Relocating to ft lewis (Seattle, Olympia: home, to buy, schools)

[anotherarmywife]

My husband and I will be relocating to Washington from Jersey in November. I was born and raised on the East coast, he was born and raised in Oregon. He has lived all over and is looking forward to moving west again. I am just thrilled to get out of Jersey, the rainy, cloudy weather was distressing to me until he reminded me that I lived in Rochester NY for 34 years and I was OK with that, lol.
K, so we want to buy a place with land and were turned onto the Yelm, Roy area, but everything with land that was in our price range (200k) seemed to be a manufactured home and I have only heard discouraging things about resale etc... So now I am looking at the outskirts of Chehalis. Can anyone tell me about this area? We don't have children, so schools are no concern, we just want a quiet spot of land in a nice little community.
Thanks in advance for any information you can give!

[Ira500]

The Chehalis and Centralia areas are pretty nice. I'm not real familiar with home and land prices there, but I've been told that being halfway between Portland and Seattle, and being close to Olympia makes Centralia and Chehalis a good place to buy a home...Look at Morton too while you're at it.
But you're not going to get away from cloudy and rainy weather. Western Washington is not famous for it's sunshine...By the way, where are you in NJ? I grew up about 15 miles from Fort Dix( and lived to tell about it.)

[anotherarmywife]

Thanks for the info Ira,
We are in Wantage NJ ( Sussex- far north, we are about 2 miles from NY and 5 from Pennsylvania) He is stationed in Patterson on recruiting duty, the longest 3 years of our lives. Can't wait to get back to his regular MOS and get the heck outta this place!

[Sandy Nelson]

Anotherarmywife,
My husband is from New Jersey and I understand what you mean. You'll love it here in Washington. The Centralia/Chehalis area is a nice community with decent home prices and all the conveniences (shopping, entertainment, restaurants). The only drawback is the commute to Ft. Lewis. The drive will take at least 40 minutes, and with gas prices being so high it will get costly. If that is not an issue for you, I think you'll do well living in Chehalis.
Good Luck!

Sandy