Relocating to Lander...need some friendly help (Casper, Riverton: real estate, apartments)

[Wyoming-dreamcometrue]

Hi!! We are moving from Oklahoma in 2 weeks to excellent Lander . I have a few questions...

First, of course, is housing. We have 6 horses, yet we can only find apartments for rent. We dont want to buy right off the bat because we want to get there and live it for a year atleast to see where abouts we wanna plant ourselves permanently. So we were praying someone would know of a place.......

Also, we homeschool our two teen girls. Is this unusual for Wyomingites? Lander to Riverton areas? Are there any groups or activities for homeschoolers around there?

We did visit Wyoming a couple of weeks ago. Had 2 job interviews. One in Casper and the other in Lander. PCI of Lander won. However, we spent our first 2 nights in Casper...wish we would have stayed in Lander after we went there and felt the hominess of the town.

Another question is ... the job pays $60,000 annually. Is that good or bad for living up there? Here in Oklahoma it would be "decent".

And my final question....we are SO wanting mega snow. About how much per winter does the area see? does it stick around, or melt away the next day or two (like oklahoma snow does)? Are there ever times where it would be so heavy we'd be snowed in?

Thanks so much

[rya700]

Rentals here in Lander are difficult to come but you might get lucky - check out landertalk. How much land do you need for 6 horses? Not sure what you want to spend on a house but do look at real estate prices and availability for properties with enough acrage....i'm thinking it might be pretty limited on 60k a year unless you have a down payment. Lack of affordable housing is definately the downside to Lander. You may want to consider Riverton/Kinnear where it's cheaper.

Not sure how many homeschoolers there are in the area but I do have 2 neighbors who do so. The past 2 winters were horrendous so you may be in luck for 'mega snow.' It didnt melt off at all until march.

Good luck with your relocation, welcome to lander.

[Brian_M]

Yup, Lander rentals are highly sought after ~ besides Landertalk, contact one of the realtor offices as they all have a listing of all available rentals (and most of them are property managers for those rentals anyway).

Can't help with the horses thing, I lived my whole life in-town. Ditto on the home schooling, But I did work for the library and know they have resources available for home schoolers and would probably be your best resource for getting info when you first move there.

My wife and I (no kids) lived VERY Well on $60k/year in Lander. Fully able to utilize the 30 vacation days we both received each year with several long vacations each year. I know kids can be costly, but I don't believe my family made anywhere close to that while I was growing up.

As for the snow... you'll have to wait and see. Some winters will have 2~3 feet hanging around from Nov till April, other winters it'll snow lightly 2 or 3 times all winter and be brown the rest of the time. I remember some years when bruces campground wasn't fit for the normal drop-off of snowmobiles. I vividly remember playing golf all winter a few times back in the late 80's and early 90's too. Though I guess perspective comes into play too... 'mega snow' to me means more than 4' on the ground (which I've seen in Lander).

Good luck in Lander.

[Popoagie]

Lander is much pricier than it was even ten years ago. All the best.

[Popoagie]

Regarding homeschooling, Wyoming requires that you have the school superintendent approve your choice of textbooks, at least in Jackson. As a seasoned homeschooler, I would recommend that you collect books that are similar to those in the public school as your official books, so long as you know you can cover the basics in them with your actual plan, and then just use whatever works for you. Please not I'm not suggesting you not cover the material in those books. I find state control of homeschooling to be intrusive, but I provided an extremely rich education for my son. For families who might not be as intense about education and need to be, perhaps approval might benefit them. I simply find that whatever a state requires is usually just a hassle and extra work because my son always was studying far beyond what the local school requirements were. Wyoming has a strong educational system, and so I would expect that they would take that approval process seriously. You might consider getting online and finding used books from another Wyoming family--books that were already approved but that you can get cheap because they are used, and submitting those, just to make things simpler. Or, just get the names of books approved, and make sure they are at least at the "age appropriate level" and then buy them online as cheaply as possible. My own son would end up using over a hundred books during the school year, and we had all kinds of ways to get free or cheap books, so if we were living in Wyoming at the time, I would have done as outlined here so that it's just a standard approval. He was years ahead, but I wouldn't have bothered to give them dozens of advanced books as though would have just put them in a quandry about whether they can approve such advanced books and so many for a kid his age. As long as your child could pass a test on each of the books by the end of the school year, you should be good. You can even review the material in those books at the beginning and end of the year if you want if you don't want them to be your main teaching materials.

One of our main sources for books was the local university. We'd just walk into a department during planning days and ask professors if they have any old or sample textbooks. We got thousands of dollars of textbooks that way, completely free. We were then able to give them away to other homeschoolers when my son had mastered their content and moved on to more advanced topics.

[Popoagie]

Regarding horses, you might want to look into boarding them in exchange for some service you can do well, such as bookkeeping, plumbing, electrical work, cleaning stalls and other barn chores, etc. Or, you could pay for boarding in other people's barns, but I don't know if you can easily get six stalls. Ask around in Landertalk.