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Hello, I posted a few months back to get a o
Comparison between Boise, ID and Tennesse.
We have almost decided Tennesse just sounds more like the kind of lifestyle we are looking for but are concerned about a few things..
We live in San Luis Obispo County (Arroyo Grande). We are not moving from a big city where the traffic is horrendous, the homeless population has sky rocketed, or because of gangs (like I usually hear about people leaving CA in San Diego area or SF). We are mainly moving because we simply cannot afford to live here comfortably. I would go as far as to say San Luis Obispo is the perfect little town..except you cant afford to raise a family here. My husband makes pretty good money for our age but it doesnt go far.We pay $1400 for a run down apartment in a cold community, it's considered a good deal as most of them go for $1600-18. We want space for our children to grow up where we can garden, they can play outdoors, sit on the porch and have fellowship and have a close knit community.
We initially visited Chattanooga and liked the downtown area but I felt like all the neighboring towns were run down. It was raining and grey the whole time we were out there so I got a grimey, wet and rugged type of vibe from it. We did however love the town of Ooltewah. I have decided to travel back and visit Maryville. I have read mostly positive things but also read from a few people its run down, no side walks and lots of cables running through the roads. Is this true?
I like Mountains, Sunshine, Outdoor Recreation, Community and mostly aesthetically pleasing areas. I would never move to somewhere like Seattle, Ohio or Midwest due to the lack of sunshine.
Does this sound like Knoxville? Maryville? Johnson City?
Thank you in advance for your kind responses and God Bless
If you liked Ootawah, you might want to look at Cleveland, TN.
There are bad parts in just about every city in America, if you look hard enough.
While many cities have some sidewalks, there are many parts that don't have any.
Not sure what you mean about cables running in the streets. Do you mean overhead wires on poles?
While Knoxville has a lot of sun days, it does rain here a lot. Last year we got about 60", and the average is in the mid 50's. That is a lot of rain. Be prepared.
I like Mountains, Sunshine, Outdoor Recreation, Community and mostly aesthetically pleasing areas. I would never move to somewhere like Seattle, Ohio or Midwest due to the lack of sunshine.Does this sound like Knoxville? Maryville? Johnson City?
If you liked Ootawah, you might want to look at Cleveland, TN.
There are bad parts in just about every city in America, if you look hard enough.
While many cities have some sidewalks, there are many parts that don't have any.
Not sure what you mean about cables running in the streets. Do you mean overhead wires on poles?
While Knoxville has a lot of sun days, it does rain here a lot. Last year we got about 60", and the average is in the mid 50's. That is a lot of rain. Be prepared.
Yes, a few people had said that they flew out to Maryville and were very disappointed that it looked run down with tons of overhead wires on poles going everywhere. Not sure where the were from.
Thanks for the input I'll look into Clevland. Do you live in Knoxville? If so. Are you happy there?
I've lived in Boise for 2 years and really hated that place. But, a lot of Californians move there and seem to enjoy it because it has similar scenery and still has the West Coast vibe. In fact, many refer to Southern Idaho as California North now. There is a lot of California culture infused into Boise and you can kind of feel it.
As far as scenery and friendliness of people, I believe Knoxville would be many times better. People rave about Boise's scenery, but I found the Treasure Valley to be one of the ugliest places on the Earth. But, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by lush green vegetation and beautiful mountains. So, for me, a brown desert with fake trees and brown hills just made me depressed. It is the same reason I really don't like Colorado's scenery. However, the mountains above Boise are gorgeous, but you really do have to drive over an hour from the city to get to the nice parts of the Boise National Forest and drive 3 hours to get to the very scenic Sawtooth mountains. For 6 months of the year, getting to the Sawtooths is treacherous and the roads are usually closed a lot. Oh by the way, I hope you like smoke because Boise is very smokey in the summer as I learned. It got hard to breathe there at times. Also, Knoxville can get hot, but Boise's summers can also be brutal. There was a week I was there it did not get under 100F and one day it got to around 110F. At almost 3000ft that sun hits you hard.
If you really want sunshine and don't mind desert scenery Colorado has lots of it. But at 6000ft that sun really hurts..
