Relocation Decision Time: Coeur d’Alene, ID Area vs Charlottesville, VA Area (living, cost)
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Our lease is up soon and we’re looking to relocate, but having a very hard time deciding.
We’re in the market to buy a home, with at least 4-5 acres of land. Our absolute max budget is $500k.
Jobs are not a factor in this decision. I work remotely as a software engineer, so we can live anywhere as long as there is a reliable high-speed Internet connection and good cellular service.
More than anything, my wife wants to have some land, and to be able to grow food for ourselves. She would like a to have a decent growing season, but not if it means lots of bugs and oppressive hot weather.
We’d like to live within ~20 minutes of some nicer amenities like good cafes, health-food grocery stores and restaurants. It’s also nice to live in an area that does have some good jobs. Not for us directly, but because you end up getting some nicer amenities that cater to that crowd.
We want some natural beauty and easy access to outdoor activities like hunting, swimming, boating, hiking, and road cycling.
We love greenery: green grass, green deciduous trees, and evergreen trees. We don’t like dry, desert landscapes.
We really don’t like temperature extremes: If I had it my way, it would never be hotter than 80F and never be colder than 30F. I get that the Pacific Northwest has very mild temperatures that stay within a narrower band, but we really don’t want to deal with the long gray seasons that come with that. We get enough gray weather here with the long Lake Erie winters.
With the caveat that, as someone who chose Virginia to relocate to myself, I may be a wee bit biased, but:
If you love greenery, than Charlottesville is your choice.
Driving down Skyline Drive is a sea of lush, dark green for 3 hours. Then you have the Blue Ridge Parkway for another 5 hours, the Shenandoah Valley towns - old Staunton, which is gorgeous, Luray Caverns, Lexington, Harrisonburg, Winchester, etc. You also have the Monticello Wine Trail [Charlottesville's wine country] and the Piedmont Plateau - itself with cute towns like Orange, Culpeper. If you want more strenous hiking, Old Rag Mountain is nearby, and you can also do the Triple Crown, McAfee Knob, Grayson Highlands for its wild ponies, Mount Rogers, the New River Valley near Blacksburg, and the New River Gorge in West Virginia - one of the greenest, most heavenly places in America imo.
Couer d'Alene is somewhat green but has a more arid look to it.
I do think you're missing a few of the key differences here.
Charlottesville is one of the most liberal cities in America.
Couer d'Alene is VERY famous for its conservatism.
Kootenai County [Couer d'Alene] was 67 percent Trump, 25 percent Clinton.
Albemarle County + Charlottesville city were were 28 percent Trump, 70 percent Clinton.
Statistically they are similarly. Culturally, these are completely different from each other. They feel different. Their cultures and values are completely different.
The other thing you're missing is proximity. Couer d'Alene is a 35 minute to Spokane, but everything else is FAR away.
Seattle is a 5 hour drive. Boise is a 7 hour drive. Billings is an 8 hour drive. That isolation works for some, but if you only way to daytrip in nature isn't too big of an issue.
For Charlottesville, you have Richmond an hour away [which itself is twice as big as Spokane metro]. Virginia Beach is 3 hours away, Washington is 2 hours away, Baltimore is 3 hours away and Raleigh is 3.5 hours away. New York, even, is 5.5 hours away.
Think of it another way: Couer d'Alene is 6 hours from civilization, while Charlottesville is 2 hours from the nation's capital and less than 6 from NYC, the center of the universe.
And if you love hiking, everything to your west is mountains [including all of West Virginia, half of Virginia, half of Pennsylvania, half of Kentucky, and the Great Smokies even to your south].
That said, IF you care about gardening, and your wife appears to, I would suggest you also look at places like Staunton, Waynesboro and Harrisonburg. Charlottesville's elevation is 600 feet while Staunton is 1,500 feet. That increase in elevation does decrease weather fluctuations. And of course, the closer to the mountains the better. The Shenandoah Mountains are 10 degrees cooler than the valley below.
Charlottesville will get above 80F and Couer d'Alene will get below 30F, so weather extremes are par for the course.
With the caveat that, as someone who chose Virginia to relocate to myself, I may be a wee bit biased, but:
If you love greenery, than Charlottesville is your choice.
Driving down Skyline Drive is a sea of lush, dark green for 3 hours. Then you have the Blue Ridge Parkway for another 5 hours, the Shenandoah Valley towns - old Staunton, which is gorgeous, Luray Caverns, Lexington, Harrisonburg, Winchester, etc. You also have the Monticello Wine Trail [Charlottesville's wine country] and the Piedmont Plateau - itself with cute towns like Orange, Culpeper. If you want more strenous hiking, Old Rag Mountain is nearby, and you can also do the Triple Crown, McAfee Knob, Grayson Highlands for its wild ponies, Mount Rogers, the New River Valley near Blacksburg, and the New River Gorge in West Virginia - one of the greenest, most heavenly places in America imo.
Couer d'Alene is somewhat green but has a more arid look to it.
I do think you're missing a few of the key differences here.
Charlottesville is one of the most liberal cities in America.
Couer d'Alene is VERY famous for its conservatism.
