Moving back to Iowa--What about Boone? (Des Moines, Ames: apartment, employment, bars)

[nreilly1]

I grew up in Grimes (outside of Des Moines) and it looks like we have an opportunity to finally move back to wonderful Iowa. We are considering Boone as it will be close to my husband's employment. Anything you all could tell me about it? Thanks!

[duster1979]

My wife has a friend who lives in Boone. I don't know a lot about the town, but it seems nice and they have several events throughout the year. If you have specific questions I would be happy to try to find answers!

[patmc]

Boone's proximity to Ames gives you great opportunities for concerts, sporting events, academia....

You might want to ask over at BooneTalk.com Someone from Boone or Ogden may have some advice for you.

[FutureIowaTeacher]

hmm, the Boonedocks. Well, the ominous name aside, it is actually quite beautiful there. Right near the river valley, and Story street driving into town is gorgeous. Boone does parades! Pufferbilly Days is something else. There are several really nice, well-maintained parks all over the town. A fun town to walk. My wife and I lived about as downtown as you could get in an amazingly spacious, extremely well priced, privately owned loft apartment. Well, amazing except for the trains. The quote, "We hardly hear 'em anymore," is always said with a smirk. 90 trains a day on average we were told. From 10pm to 6am that's roughly 30. And not the cute toot-toot Thomas the Tank types. These are full-on Union Pac. airhorns. You'd wish all types of evil death on those train workers at 4 in the morning. That, the lack of anything open after 6pm except pizza joints and bars, the endless 17 year old smoking mothers, and the conservative social attitude caused us to move. One 30-ish year old woman summed up her lifelong experience there: This is a railroad town, and I'm not in with the railroad, so I'm not in with the town.

Really, we met some excellent people and there are some really pretty neighborhoods. We were told: north of the tracks is bad, south is good, which I believed to be a harsh generalization.

Now, we experienced Boone as an unmarried couple w/out children, and Boone wasn't really set up to cater to that crowd, so your experience would be entirely different. It was so pretty there, I remember really wanting to fall in love with it.
My advice: check your proximity to the tracks!

[jazzlover]

Don't blame the railroaders for the horns. They are required by Federal law to blow the "whistle" for road crossings without exception--day or night--unless the town has set up a "no whistle zone." The requirements for that are very strict and include very expensive crossing gates, etc. at every "silent" crossing. Some communities have set up crossings where the warning whistles are located at the crossing itself, rather than requiring the train to blow its whistle for the crossing, but that still is noisy. I've lived close to railroads much of my life so the noise doesn't bother me. I much rather listen to trains than to highway traffic all day and all night.

PS--I haven't been to Boone, but it sounds like town that I would like.

[SharpHawkeye]

May I ask where your husband's employment is? Just considering that if it is very far at all to the east of Boone, you may want to also look at the west side of Ames.

I don't know a terrible lot about the area, but from what I hear Boone is a nice town. Ames is also very nice in my experience.

[j-o-h-n]

Boone is where the people who can't afford to live in Ames live.