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Well, I have to post the results of our 10 day road trip I mentioned a while back! We drove from Portland area to Roseburg, met friends there, then on to stay two nights in Medford and scout around while there. We saw Ashland (nice but waaaaay our of our price range!) and Jacksonville - very quaint and a wonderful place to spend some time and look at historic homes and quaint shops and buildings. We had lunch there! Then we seriously went on to Shady Cove - 20 miles east of Medford, and found a great Rogue River small town which is starting to boom! Not really a livable city in itself, folks depend on Medford for most things. Heavy into river rafting, canoeing, kyacking, hiking and camping. Sunnier and clearer than Medford, which tends to have a little higher humidity factor and, of course, the valley there gets sometimes socked in with pollution from vehicle traffic which is getting heavier all the time. We drove from Medford and headed for K-Falls on highway 140. We have never seen anything prettier in way of pristine, natural settings - in our travels around the northwest or mountain west. It honestly does not get enough credit for the stunning and breathtaking hills covered with evergreens, lakes, wetlands alive with birdlife (Klamath Falls is in the heart of a bird migration area and we saw so many pelicans and a couple of eagles, hawks, wild turkeys even!). My cousin is a retired law enforcement (homocide detective) and has lived in Klamath Falls for 32 years. He previous lived in Seattle area when first starting out his career. He is also from the Portland area, as is his wife. We met with them, they rolled out the red carpete and prepared a dinner better than anything we'd had in a restaurant so far on our trip. They love Klamath Falls and say they feel so much better in the sunshine, which honestly is about 300 days a year. Humidity is low - yet this high desert oasis is much prettier, in our opinions, than the Tri-Cities area, which we'd looked at seriously a couple of times and have another cousin living in retirement up there. There is no doubt that if we could pack our bags and sell the house tomorrow, we'd be going to Klamath Falls. As for the Running Y Ranch being only for rich people - let me say that we bought our plan 8 yrs. ago and I was operating a home-based child care and preschool program. We earned average incomes - we never took a vacation - raised 4 kids of our own and and our $$ went to their needs and activities. For ourselves, we decided we needed a 'forced vacation' scenario to get us to pack a bag, put down our workloads, and go! So, it was 3 yrs. before we used the resort plan! Couldn't afford to go anywhere and buy a plane ticket. So - year 3 rolled around and we booked into an Oregon coast resort for a week while moving from UT back to OR and needing a place to stay!! $143/mo is alot of money for some folks, but we managed to squeeze it out to keep this plan going. Now we are starting a new tradition of booking in at the Oregon coast over Labor Day every year and booking a placle big enough to accomodate our adult children and our granddaughter! So, there's my response to the poster who may have thought we were rich snobs with our noses in the air and wearing Versace whatevers! Try Fred Meyers and you'll hit the target for our clothes shopping one-stop-shopping store where we purchase our fineries! Klamath Falls is honestly pretty self-contained. If you are looking for a city that is 'buzzing' with energy and excitement, in the traditional sense of city living, you won't find that in K-Falls. The excitement comes from the breathtaking vistas and the awesome climate and friendly townspeople. K-Falls gets far less snow than the Bend area. We like snow, but not that much. We lived in Salt Lake City, UT for 10 years where the average snowfall is about 60 inches. In downtown K-Falls, the Ragland Theater is quaint and a shining jewel in the main part of downtown. Running Y Resort is building awesome chalets for $300,000 and up - single dwellings with wrap-around decks. The same exact design by the same builders is being put up near the Eagle Crest Resort in Bend area starting at $530,000 and going up. The views are less thrilling - and there is heavy, dense traffic around the Bend area any more. We much preferred the lower humidity and clearer blue skies and configuration of the town and the resort in the K-Falls area. It cost us in credits as much for 2 bedroom 2 bath large condo with very private entrance and killer in K-Falls as it did for a deluxe hotel room at Eagle Crest. Prices in the Bend area are a joke by comparison and CA and other folks with dollars to spare will find, however, that 'it's a great deal' because in Oregon it is still cheaper to live than California.
After leaving Klamath Falls (2 days there - awesome) we visited Crater Lake - 48 degrees and everyone was in shirt sleeves!! Full, clear sunny skies. It was breathtakingly gorgeous, as well. Again, friendly folks wherever we went. After that we headed to Eagle Crest for 2 nights' stay in Bend area. We drove around - loked at Prineville and were shocked at the price of homes there and the small, not-much-there-at-all town that Prineville still is. My husband got food poisoning from the salad bar - but then - I guess that was a poor choice of foods as salad bars can be toxic, if not tended to and things rotated out often. It clearly was NOT "Sweet Tomatoes". From there we went north to Goldendale, WA - which we found to be gorgeous wheat land and also heavy cattle ranching. Yes, as of last Saturday, you can still get 20 acres of land from $55,000-155,000, having stopped by a realty office and getting some print outs on several parcels we checked out. Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood are clearly in the path of almost everyone's view- whether on a hillside or on the flat valley floor. It is very, very pretty there, as well - only draw back is that The Dalles, Oregon is 40 min. away and that iss the closest shopping. There are a couple of restaurants there, one local grocery store, and Yakima is about 70 miles north - where there is a Costco and more shopping. No movie theater except for The Dalles and not alot to do. They do, surprisingly, have a Senior Center in the heart of their little downtown. The realtor estimates about 5,000 residents but the printed data says more like 2,900 population. It doesn't appear to have enough amenities locally to support 5,000 folks, however. People are very nice, very country, big melting pot for retirees now. They say the town is about to take off and grow bigger quickly! The old timers are not so excited at that prospect. 15 inches of rain a year - about 7 inches of snow - 300 days of sunshine!! Again, east of the Cascades. . . . .much drier - and no, not desert. The more desert-looking places, in our opinion, lay in the Tri-Cities area and in the eastern Oregon area around Umatilla and Hermiston. East of there it greens up, increases in elevation, the hills and mountains become green and the snowfall is quite alot with very cold winters.
This is long, but wanted to share with you the result of our trips. Goldendale is clearly a cheaper place to live to get the climate we love and the scenery, but too far to go to do activities and shopping. K-Falls, overall, met our criteria. We could both find jobs there easily, could afford the cost of living there. It is essentially 5.5 hrs. from where we currently live. We bought a house early 2004, outside of Portland for $220,000 using retirement savings for alot of our down payment and today the FMV on this house is estimated at $365,000. We've made a number of improvements, we came back home to our son being engaged and finding that life away from our 3 adult children and granddaughter would be difficult . So, we'll hang in here and brave the pain and discomfort we have with the rain (ok, I know we are having summer weather in May this year!!) and do our best to maintain our jobs and our lives here. Hoping you all have an awesome summer and get a chance to get out and see some places you have always wanted to visit!!
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05-23-2007, 01:37 PM
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