Kootenai County [Couer d'Alene] was 67 percent Trump, 25 percent Clinton.
Albemarle County + Charlottesville city were were 28 percent Trump, 70 percent Clinton.
Statistically they are similarly. Culturally, these are completely different from each other. They feel different. Their cultures and values are completely different.
The other thing you're missing is proximity. Couer d'Alene is a 35 minute to Spokane, but everything else is FAR away.
Seattle is a 5 hour drive. Boise is a 7 hour drive. Billings is an 8 hour drive. That isolation works for some, but if you only way to daytrip in nature isn't too big of an issue.
For Charlottesville, you have Richmond an hour away [which itself is twice as big as Spokane metro]. Virginia Beach is 3 hours away, Washington is 2 hours away, Baltimore is 3 hours away and Raleigh is 3.5 hours away. New York, even, is 5.5 hours away.
Think of it another way: Couer d'Alene is 6 hours from civilization, while Charlottesville is 2 hours from the nation's capital and less than 6 from NYC, the center of the universe.
And if you love hiking, everything to your west is mountains [including all of West Virginia, half of Virginia, half of Pennsylvania, half of Kentucky, and the Great Smokies even to your south].
That said, IF you care about gardening, and your wife appears to, I would suggest you also look at places like Staunton, Waynesboro and Harrisonburg. Charlottesville's elevation is 600 feet while Staunton is 1,500 feet. That increase in elevation does decrease weather fluctuations. And of course, the closer to the mountains the better. The Shenandoah Mountains are 10 degrees cooler than the valley below.
Charlottesville will get above 80F and Couer d'Alene will get below 30F, so weather extremes are par for the course.
Hope this helps.
So many good points here for the OP, especially the ones in bold.
I will add that Coeur d'Alene could experience some major changes in the next 10 years. I've read that there is a significant and growing surge of Californians moving there, which I think would affect the voting patterns, culture, and cost of living in the next decade.
I will add that Coeur d'Alene could experience some major changes in the next 10 years. I've read that there is a significant and growing surge of Californians moving there, which I think would affect the voting patterns, culture, and cost of living in the next decade.
The Californians moving there are very conservative. Look up 'LAPD Couer d'Alene' for some interesting articles going as far back as the 80s. It's a very popular spot for conservatives in law enforcement [especially LAPD] + Orange County emigrants to move to.
I hate to revive a year-old thread here, but once again my wife and I have come back to these 2 cities as the most viable options. We were going to go out to Coeur d'Alene last spring but then everything hit the fan with COVID.
We like Charlottesville because:
It kind of has four seasons, but the winters aren't too cold or gray
It's similar enough to the landscape that we come from in PA, so we feel right at home. Nothing about it feels foreign.
There are lots of great amenities: grocery stores, restaurants, etc. Cville punches well above its weight in that department.
The Blue Ridge Mountains are pretty.
...But what concerns me about Charlottesville is:
It seems like there's still some political tension there, given that it's a very liberal island in a sea of red.
It's going to be hotter and muggier than we'd like, and I hate hot weather, and I'm not a big fan of the look and feel of the south either tbh.
The bugs...the dense vegetation and high heat and humidity means spiders, snakes, and all of that stuff out the wazoo.
There's no appreciable body of water to swim in.
There doesn't really seem to be a lot of outdoor activities. Even Shenandoah National Park is basically just a single road that you drive on (as pretty as it may be)
We like Coeur d'Alene because:
It's in an absolutely beautiful area: conifer forests, mountains, big lakes. I'm sure it's a whole other level of beauty from what Charlottesville has to offer.
More like-minded people who are outdoorsy and conservative
Likely way, way, way more outdoor opportunities: better hunting, hiking, biking, swimming, fishing, scenery, the whole nine
I like snow and I hate hot weather.
...But what concerns me about Couer d'Alene is:
People are flooding into the area from all over and the area is growing rapidly. I worry that we might move there and 10 years later, it won't even be the same place as it was when we first arrived. This affects everything from driving the home prices way up, to increasing traffic, to changing the culture of the place altogether.
I think it's very very gray in the winter...maybe not as bad as Seattle, but probably on par with (or worse than) Cleveland/Buffalo.
Charlottesville better matches what you're looking for as far as climate and topography.
But like others have pointed out C'ville and Cd are worlds apart culturally.
C'ville is a left leaning college town, while Cd is very right leaning and has a very live gun culture.
To me, in the age of covid where governments are overreaching like never before in the US, Idaho is a much safer environment to be in if you value individual liberty. But not everyone does.
Coeur d'Alene is very far north, so that means days are short in the winter in addition to cloudy and cold. It looks like during December the sunrise is about 7:30am and sunset about 4:00pm. Just from my perspective, that means a lot of time outside work (assuming a standard schedule) would be spent in darkness.
Charlottesville is a wonderful small metro area, and the local hiking opportunities are not limited to Shenandoah National Park. https://virginiatraveltips.com/hikin...sville-trails/ One major negative for the area is that housing is very expensive compared to almost anywhere else in the Southern US. But the area has a far above average set of cultural amenities for a metro of its size.
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