Tennessee is pretty rainy from what I hear and is more cloudy than what you wil lbe use to.. Coming from the Pacific NOrthwest every place seems sunny to me Boise , however, gets a lot of the coastal clouds from the Pacific Ocean, they just get dried out of rain by the time they hit Idaho.
If you want a real gem and don't mind very cold winters and a lot of snow, North Idaho is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been and the people are much friendlier up there. It has a very Libertarian kind of culture and you are also near some beautiful mountains of Northeast Washington. If you have a hard time getting a job in North Idaho, you could potentially commute to Spokane for jobs. North Idaho is getting expensive as a lot of California retirees are buying up a lot of property around the lake. If you have a way to make a living, places like Sandpoint are still gems, but more remote.
If you want sunshine avoid Boise. I was shocked after living there for two years how cloudy the place was. It was almost as cloudy as Portland, but had much less precipitation . You will not see the sun for months during winter, but not have all the beautiful greenery you would have in Portland or Seattle. And the winters in Boise can be brutal . The year I was there we had 5 feet of snow and it didn't get much over 10F for a whole month. It got down to -10F the year I was there. I've never felt such bone chilling cold in my life. It feels like your body is burning with every step you take. Another thing I hated about Boise was how it was so sprawled, sterile and soulless. Once you leave downtown Boise, almost the whole metro is just a giant sprawled suburban mess. There is no character, neighborhoods or anything. It is kind of like Orange County without an ocean, but even less interesting. Boise has a few neighborhoods, but all the new development is around the downtown and North End. I find the suburbs I see in Knoxville have some character, history and soul. Yes, there are sterile subdivisions, but there are also small towns and neighborhoods with historic buildings and some character. In Boise, you have nothing but sprawl and ugly tract homes and mini malls. Downtown Knoxville looks very charming whereas downtown Boise is pretty ugly with lots of new high risers and tacky condos and apartments being built. All the historic buildings are being demolished.
I am looking at moving to Knoxville and think that if you can get use to the rain, heat and humidity you will find it is more fulfilling than places like Boise. The scenery in Eastern Tennessee is some of the most beautiful I have ever seen and I have lived in some of the most beautiful places in Oregon and Washington.
Last edited by RotseCherut; 02-07-2019 at 11:37 PM..
I think the hardest moves are for people who like where they live but they are priced out.
OP- wunderground has a nifty little feature that lets you look at weather history in a calendar form. It's easy to use and you can see at a glance what the weather has been like for any given month, going back years. https://www.wunderground.com/calenda...YS/date/2018-5
If you take a look at east TN cities you will see that there are a lots of rainy days, but if you look at precipitation levels for those same days it's often quite low, indicating that the rain on those days is not an all day event. I find that in the winter there may be some gloomy stretches but they don't usually last for weeks at a time like they do where I grew up in the upper Midwest. Even on those rainy days there is often some sunshine too.
a 'rainy' day from that same calendar- Daily Observations May 10 2018,
Time Temperature Dew Point Humidity Wind Wind Speed Wind Gust Pressure PrecipPrecip Accum Condition
2:53 AM 69 F 57 F 65 % W 6 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
3:53 AM 67 F 57 F 70 % SSW 6 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
4:53 AM 68 F 56 F 65 % SW 5 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
5:53 AM 69 F 56 F 63 % SW 6 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
6:53 AM 68 F 56 F 65 % WSW 9 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
7:53 AM 71 F 57 F 61 % WSW 8 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
8:53 AM 74 F 58 F 57 % SW 12 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Cloudy
9:53 AM 78 F 58 F 50 % SW 20 mph 25 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
10:53 AM 78 F 59 F 52 % SW 13 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Cloudy
11:53 AM 80 F 60 F 50 % SW 15 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Cloudy
12:53 PM 80 F 59 F 48 % SW 14 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
1:53 PM 81 F 59 F 47 % WSW 16 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Cloudy
2:28 PM 81 F 60 F 49 % WSW 14 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Thunder
2:43 PM 78 F 60 F 54 % WNW 10 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Cloudy
2:53 PM 76 F 60 F 58 % NW 8 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Light Rain
3:53 PM 81 F 61 F 50 % W 9 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
4:53 PM 85 F 59 F 41 % WSW 13 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
5:53 PM 80 F 60 F 50 % S 15 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
6:53 PM 79 F 60 F 52 % SW 18 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
7:53 PM 75 F 61 F 62 % SW 12 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
8:53 PM 73 F 60 F 64 % SW 10 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
9:53 PM 72 F 60 F 66 % WSW 10 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
10:53 PM 70 F 61 F 73 % WSW 9 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
11:53 PM 68 F 61 F 78 %W 9 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
I've lived in Boise for 2 years and really hated that place. But, a lot of Californians move there and seem to enjoy it because it has similar scenery and still has the West Coast vibe. In fact, many refer to Southern Idaho as California North now. There is a lot of California culture infused into Boise and you can kind of feel it.
