How Long Before you Can Tell..... (Manteo: homes, place to live, bill)

[LehighU2006]

How long of a visit do you think we'll need before we can tell if NC is the right place for us? We are going to take a couple of trips down during the spring to visit different towns. How long should we plan on staying in each area? Do you think we'll be able to get a feel for the town and people immediately? This is not a necessary move, so we have time to explore and find the perfect place. Thanks!

[findinghope]

i knew from the moment i stepped off the plane in January (07) and it was close to 70 degrees.
but i took longer obviously to find the right town and home. we took about 4 months of looking at different towns and hundreds of homes.
we were very specific though in the area we needed to live for work.

[SunnyKayak]

just to give you a perspective far as travel time across the state it takes about 8.5 to 9 hours from Manteo to Murphey. For just getting idea of the towns decide what size of town you are looking for, mountain town , foothill, piedmont, coastal plain or coastal town then try to spend at least a day in each

[witchseavey]

I was able to do exploration on line. We were in the same position before our move, and we generated a very specific list of things we wanted in a place to live including climate, topography, recreational opportunities, racial diversity, political persuasion, economy, health care, roads, and the arts. Once we had clarity around what our priorities were, what was a need to have and what was a nice to have, finding a region that fit the bill on line was pretty easy. That narrowed the range of places to visit pretty considerably. We knew the minute we got to our new town that it was a perfect fit and, two years later, we're still feeling like we won the lottery every single day.