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I did want to point out that ALL of Murphy has no alleys or rear entry homes. There are some homes with a J swing front entry but those have been eliminated in the new developments. So it's all side entry with many of the 3 car homes having a single car "front entry" but further back on the lot behind the 2 car entry.
Personally I like that about Murphy. No alley issues, and it creates a larger swath between you and the neighbor on that side of the house.
The trees sticking out of the water serve as habitat for fish. When the lake is full, the immersed trunks grow and attract food for smaller fish. Those fish, in turn, become food for larger fish.
Ah as someone who fishes a lot, I should have known that.
I did want to point out that ALL of Murphy has no alleys or rear entry homes. There are some homes with a J swing front entry but those have been eliminated in the new developments. So it's all side entry with many of the 3 car homes having a single car "front entry" but further back on the lot behind the 2 car entry.
Personally I like that about Murphy. No alley issues, and it creates a larger swath between you and the neighbor on that side of the house.
Yes not having alleys in Murphy is one of the things that is really attracting me to the area. When driving through Murphy, I also noticed a lot of houses with basketball courts and other various signs of children in the area.
But one other observation that struck me as kind of odd driving through Murphy, Plano, and Allen was that we didn't see any kids outside playing when we know that there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood. We actually only saw one kid riding his bike down the street in Murphy but that was it. Even the community pools seemed empty.
Can any locals tell me if t his is typical for kids to not play outside often? The weather was pretty mild at around mid around 90 degrees this past week that I was there. Well I was told that 90 was considered as "mild" for Dallas in August.
Can any locals tell me if t his is typical for kids to not play outside often? The weather was pretty mild at around mid around 90 degrees this past week that I was there. Well I was told that 90 was considered as "mild" for Dallas in August.
Yes, 90 degree days are quite mild for summers in the DFW. In fact, this summer has been very mild compared to previous summers. I know that lots of families escape the heat, and take the kids on summer vacations in August. Also, during the summer, I noticed that most people hit the parks in the area after 5-6pm, so there's lots of kids outside around then.
I've been told that homes here are large and yards are small (besides builder profit margins) is because you'll end up spending more time indoors than you would outdoors due to the heat/dew points of this area.
I always laugh when people complain about traffic in Dallas , yest it can be bad in some area but only in short time during the day. Nothing to compare to cities like Chicago, LA, Seattle , San Fransisco, Boston , the Washington DC area and many other larger cities where traffic is dense at all hours.
Yes not having alleys in Murphy is one of the things that is really attracting me to the area. When driving through Murphy, I also noticed a lot of houses with basketball courts and other various signs of children in the area.
But one other observation that struck me as kind of odd driving through Murphy, Plano, and Allen was that we didn't see any kids outside playing when we know that there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood. We actually only saw one kid riding his bike down the street in Murphy but that was it. Even the community pools seemed empty.
Can any locals tell me if t his is typical for kids to not play outside often? The weather was pretty mild at around mid around 90 degrees this past week that I was there. Well I was told that 90 was considered as "mild" for Dallas in August.
It's August. You won't find a ton of kids out right now. If so, they may be in backyard pools. But by and large Murphy has a ton of kids out running around most of the year. Actually in a couple of weeks, I'd suggest you swing by the parks after school because they will have a lot of kids, families out. One of my best young friends and her circle would ride their scooters to the fishing pier at Liberty Park and do homework there after school when it was nice.
I've posted a few threads with questions on this site about moving from So Cal to the Dallas area sometimes next year. I have also read numerous threads about relocating and what it is like to live in the Dallas burbs particularly Plano, Allen, Frisco, etc.
I know there are tons of people who are also looking to relocate to this area so I wanted to post some observations that I have made after making my first visit to the area with my wife this past week to check the area out. I also have some follow up questions for some of the locals as well.
Please note that I only spent 4 days in the area and mostly confined to the northern burbs so my observations might be skewed and not meant to reflect on the whole DFW area. And also I live in So Cal so I can only compare things from the point of view of someone coming from So Cal.
First Impression
1. The traffic situation in saw during my trip was nothing like what I have read on this site. I was under the impression that traffic was pretty bad in the Dallas area given the growth the area has had. Well coming from someone who lived in So Cal his whole life, most of my commute felt like a sunday afternoon drive as there was hardly any traffic. I picked up my rental car on Tuesday at DFW at around 1pm and was able to get to Plano area near Preston and Old Shepard road in no time. There was hardly any traffic at all and at times I felt like there was only a few other cars on the road with me. I realize that this was only around 1:30 pm on a week day but coming from So Cal, the only time I see the freeway this empty is around 3am in the morning. After checking in the hotel, we drove up the DNT to Frisco for some lunch then back to the hotel. Around 4pm we decided to check out some area further East so hopped on the Bush Turnpike to Richardson then Murphy then out to Rawlet. Again hardly any traffic at all and this was what should have been rush hour traffic time. Then around 6pm we left Rawlet to head to Allen via Bush Turnpike to the 75 North. This was the first instance that I saw any semblance of rush hour traffic and it was only the interchange of Bush to 75 North. A few miles north of this interchange, traffic was moving a pretty good pace of 50 mph plus. This was pretty much my experience all week concerning the traffic as I spent most of the time on the DNT and Bush. I did see the DNT southbound clog up a bit on Thursday coming back from Frisco to Plano around 5pm but overall, traffic wasn't even an issue. I guess most of the bad stuff I read about concerning the traffic has to do with further closer to downtown Dallas. My observation is that Dallas might have traffic issue but the window of traffic is very small as compared to So Cal where we traffic start to clog up from 2:30 pm to 7:30 pm on week days.