As far as scenery and friendliness of people, I believe Knoxville would be many times better. People rave about Boise's scenery, but I found the Treasure Valley to be one of the ugliest places on the Earth. But, I grew up in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by lush green vegetation and beautiful mountains. So, for me, a brown desert with fake trees and brown hills just made me depressed. It is the same reason I really don't like Colorado's scenery. However, the mountains above Boise are gorgeous, but you really do have to drive over an hour from the city to get to the nice parts of the Boise National Forest and drive 3 hours to get to the very scenic Sawtooth mountains. For 6 months of the year, getting to the Sawtooths is treacherous and the roads are usually closed a lot. Oh by the way, I hope you like smoke because Boise is very smokey in the summer as I learned. It got hard to breathe there at times. Also, Knoxville can get hot, but Boise's summers can also be brutal. There was a week I was there it did not get under 100F and one day it got to around 110F. At almost 3000ft that sun hits you hard.
If you really want sunshine and don't mind desert scenery Colorado has lots of it. But at 6000ft that sun really hurts..
Tennessee is pretty rainy from what I hear and is more cloudy than what you wil lbe use to.. Coming from the Pacific NOrthwest every place seems sunny to me Boise , however, gets a lot of the coastal clouds from the Pacific Ocean, they just get dried out of rain by the time they hit Idaho.
If you want a real gem and don't mind very cold winters and a lot of snow, North Idaho is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been and the people are much friendlier up there. It has a very Libertarian kind of culture and you are also near some beautiful mountains of Northeast Washington. If you have a hard time getting a job in North Idaho, you could potentially commute to Spokane for jobs. North Idaho is getting expensive as a lot of California retirees are buying up a lot of property around the lake. If you have a way to make a living, places like Sandpoint are still gems, but more remote.
If you want sunshine avoid Boise. I was shocked after living there for two years how cloudy the place was. It was almost as cloudy as Portland, but had much less precipitation . You will not see the sun for months during winter, but not have all the beautiful greenery you would have in Portland or Seattle. And the winters in Boise can be brutal . The year I was there we had 5 feet of snow and it didn't get much over 10F for a whole month. It got down to -10F the year I was there. I've never felt such bone chilling cold in my life. It feels like your body is burning with every step you take. Another thing I hated about Boise was how it was so sprawled, sterile and soulless. Once you leave downtown Boise, almost the whole metro is just a giant sprawled suburban mess. There is no character, neighborhoods or anything. It is kind of like Orange County without an ocean, but even less interesting. Boise has a few neighborhoods, but all the new development is around the downtown and North End. I find the suburbs I see in Knoxville have some character, history and soul. Yes, there are sterile subdivisions, but there are also small towns and neighborhoods with historic buildings and some character. In Boise, you have nothing but sprawl and ugly tract homes and mini malls. Downtown Knoxville looks very charming whereas downtown Boise is pretty ugly with lots of new high risers and tacky condos and apartments being built. All the historic buildings are being demolished.
I am looking at moving to Knoxville and think that if you can get use to the rain, heat and humidity you will find it is more fulfilling than places like Boise. The scenery in Eastern Tennessee is some of the most beautiful I have ever seen and I have lived in some of the most beautiful places in Oregon and Washington.
