House Hunting: California
Dec 01 2009
We’re in the coastal city of Cayucos, California presently finishing up our holiday stay with family. After turkey, pies, local fish tacos, a visit to the Hearst Castle (photos will be up soon on our Web site), and a polar bear plunge into the Pacific by our boys, we embark from here on a house hunting/site recon mission.
The first place we’ll stop is the Grass Valley/Nevada City area of California (east of Sacramento into the foothills toward Lake Tahoe). This area is outside the urban setting of mid-California, close to Beale Air force Base, close to family, and offers houses with some land at affordable prices for California. Also (and readers might be interested in this) California has a veterans benefit that allows dependents of a veteran with a VA disability rating to attend a California university (either their state college system or the universities) tuition and fee free! With tuition at about $10,000 (and having three kids), that is a pretty good benefit to consider when deciding on a state. We have not found that specific benefit matched in other states.
On the other hand, the cons of California relate to the state’s financial situation and the cost of living. Things are just more expensive here. And, if the state’s deficit keeps spiraling down, day-to-day fees may increase or see services taken away. Regarding the latter, we’re concerned that the state might eventually take away the tuition benefit mentioned above in order to save money.
So then, it is off to look at places to settle. After Grass Valley, we plan to head to Ashland and Bend Oregon. I’ll summarize their pros and cons later.
We're not thinking about college quite yet...
Such a difficult decision!!! Good luck finding a place to call home and remember, nothing is permanent. That helped me when Don and I finally chose Colorado. I thought if after awhile I did not like it here, we could always move again–not the ideal situation, but at least it did not feel like a commitment set in stone. Don still talks about moving–I am pretty settled at this point!
Ashland is very beautiful and the Shakespeare Festival from March to October is fabulous. My aunt and uncle are members and make multiple visits each year. Medford, not so great, but Ashland is quaint.
Bend is a nice place if you like to ski in the winter and golf in the summer. Several hours drive from anywhere really interesting, though. Winters can be a bear if you need to travel south toward Klamath Falls because the road freezes in December and stays a solid sheet of ice until late March. Yuck!