Towns outside of Seattle

[Ira500]

I'm going to suggest North Tacoma, particularly the Proctor District. Expensive for Tacoma, but far less expensive than most Seattle neighborhoods. Quaint, charming, and fun, feels like a small town, has a great Saturday farmers market, really cool old buildings, not too far from the airport, and not too far from a great off leash area.

http://tacoma.onethousandthingstodo....eash-dog-park/

[Ira500]

The link appears to be broken, but it's the Ft. Steilacoom off leash dog park.

[cabocurtis]

Proctor and Ruston area of tacoma are great. Olympia is a nice self contained town and generally traffic is reasonable to Airport especially around non commuter hours. To Seattle its a bit long 66 miles with some potential slow commuter traffic. Gig harbor is part of sound transit for bus service and you benefit from avoiding the bridge toll and also get to travel in high occupancy vehicle lanes. Kent to me seems to offer potential in that you can access sound transit trains from there and are close to the airport. Kent downtown is nice but its sprawled from a residential point of view. Take a look at Manchester by port orchard where you could walk on the ferry to west seattle or foot ferry to downtown seattle via vashon. Also you might want to look at university place, dupont and steilacom. There is link bus service via sound transit to the train and bus service all the way to seattle. Dont forget to look at the lacey yelm area. You will need a car but there are some back road options through spanaway via 167 puyallup so you are not totally dependent on I-5. Very nice.

[Feybie]

Originally Posted by Ira500

I'm going to suggest North Tacoma, particularly the Proctor District. Expensive for Tacoma, but far less expensive than most Seattle neighborhoods. Quaint, charming, and fun, feels like a small town, has a great Saturday farmers market, really cool old buildings, not too far from the airport, and not too far from a great off leash area.

Fort Steilacoom Off-leash Dog Park - Tacoma, WA*·*1000 Things To-Do

I've been reading a lot of negative things about Tacoma....

[Ira500]

Yup. Parts of Tacoma are disgusting, and if you lived in proctor or Ruston, you'd never have to be in those other parts. Parts of Seattle are not so great either. Olympia has some bad parts too. Don't rule out an entire city because of it's bad parts.

[Feybie]

I'll definitely take that on board. Thanks.

[Infantry Wife]

My husband will be transferred to Ft. Lewis. We will be new to the area. Have 2 kids and a German Shepard. Need suggestions for housing/east side of fort with good schools.

[Ira500]

Infantry Wife,
Any reason in particular you want to be on the east side of Fort Lewis? Because some of the better school districts are not east of the fort. The Olympia district is top notch, and the Steilacoom district is considered good.

[yukiko11]

Originally Posted by Feybie

Is Arlington and surrounding areas all military towns? I heard somewhere that they were.

NO. There is a small amount of the navy fleet stationed in North Everett and the support housing and shopping is in North Marysville. You really don't notice the people who are in the military because there is no formal base. The navy originally built a lot of housing, but when the fleet was cut, they offered the homes to civilians. Military people live all over and they are just families in neighborhoods.