surprised. Everyone from realtors to furniture salesman to church leaders all said the same thing: people from the West Coast and other lockdown states like Michigan and Minnesota were pouring into the area. Those of us who were fatigued from the punishing and arbitrary restrictions saw South Dakota like a man dying of thirst sees a glass of water.
That’s exactly how it felt when we dropped our suitcases on the stoop of our new house: like we’d found an oasis in a desert of hysteria and insanity. It didn’t matter that the house wasn’t even finished yet, and we had to stay in a hotel for a week.
It didn’t matter that we were exhausted from the biggest move of our lives, or that I had left behind the only state I’d ever grown up in. We made it. We were free from the vast majority of public and private restrictions that made life in Washington intolerable and were now in a community that warmly welcomed “blue state refugees” like us who shared their values.
One of the most refreshing changes was the mood of people in the community. The Washingtonians we interacted with in daily life were usually either keyed up, depressed, or antisocial. The second week in South Dakota, my husband Cody went to pick up a pizza and came back overjoyed that someone in line had asked him about the design on his T-shirt. That’s how starved of friendly human contact we’d been.
One year later, two dozen relatives, from siblings to cousins to great-aunts, from both sides of the family have joined us in the area, and more are still planning to come. Some took more convincing (not from us, really, as the area sells itself) and more time than others to get here, but none of us regret leaving Gov. Jay Inslee’s medical dictatorship.
An amicable community and a network of nearby family is certainly not a blessing everybody gets. I can’t tell you everything will turn up roses if you decide to move, and I can’t tell you dear family members will want to go with you. Moving is expensive and monumentally difficult for most people, but freedom is precious, as is living in a culture that isn’t constantly at odds with your values.
The lockdowns may be “over,” but COVID tyranny like vaccine passports and other insane leftist policies are not. If you feel smothered and helpless in Blue America, plan a trip to a free state and give relocation some serious thought. At the very least, you’ll get a reprieve.
What a refreshing read!
Don’t worry, demonrats will wreck it soon enough
Georgi, get beck to us after they Winter one or two times in SD.
Moved and brought their vile voting habits with them?
‘eff those people.
Well, just don’t screw it up. You must let go of all Washingtonistic beliefs. Sounds like you are off to a good start. Had we foreseen current events we may have chosen a different retirement location.
Refreshing read!
During the craziness last summer, it suddenly jumped from $150K to $180K. Just people wanting to get out of the craziness of our nearest big city, Pittsburgh, about an hour to the northwest. We even had people calling and writing with cash offers.
Since China's puppet emperor took office, it has risen to a modest $190K in the past year or so. After the county delivered a stinging rebuke to the Democrat party in the election earlier in the month (ever D swept out of office, including a couple of decent ones for whom I actually voted), Zillow now has us at $220K.
That's how crazy things are getting, people. It doesn't hurt that we have at least four Pennsylvania state troopers living in our neighborhood and parking their cruisers in the driveway.
I could have written this about California to Idaho.
Had to laugh at this: “By May, I was indignant enough to rip the caution tape off the playground”
By May 2020, I was ripping all the damned caution tape off of park benches in the parks on the San Francisco peninsula. I couldn’t think of anything more preposterous than keeping everybody off of a park bench. For what? That two people might be three feet apart for a few minutes? I’m sure if you could analyze every single COVID transmission in the world, you’d find ZERO cases of two people sitting outdoors on a park bench transmitting COVID.
The yellow caution tape on park benches told me everything I needed to know about the insanity of the whole situation.
Even worse, they shut down all the parks on the Peninsula and put traffic cones on all the nearby streets to prevent people from even parking nearby and walking into a park.
Actually, it was quite nice for a few months because I continued to get into the parks and had them all to myself. Especially after I ripped down the damned yellow caution tape.
You got it. Just follow the dots. EX - The move from LA county to Orange county these leftists now equal in population. They ruin everything they touch.
The Democrats will make sure every formerly decent middle class neighborhood will have ugly high rises built for free housing for illegal aliens and “refugees.” They need millions of new gimmiedat voters.
I just vacationed in the state in August. Nice scenery. The eastern half is agriculture and west half is ranching and has the mountains. I visited Custer, Rapid City and Chamberlain. Turns out commentator Tomi Lahren is from Rapid City. I enjoyed Custer State Park and The Badlands.
Here is more on the state:
https://youtu.be/LCOGW5dvuuc
Welcome to my home state, South Dakota. My family came there to homestead when it was still a territory and my father was born in a sod house on the wind swept prairie. I grew up in a small town that still had Saturday night band concerts every summer on a small town square and a parade every Memorial Day. Sure the summers are hot and the winters cold, but the people are welcoming and still believe in the American dream.
Sadly due to job and family I now live in the People’s Republic of Minnesota a socialist utopia with riots, car jackings, defunded police and COVID madness. However, South Dakota will always be my home and example of how great this country used to be.
Good. Now don’t F things up. The first tie you think, “back in Washington they did this cool thing...”. Stifle yourself.
Does anyone here know what the property real estate taxes are like?
Enjoy the blizzards, tornadoes and droughts
Enjoy flying to Denver or Chicago if you get really sick
bookmark
Enjoy Philadelphia and it’s utterly retarded violence and lack of culture. Enjoy feces on the streets in San Fran. Enjoy bums everywhere in Seattle. Enjoy communist riots in Portland. Enjoy the house prices in Denver. Enjoy the black murder epidemic in Chicago.
We enjoyed walking through the country club adjacent to our neighborhood during the lockdown. I averaged 20,500 steps per day May 2020.
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