Question for the locals in the area....does anyone know what the typical weekly charge of using these toll road were? We were in the rental and I purchased the unlimited toll roll option so I had no idea what sort of charges I ran up as were on both the Bush and DNT a lot.
2. Even though Dallas doesn't have the mountains or beachs of So Cal, it totally blow away So Cal by how clean it is. Wow my wife and I couldn't believe how clean this metroplex is. Driving from DFW and all through the Bush and DNT, we didn't see any trash on the side of the freeway. We didn't even see any graffiti at all or walls that had been painted over to cover up graffiti. I know this sounds odd to someone who might have grown up in the area but coming from someone who have driven all over CA and alot of other major metroplex, this is not the case with the Dallas area. When I got home and driving from LAX to my house in Orange County, I made it purpose to look at the side of the freeways and walls and sure enough, trash littered side of the freeways and a lot of ugly spray painting. Keep in mind that a portion of my drive home is through some nice part of Orange County and it was still plague with this problem.
3. I'm Asian and my wife is Hispanic. My wife made a comment that she didn't think anyone even gave us a double take when seeing us out together. I don't tend to notice this sort of stuff but my wife is more sensitive when someone is giving us double take as a mix ethnic couple. Living in CA where things tend to be more liberal, I guess occasionally people still gives us double take look. Even though we were only in the area for a few days, it was good to confirm that us being a mix ethnic couple is no big deal to the people living in the area.
4. Most of the burbs look a whole lot alike. Visually there wasn't much difference between Frisco, Allen, Murphy and Plano. Everything from the houses, streets and such were very similar. The back alley and lack of front garages was a bit odd from someone who is used to front garages. I guess this is the norm in Dallas burbs to have back alleys. The street in the neighborhood were a lot more narrow then what we are used to in CA. It seems these streets are about 3 car lengths where it would be an issue for two cars to pass each other if there are other cars parked on the street. This is definitely something I would have to adjust to as well as the narrow alleys to get into your drive ways. I did see a couple of neighborhoods in Murphy and one in Plano that did have the front entry garages but it appears that this is not the norm for the area.
5. Didn't see any idiot drivers This could be the fact that I was mostly in the "better" part of town in the whole Dallas area but I didn't see any drivers doing anything that would make me shake my head as what I see here in CA. I don't think I can go 2 days in CA without seeing anyone trying to make a yellow light but end up crossing the intersection when it's totally red or someone cutting in front of another car. For the most part on this trip, people were very courteous when letting you change lanes and so on. Didn't see anyone trying to beat a late yellow light. Heck the only person on the whole trip that did this was me on Thursday night when I was lost in Dallas looking for a restaurant.
6. Sad to see the state of the local lakes My wife and I are water people and was hoping to enjoy the lakes in place of the beach life we're giving up in CA. When we drive to Rockwall, it was sad to see the state of lake out there as it was very low. I couldn't understand why there was trees sticking out of the lake as you think it would have been removed when the lake was created. Didn't see Lake Lewisville but have heard this was a party lake and not much of a place to take two young children. This definitely a big time bummer as we were told the nearest lake to enjoy the way we are used to is Lake Texoma which is bit of a drive away.
Conclusion
Overall the trip was very productive and I had a great time. We have an agent who showed us around and a blast to work with. I saw first hand why a lot of families are flocking to the area to raise their kids. Coming from CA, my wife and I understand that we're leaving a lot of things behind and going to miss such things that Dallas won't and will never provide such as the beach and weather. But after this trip, we understand that there are things that Dallas can give us that So Cal won't be able to as well and are both excited about this coming new chapter in our lives.
I'm glad you liked your visit.......really wish you visited the city though
Can any locals tell me if t his is typical for kids to not play outside often? The weather was pretty mild at around mid around 90 degrees this past week that I was there. Well I was told that 90 was considered as "mild" for Dallas in August.
Another thing that hasn't been mentioned yet: the areas you visited are the types of cities where parents are going to enroll their children in a good number of activities such as organized sports, dance, music that are structured. There's also a good chance a number kids were away at summer camp or day camp for enrichment activities. It's some what sad to say, but many kids with good parents in good neighborhoods don't have the opportunity or receive the encouragement to just play outside without supervision.
Yeah...stuff like this kind of gets my back up. As a Texas native, I get tired of people assuming that we're a bunch of racist rednecks. It's 2014 here too.
Nobody here cares. And even if anyone did, it's painfully unlikely that they'd say anything to you about it. We all have more important things to do than harass interracial couples.
I get what he's saying. I'm brand new here from Chicago, and my fiancee and I (she's white, I'm Filipino) are constantly surprised to see all the interracial relationships around DFW - not just couples, but groups of friends as well.
And it has absolutely NOTHING to do with any kind of assumption about anyone being racist rednecks or anything of the sort. It just doesn't occur anywhere nearly as often in Chicago (city or suburbs) as it does here. Interracial couples aren't unheard of back home by any means, and you'll see groups of white people with an odd minority here and there, but you'll rarely see couples or groups of friends between two minority groups...I think I've seen that here more in a month and a half than all my time in Chicago. Pretty cool.
Rarely are kids playing outside unless they are in an organized event.
We have great airports, and we need them because we are visually starved of natural beauty and good lakes. We do have man-made beauty.
If you find you absolutely must escape frequently to enjoy natual beauty, you must factor in all the costs associated with travel to calculate the real costs of living here. I have family members who must travel out at least every 6 weeks for personal sanity. With air fare, hotel, food, car rental, etc. they would break even living in a more expensive renue that provided the mountains and water they need.
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on Thursday night when I was lost in Dallas looking for a restaurant.
