Retiring to the PNW?

[LakeCleElum]

Originally Posted by scottmandue

What is the "Tri Cities area"? Pardon my ignorance.

South central Washington - Kennewick, Richland, and Pasco......Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the big employer there.....

Scott - Looking at your list:....It shrinks dramatically when you get to 150-200 days of sun and 30-50K population........

Take a week off in Mid-December, take your top 5 picks and spend a day in each. That's what I did to narrow my choices. Why mid-Dec? Shortest days, gloomy days, traffic gridlock with Christmas shoppers...Can rain for 30 days straight.....Reality check 4U....

[john70t]

Here is a small pic of Portland from the air (screenshot from a video game based on sat photos). You can probably get the same viewpoint from google earth or others.
I'll post any requests.
What I like about "getting above it all' is the ability to see what is connected and where the roads run. The paper maps just don't show this. The PNW is packed full of mountains and hidden valleys. What may seem like a normal city on the map can actually be smack dab in the middle of nowhere with a difficult trek to anywhere.
But maybe that's a good thing for some. Strategic thinking towards a specific lifestyle.

[arcsine]

Bellingham can offer you this in terms of:

Hiking: Many miles of urban and semi-urban trails within minutes of town. Drive east towards the mountains and this becomes literally endless trails in the Cascades.

Biking: Either road or mt biking is epic. For skinny tires, Chuckanut Drive, the roads in the county and the many bike paths in town allow for whatever you like. As long as you don't mind hills. We have hills. Lots. They are unavoidable. The mountain biking is world class with Galbraith Mt five minutes from downtown. Then there are trails along Chuckanut. And the east side of Lake Whatcom. And the North Shore trails in Vancouver an hour north. Whistler is 3 hours north.

Plays and Concerts: There is a pretty stable music/arts scene that tends towards the acoustic/jazz/folk side of things. Some of the college bars will have harder music if you want. The Mt Baker Theater books nationally touring bands/plays/entertainment. Plenty of other things available too. Just look through this to see what is happening this month.

Food: This is what I find to bee most disappointing in B'ham. There is good food to be found in restaurants but the top-notch ones are limited in number. Plenty of perfectly acceptable middle-of-the-road places but then again, Seattle and Vancouver are and hour away and you can get your foodie fix there. What B'ham does have is a serious support of locally sourced food and organic products. And while you did not mention it, there are 9 microbreweries in town and at least two distilleries and a couple of wineries. Tying this together, our band is playing at the biggest brewery in town this Friday. Rock/Blues music outside with award winning beer appeals to a lot of people here it seems.

[zippy_gg]

Like Scott, my wife and I are planning our departure from the expensive SOCAL and are considering PNW as a strong possibility.
The big difference however is that we would be splitting our time between Mexico, in the Winter, and PNW during the rest of the year.
Researching taxation on income, real estate, and sales tax.
We have been reading through this thread with great interest, and also considering Utah, Colorado, etc...
Wherever we end up in the US must have great motorcycling and 911 driving roads (sorry Florida! LOL).
Like many we want to have a hospital withing reasonable distance...
We have 2-5 years to plan for this and hopefully do it right. Renting a RV and go places for a month or so will help us with our decision.
By the same token we will rent a house in Puerto Penasco, MX so we can get a taste of what it is really like to live there day in and day out.
Any advice appreciated.

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by LakeCleElum

Scott - Looking at your list:....It shrinks dramatically when you get to 150-200 days of sun and 30-50K population........

Seeing as Everett is moving to the top of the list (at 100K population) I guess I have to be somewhat flexible. The airport/medical is pushing us to a slightly larger city.

But you are correct we need to fly up and vacation in the area to check some of these areas out.

[Ayles]

As someone who grew up in the Everett area its probably at the bottom of the list of places I would willingly retire to. You can take a 15 min ferry ride out of Mukilteo and be on Whidbey Island. I would def consider retiring there.

[jhynesrockmtn]

Spokane in a few pics :-)


Fun with Porsches - Great driving/riding roads and destinations - Schweitzer Mt.



It's easy to escape the city - Multi day ride with my son through Glacier NP



Racing and Track Days - Local road course, my 914 racing in June



There is water - My wife and pups at Lake Coeur D' Alene



Mountain biking - Local nature preserve on the mountain bike last fall



Road cycling - Climb to the top of Mt. Spokane this summer




Downtown Spokane - Some views are quite beautiful



Housing is cheap - my house including the shop the city signed off on in a day





There are great medical facilities including WSU's nursing program and a medical school coming.

[ledhedsymbols]

Might I recommend Anacortes, Whidby Island, Bellingham, or Skagit Valley which is where I live.

If you can handle the wet... The weather in Skagit County in my opinion is marginally better than Snohomish County (Everett) or Whatcom County (Bellingham.) Large high quality hospitals in Everett and Bellingham. The hospital in Mount Vernon is OK, but the others are less than an hour away each.

