Where oh where can I find it all? (Missoula, Kalispell: rental, loan)

[susansolin]

I've been asking questions and reading back posts for about 3 weeks and I'm hoping you can answer a couple more questions. My husband and I are interested in relocating and are seriously considering Montana. We were recently in the Kalispell/Whitefish area and were impressed with the surrounding area but posts here worry me a little. It seems like the winters in the Flathead Valley are dark/grey. Coming from western Washington we were hoping to find a place with a little more winter sun. Snow is fine, we are originally from Wisconsin and have discovered (much to our amazement) that we miss snow. The things that are most important are;

Wildlife, we want to live somewhere where we can watch wildlife. The idea of elk or moose occasionally walking through my yard is thrilling.

Public land, my husband likes to hike and we would like to get a 4-wheeler and do some exploring

Sun, some sun in the winter would be nice. I'm not expecting sunny all the time but a little would be good. I hear there are small pockets of nicer winter weather somewhere along the mountains, can anyone tell me what towns these might be in or near?

Friendly people/small town, I would like to be able to walk into a local grocery store or bookstore or restaurant and know people. Someone from Whitefish told us about all the great town celebrations, winter parade etc and they sounded nice.

Affordable, we will be living primarily off our retirement income. We would like to build a new small house in or near a small town, we live pretty simply.

Again, thanks for any and all suggestions.

[sallyv6767]

I, too, am considering relocating to MT and susansolin's list of ideals is just up my alley. Any thoughts/suggestions appreciated here too! Thanks!

[grizzfan]

Here is your basic dilemma:

In the Winter, the sun doesn't shine much west of the Continental Divide; East of it it does a bit more, but the weather East of the Divide is much colder and the season are much shorter by a month, i.e. Winter lasts a month longer and Fall comes a month earlier.

All those other things you call priorities you can do either East or West of the Continental Divide.

[rickers]

You can always try finding a rain shadow type of area in the mountains such as Plains, Dixon, Hot Springs, Camas Prairie etc. There is a bit more sun in the winter at times especially Hot Springs and Camas Prairie because the river fog layer during inversions doesn't usually extend that far up from the lower basin areas.
Here is a picture of one of the locals. We floated past this guy on the Lower Flathead River Between Dixon and Perma.

[susansolin]

Rickers

Thank you so, so much for the response and the pic, what a great looking local! I'll add that area of to my list of places to look. We've also decided to stretch out into Idaho and Wyoming. We ruled out Colorado, too expensive. Now if my house would just sell!

[rickers]

We plan on living in a motor-home at some point shortly after our loan is paid off in about 9 years from now. With three rental incomes plus retirement we should be able to cruise about and see the parts of country we haven't seen yet and migrate with the seasons. Hopefully we will not be so decrepit with age by then that we can enjoy living on the road for a while. I'm almost 58 and half the time I feel like the tin man in the Wizard Of Oz when he was found all rusted up in the woods.

[mtlogger]

You can't eat the mountains as my dear departed Mother once told me - and she was right! If you aren't bringing a job with you or creating a new one, forget about moving to the mountains. It's a tough place to make a living.

[susansolin]

Thanks again for all the info. Not being able to eat mountains brought up another question. Are gardens common in the Whitefish/Kalispell area? Where I live in Washington it's too cold to grow much for veggies, I haven't even been able to bring a pot of tomatoes to ripeness on my deck! And one other question. Do you have thunderstorms? We moved from Wisconsin to Washington and didn't realize that Washington (far west anyway) almost never has thunder. When it does occasionally thunder (and I can count the number of times it has on one hand in the 6 years I've been here) everyone in my house gets so excited we run around in circles! It's a strange thing to miss but I do miss thunder.

[rickers]

I've grown tomatoes in both the prairie and in the mountains no problem and I've never seen a tomato worm here yet. The growing season is very short all over Montana and we do get thunder storms in the summer mostly, especially in the afternoon.
Missoula calls itself "The Garden City".

[MTRocks]

Elevation makes a huge difference. Usually if you get a few miles out of the valleys and pick up a couple of hundred feet you can break out of the inversions in the winter. The downside is it gets harder to raise tomatoes the higher you get and the winters are colder w/ deeper snow. Usually the price of property goes up with elevation, too. Most importantly, don't assume you can drill a well and get water if you buy raw land. Some areas have lots of water (I think Kalispell/Whitefish is pretty good) others you can sink a hole 1000 feet and come up dry. Last I checked it was $42/foot to drill a well but that was a couple of years ago.