Rotsecherut, thank you so much for taking the time to go in detail about both areas, it is much appreciated! I am shocked by your comment as everyone I have talked to just RAVES about Boise and how beautiful it is. I have spoken to many people that have moved from California and considered the winters to be mild. I literally have been hunting down the truth for MONTHS because it didnt sound right. I can survive in cold, but not happily! I will avoid it at all cost and will live in my parka if I have to just so I dont have to feel the cold wind weather on my skin. I am saddened but also relived by your honesty on the cloudiness. For every 10 people that said winters were mild and not cloudy, there was always 1 that said they couldnt handle the endless grey days and felt very depressed. I would probably be one of those people. Or maybe not if I had a nice house & space for my children to play (something we dont get In CA). I was pretty set on Knoxville until I landed on some pretty harsh reviews about the city on another site. The city has about 110 reviews on SB and rated very poorly by many all saying the same things; its hillbilly central, about 40% of the city is on oxycontin or meth, very unhealthy city & majority of population is overweight, overly polluted air & water, radioactive waste in ground water, cell phone towers and power lines consuming the landscape, body farms and ignorant people (their words, not mine) I felt very discouraged reading them as I was really looking forward to visiting and house hunting. Of course will embrace and love the culture anywhere we end up, but when I read those things I just could not see myself living there and raising a family. unhealthy, pupulted air, water and uneducated spiritually dead environment is not something I stand for. Oh well, I guess I will have to check it out myself let me know when you find the perfect town, where its beautiful, mild weather and kids still ride their bikes and play in the street.
I think the hardest moves are for people who like where they live but they are priced out.
OP- wunderground has a nifty little feature that lets you look at weather history in a calendar form. It's easy to use and you can see at a glance what the weather has been like for any given month, going back years. https://www.wunderground.com/calenda...YS/date/2018-5
If you take a look at east TN cities you will see that there are a lots of rainy days, but if you look at precipitation levels for those same days it's often quite low, indicating that the rain on those days is not an all day event. I find that in the winter there may be some gloomy stretches but they don't usually last for weeks at a time like they do where I grew up in the upper Midwest. Even on those rainy days there is often some sunshine too.
a 'rainy' day from that same calendar- Daily Observations May 10 2018,
Time Temperature Dew Point Humidity Wind Wind Speed Wind Gust Pressure PrecipPrecip Accum Condition
2:53 AM 69 F 57 F 65 % W 6 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
3:53 AM 67 F 57 F 70 % SSW 6 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
4:53 AM 68 F 56 F 65 % SW 5 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
5:53 AM 69 F 56 F 63 % SW 6 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
6:53 AM 68 F 56 F 65 % WSW 9 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
7:53 AM 71 F 57 F 61 % WSW 8 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
8:53 AM 74 F 58 F 57 % SW 12 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Cloudy
9:53 AM 78 F 58 F 50 % SW 20 mph 25 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
10:53 AM 78 F 59 F 52 % SW 13 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Cloudy
11:53 AM 80 F 60 F 50 % SW 15 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Cloudy
12:53 PM 80 F 59 F 48 % SW 14 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
1:53 PM 81 F 59 F 47 % WSW 16 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Cloudy
2:28 PM 81 F 60 F 49 % WSW 14 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Thunder
2:43 PM 78 F 60 F 54 % WNW 10 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Cloudy
2:53 PM 76 F 60 F 58 % NW 8 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Light Rain
3:53 PM 81 F 61 F 50 % W 9 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
4:53 PM 85 F 59 F 41 % WSW 13 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
5:53 PM 80 F 60 F 50 % S 15 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
6:53 PM 79 F 60 F 52 % SW 18 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
7:53 PM 75 F 61 F 62 % SW 12 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
8:53 PM 73 F 60 F 64 % SW 10 mph 0 mph 28.9 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
9:53 PM 72 F 60 F 66 % WSW 10 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
10:53 PM 70 F 61 F 73 % WSW 9 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Partly Cloudy
11:53 PM 68 F 61 F 78 %W 9 mph 0 mph 29.0 in 0.0 in 0.0 in Mostly Cloudy
Yes, a few people had said that they flew out to Maryville and were very disappointed that it looked run down with tons of overhead wires on poles going everywhere. Not sure where the were from.
