Relocating to TN & Looking for Friendly Small towns. (Chattanooga: houses, school)

[britt09]

Me and my teenage daughter are looking to relocate to a friendly, farm living, small town in Tennesse. Not to far from either Nashville or Chattanooga. To be exact we would like to find a small town that is about 30 minutes to an hour away from either one of those 2 major cities. As far as the views & town looks...im looking for spacious fields, green [as in not dead looking lol], horse farms, a couple country stores & farmers markets. And as far as houses go, were paticularly looking for a nice farm house of some sort, so it would be nice to have a lot of those type of houses inside or right outside of the town. We plan on traveling down to either Chattanooga or Nashville in the middle of May to look at a couple towns outside of each of them. If anyone has any ideas that might meet my discription of what im looking for, please reply back ASAP so we have a couple towns to look in to when were down visiting. Thanks much =)

[alleycat]

I'll throw out a few for consideration: Shelbyville (also home of the annual Tennessee Walking Horse Celebration; probably look on the north of Shelbyville to be closer to Nashville--there's quite a bit of open country in that area), Carthage (boyhood home of Al Gore), Springfield (Springfield/Robertson County used to be "farm and horse country", but is much less so now).

It's hard to be within 30 minutes of Nashville and now be in what is effectively a suburb of Nashville. You can find more rural areas to the west and northwest of Nashville in parts of Cheatham, Robertson, or Dickson County. Within an hours dirve you can find all sorts of small towns and rural areas.

[Dave_n_Tenn]

Look around Soddy-Daisy, or Dunlap near Chattanooga.

[britt09]

Thanks to both of you =) we decided we were gonna take a drive through the three counties that Alleycat provided. And also Springfield, Cathage and Dunlap. Once again thanks soo much.

[britt09]

If anyone else has any towns they can think of...then PLEASE reply. =)

[alleycat]

Are you flying to Nashville, or driving? We might be able to help a little with some kind of itinerary/travel route sort of thing. You're going to be covering a lot of ground if you're looking around both Nashville and Chattanooga.

And, as I mentioned, there is more farm land to the west and northwest of Nashville in Cheatham and Dickson Country that is within your driving range; I should have also mentioned that those two counties are not quite as prosperous as some of the other counties adjacent to Metro Nashville.

Springfield is located in Robertson County. It sounds like Springfield might be a good fit for you, but it's always hard to tell what someone else might like. There's a quirky little restaurant in downtown Springfield you might want to try; I've forgotten the name of it offhand (seems like it's in a yellow painted building, but I'm not sure).

There are just so many smaller town around Middle Tennessee that it's hard to pick ones out for someone else. For example, I started to suggest Gallatin as well.

[britt09]

We are going to be flying. But like I mentioned we might be flying out to Chatanooga because i have friends out there to stay with for the week. And yes we plan on covering as much ground as possible during our stay, but we're only there for 5 days so that would be great if you could do that for us. =)

If it helps any...we're looking for a town that is country, you know...with the friendly people and country accent. Particularly small with a bigger city not very far at all for work purposes. And we're really looking for something closer to Chattanooga but still near Nashville.

Ive really been taking a good look into Shelbyville online, and it seems like a good place so far, but i guess we will only know if we pay it a visit. Ive also looked alot at Bell Buckle. Could you give me any information about that town ?

[alleycat]

There's not a lot I can tell you about Bell Buckle. It's a very small town. It's greatest claim to fame is probably being the home of The Webb School, which has graduated a few prominent people such as Wayne Rogers (Trapper John on M*A*S*H).

By the way, Nashville has a much better airport than Chattanooga; it's usually cheaper to fly in and out of Nashville, although that might not work as well with your plans. You might check the cost of flights to see what it would cost to fly to either Nashville or Chattanooga.

[britt09]

Okay and as far as the age of the residents of Bell Buckle, are there teens there or is it mostly senior citizens ?

And yes we've realized that, ive been comparing the prices on many different websites. And realized that it is about $100 cheaper to fly to Nashville instead of Chattanooga. But wouldnt it cost the same if we flew to Nashville & then drove all the way to Chattanooga to stay with my friend for the visit, and then have to drive up there a number of times during the stay, and also have to drive back up there to catch the plane back home. So maybe its better to just pay the extra money to get a flight to Chattanooga. What do you think ?

[alleycat]

Did you know you can get all sorts of information about towns on the main City-Data page just by entering the name of the town? Including median age and that sort of thing.

This is the page for Bell Buckle: http://www.city-data.com/city/Bell-B...Tennessee.html

Yeah, if it's only $100, and with your plans, it sounds like you'd do better just to fly to Chattanooga.

I'll scratch my pointy little head a bit and see if I can suggest a trip guide for you to cover some of the places we're discussed.