How are we getting known? (Knoxville, Clarksville: car rental, fit in, transplants)

[Braves_fan]

Not trying to be rude, or discourage families from wanting a "change of scenery"

But I'm just curious here...and have a question to you Future Transplants who would ask us Southerners about moving to Tennessee.

Do ya'll just pick out a town on a map that you've never seen before and try to make a visual in your head of living there before you've actually seen it or visited?

I'm asking this because I notice alot of folks who start threads inquiring about "Small towns and what they are like in case they move there" when they have never even been here in the first place to even see what it's like.

I can just visualize the typical Michigan or Ohio family sitting around at the supper table talking about this and then getting out a map or of course getting on the internet and just randomly picking out middle to small sized towns here in Eastern Tennessee, and getting an idea that "hey maybe we should look into moving there, because its totally different then where we are now"

Its mind boggling how all these people even know about our communities in the first place.

[Rapunzll]

I'll be moving to either Clarksville or somewhere between Nashville and Clarksville because I want to live near my daughter, sil and grandbaby. If I had my first choice, I'd be moving to coastal GA to be honest. But I'm sure I'll be very happy in TN and am looking forward to it. As for how to pick a place, I have to visit before I know where I want to live. I'm not a throw a dart at the map sort of person.

[daniellefort]

I don't even know if i consider myself a southerner, northerner, hillbilly, yankee or whatever other classification i just alway fit in wherever i go. I'm pretty open minded about the way people live and don't make it an issue but to answer your question, i visited Gatlinburg/pigeon forge for vacation and a friend of ours had bought some land near Newport so we took a drive out to see his property and we happened to like the little town of Newport. We made 2 more trips to scout out the area first and did our research and just bought some land northest of Newport just out of town. We're just ready for a change from FL and i've always wanted to have a log home and what better place to have my dream home than in the mountains. I come from a very small rural town growing up where everybody knew everybody and in FL i hardly know my neighbors so i've experienced both ends of the deal. I would hope people would personally visit the areas they plan to move to and not move there based on what people tell them. On the other hand, i up and left home when i was 18 and moved to Florida never being out of the state of N.H. before but it worked for me. I've enjoyed it down here but just ready to go back to my older days. Well, i say older but i'm really only 31.

[AprilFamily]

Well, the way we came to be thinking about moving to Knoxville is through a website. What you do is take a fairly extensive quiz about what you are looking for in a relocation - size of town, climate, arts & culture, educational opportunities, etc. Then it will give you the top 10 (or maybe 20) places that meet your criteria. For us, Knoxville was number 3 on the list, but seemed like it would be the one that most fit our desires. We are moving from Florida and yes, happy that the cost of living is lower there, but even more so I'm looking forward to a somewhat slower pace of life, friendly people, nice neighbors, etc.

Lori

[Tek_Freek]

We took a two week driving trip in 1999. The first vacation longer than a week for us. Drove the back roads down through IA, MO, KY (Paducah, Bowling Green, Lexington, New London, Cumberland Pass), then into the Smokies by way of Kinsport (stayed there overnight and liked what we saw), then down to Asheville (Biltmore, etc) and liked what we saw, back through TN (Knoxville, Nashville) and liked what we saw (getting the picture?) then stayed a long weekend at Hannibal, MO. Went through the caves and took a steamboat ride down the Mississippi, had a deer come with 10 feet of us as we had a picnic, and found a Walking Stick on my wife's jeans. She was not initially happy about that!

On the way down we stayed overnight at New London, KY and had dinner there on Sunday. When I asked for a drink I was reminded that there were no liquor sales on Sunday. When they brought the dessert menu I noticed they had Bourbon upside down cake. I asked if it was available and when the waitress said yes, I asked for a double. Guy sitting across from us spit his coffee all over his table.

I got my double.

We liked TN and NC. We came back last summer and found Fairfield Glade. Liked it and bought a lot. We are going to continue the search just in case we find somewhere we like better.

I wish we would have bought land in Asheville in 1999 - we thought about it and didn't.

[TN Tin Man]

Spent a lot of my child hood running around bare foot in the eastern hills of TN, "Gods Country"....

[Dreamweavers]

For us it all started with googling " best place to live in the US " That brought up alot of places in the general area of the tri-cities, (like Abingdon, Mount Airy, Asheville & some places in KY to name a few). Then we took the test mentioned by Aprilfamily above & cross-referenced it with the google results. That narrowed it down to an area of about 120 miles with the tri-cities being in the center. Upon noticing that , we decided to research the tri-cities in a number of ways (all of them via the internet). There are websites to get the hard facts, taxes, avg. inc. & the like. Then we found pictures of the area to confirm the landscape was what we were looking for.
Lastly & most importantly was to try to get a feel for the folks here, ENTER THIS FORUM. Say what you will of my methods for choosing this place to call home, but, having been here now for just over a month I believe I'll be buried here. This is the best place I've lived, however I only have CT, WY, FL & Germany to compare it to. LOL

[northcountrygirl]

We first decided that we wanted to move south. Then like most above we did research on Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Kentucky. We picked Tennessee on the climate, the class of people, the general terrain, affordability and compatability. Then we flew down and drove all over the state to get a feel for the place and chose an area that fit the requirements.

[Braves_fan]

Some interesting replies to the question at hand. Thanks Ya'll

[thirtyish]

I'm one of those throw the dart at the map kind of a gal. LOL We decided to put our home in sunny, central California to move to a better community (less gangs, crime, car thefts). We started looking in Lodi, California just 12 miles away. We can buy a comparable home of 2000 sq ft on less than .25 acres for $550,000. Before we plunk down that kind of dough I decided to give ****.com a whirl. California was nowhere on my top 20 list. Tenn. had 4 matches. I do want to warn others that several of my friends have now tried **** and we have had repeated matches with different answer response. Anywho, I then started the internet, hard fact research. I booked a one way flight for June 12th and a 2 week car rental. My 10 year old daughter and I will begin exploring from Nashville. And, here I am. . .My husband and I are both born and raised Californians with all of our friends and family here. Call me a dart thrower. At the very least we will meet some new people and see a beautiful part of our country.