Thanks for the input I'll look into Clevland. Do you live in Knoxville? If so. Are you happy there?
Parts of Maryville do have overhead utilities. On the poles are power lines, phone lines and sometimes cable lines. Not any different than then places I lived in So Cal in the SF Valley and Long Beach. Other parts of Maryville have underground utilities. Same goes for Knoxville, some areas have overhead utilities, some have underground.
Maryville has some very old parts of the city, and of course there are new areas as well. And, like any city, there are some areas that are run down a bit.
I do live in Knoxville. I moved here in 1994 from So CA. Obviously, I must really like it here to stay this long. One of my daughters lives in Cleveland, so I have spent a lot of time there.
The thing to do is visit. No one can know what you will find great or unacceptable. I moved to a community outside Knoxville from Northern CA. I lived in Sacramento, and the Sierra foothills for over 40 years. I grew up in Carpinteria, so I know about San Luis Obispo. The weather here is much different than SoCal. You have the ideal weather there, so anything anywhere else in the country is not going to be as nice. Eastern TN has 4 season weather, but the winter weather is not as cold and snowy as the northern part of the country. We get about 2 storms with about 1-5 inches of snow per year, per storm. In a normal winter it rains a couple days a week. It can get cold for a few days (below freezing) and then it will warm up for a few days to the 60's. It will be cloudy for a day or two and then partly cloudy or mostly sunny for a few days. In the summer there will be humidity, which Californians are not used to. It's not as bad as the deep south's heat and humidity, but it will be sweaty in the sun, bearable in the shade. The big difference is it rains in the summer here, but usually only for an hour or so in the afternoon, every few days. So the trees and other plants and grass are beautiful and green all summer long. The spring and fall are wonderful with warm sunny days, and rain a few times a week, again usually for an hour or two every few days, then clearing up again. It's nothing like Seattle, or Oregon in terms of rain. It's seems really unusual when we get a day or two of non-stop rain or drizzle. It happens, but not often at all. Basically, the weather here is characterized by VARIETY. It doesn't stay with any one thing for a long time. That being said, we seem to be having an unusually wet winter, but everyone's been having a funky winter this year it seems.
Anyway, you need to visit the areas you are thinking of. It would be very unwise to consider moving to an area you've never seen. You can't rely on other people's description of something as they may have very different expectations or interests. I can say that Tennesseans are not 40% druggies. Yes, we have overweight people, as does the rest of the country, 60% of Americans are overweight. Yes, we have cell towers, but no more than the rest of the country, probably more overhead lines in some cities than CA. But undergrounding lines costs a LOT of money, and the taxes and electric rates here are very low, so you get what you are willing to pay for. We have some days in the summer when we have high air pollution days if you live in a bigger city, just like CA. No, in general the groundwater is NOT radioactive (LOL!!), unless you live immediately adjacent to the old Oak Ridge nuclear facility. I mean, the largest part of the state (probably 90%) is forest, or farmland, so why would the ground water be radioactive?? If you visit, you will find almost all the people to be very friendly and eager to be helpful. The cost of living is low, but so are the level of some of the services, so understand that things move more slowly here, and you may feel you've taken a step back a couple of decades compared to CA, but for us that was a pleasant change. Be sure to check out the schools in any area you are seriously considering. There are huge differences in the school quality. I can't really help in that regard, no kids.
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I'll look into Clevland. Do you live in Knoxville? If so. Are you happy there?
Boise , however, gets a lot of the coastal clouds from the Pacific Ocean, they just get dried out of rain by the time they hit Idaho. 
I felt very discouraged reading them as I was really looking forward to visiting and house hunting. Of course will embrace and love the culture anywhere we end up, but when I read those things I just could not see myself living there and raising a family. unhealthy, pupulted air, water and uneducated spiritually dead environment is not something I stand for. Oh well, I guess I will have to check it out myself 
let me know when you find the perfect town, where its beautiful, mild weather and kids still ride their bikes and play in the street.