[ledhedsymbols]

Spokane is also a nice town... Even if we call it Spokompton.

[SpyderMike]

Why so far north in the PNW? Watch the weather...lows spin down from AK in counterclockwise regular cycles. They hit Seattle, Portland, Salem, Eugene, etc. The Cascades get a dump of weather too. Bottom of the fronts are usually So OR. Rain there is about 17inches annual. Much different weather than usual in the north. I have been in PNW many years...Salem, Seattle, Portland, Bend even Walla Walla. SO Oregon is great.

[Craig T]

Go to Zillow.com and look at housing prices in Spokane. CHEAP! $250K will buy you a trendy loft in the heart of downtown. Go outside town a little and you can have a 1/2 acre with a 3,000 sq ft house on one of the lakes.

The only draw back to me is 45" of snow between Nov and March.

[tevake]

45" of snow 😨.
And just when Jerry's pics were so compelling.
Looks like a fun life you've got going there Jerry.

Cheers Richard

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by SpyderMike

Why so far north in the PNW? Watch the weather...lows spin down from AK in counterclockwise regular cycles. They hit Seattle, Portland, Salem, Eugene, etc. The Cascades get a dump of weather too. Bottom of the fronts are usually So OR. Rain there is about 17inches annual. Much different weather than usual in the north. I have been in PNW many years...Salem, Seattle, Portland, Bend even Walla Walla. SO Oregon is great.

Scanned the tread and seems like a left out a huge factor...
We will be living off my CalPERS pension (we still plan on getting part time jobs).
WA does not tax pensions.
Other states without pension tax:
Alabama = too humid
Alaska = too cold
Florida = too humid
Mississippi = too humid
Nevada = too dry/hot
New Hampshire = too cold
Pennsylvania = too cold
South Dakota = too cold
Tennessee = too humid
Texas = too hot/humid
Washington
Wyoming = too cold

Spokane looks GREAT (hope you don't mind but I copied your pics to email to my wife.
When I suggested Spokane she quipped "it is out in the middle of nowhere" but I suspect she has never visited the town.

Whidby Island looks fantastic... if we really want to get away from it all... not much there for medical or airport.

[creaturecat]

choosing to be a long distance from the ocean?
that would be a mistake imho.
the coastal lifestyle cannot be beat.
we just finished up with with two years of living on the other side of the coastal range. couldn't move back fast enough.
my vote goes to the Bellingham area. bit of a laid back vibe, reasonable housing costs, close proximity to Vancouver and Seattle.

[Craig T]

Don't underestimate the impact of grey skys and long periods of gloomy weather on a SoCal boy. It can be VERY depressing. I've done a lot of business in Seattle and Portland. I like the PNW...but could never live there. I spent two years in the UK and CRAVED the sun and warm weather. It was horrible. If it wasn't for cheap trips to Spain, I would have dropped out of school and come back to Los Angeles.

Your wife might go back just fine...But YOU may not adjust. As others have recommended, I would try to focus east of the Cascades. At least look somewhere with a quick drive to a sunny place...e.g. Eureka or Arcata's 30 minutes to sunny Willowcreek.

[arcsine]

I grew up in California so I know the whole 'sunny and warm' thing.

While there are periods that the gray can become oppressive, all I have to do is see green things growing and a think about our stable water supply. After that I am OK.

[Corvus Corvax]

Originally Posted by arcsine

I grew up in California so I know the whole 'sunny and warm' thing.

While there are periods that the gray can become oppressive, all I have to do is see green things growing and a think about our stable water supply. After that I am OK.

That's really it for me, too. I lived on the east side of the mountains for a while, and I liked the snow, and the proximity to great skiing. But the lack of green really got to me. Sure, in the spring and fall you see some green, but it's not the same as on the wet side. I look up at gray skies and know why I see green all around. So it's a little dark Nov-Feb. Yup, but its green. And the summer totally makes up for it.

[scottmandue]

Wife vetoed Spokane :
"I really do not want to live on the Eastern side of Washington... I might as well be in the Midwest. Besides, their winters are bad..."

[jhynesrockmtn]

Winters bad in Eastern WA? Never! :-)

I personally like the snow and winter sports, etc. but I get some folks don't. We try and escape to the sun in AZ for a week or two and once retired will probably winter in AZ for 2-3 months.

911 was buried for a while some work was being done on the house. We run studless snow tires on all vehicles from November through March.



Sometimes the snow is pretty



Sometimes the wind and snow are not so fun, this was damage from a November wind event that knocked my power out for a week

[SpyderMike]

So how much is the tax in Oregon on your CalPers? There is no sales tax in Oregon...that has to count for something.

I live half in the OC and half in So Oregon and we get 200 days of sunshine annually. The weather here is better than So Cal in my opinion. We got a big ass airport at Medford that we fly out of and plenty of medical facilities.

My wife and I like to motorcycle (street and dirt), hang out by the river, do wine tasting and craft beer tasting...and eat well.

Your wife has Ashland history, no?