Houston or San Antonio for outdoorsy families? (Dallas, Austin: amusement parks, crime)

[S.Allen]

I live in Houston and have been here since 1980.

If I was going to choose acity for outdoor activities or general livability...I would probably pick SA over Houston.


Why? Well, Houston is VERY congested and the crime here is crazy. SA seems smaller and easier to get around in. The real estate seems a little more sane in SA as well.


In SA, you can hike and bike the hill country and kayak the various rivers right outside SA. Houston's waterways are nasty and mosquito ridden and the Galveston beaches are crowded and the water is on the gross side, compared to rivers like the Guadelupe or San Marcos.

I am mostly in Houston, because of the better paying job scene, but if I had a chance to move to SA, I would do it in a minute. We have family there and are in SA probably 2-3 times a year, so I feel I do know it pretty well.

Houston USED to be a great place to live...maybe in the early 90s and back, but today, it is crowded and crime ridden and housing prices are getting crazy.

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by S.Allen

I live in Houston and have been here since 1980.

If I was going to choose acity for outdoor activities or general livability...I would probably pick SA over Houston.


Why? Well, Houston is VERY congested and the crime here is crazy. SA seems smaller and easier to get around in. The real estate seems a little more sane in SA as well.


In SA, you can hike and bike the hill country and kayak the various rivers right outside SA. Houston's waterways are nasty and mosquito ridden and the Galveston beaches are crowded and the water is on the gross side, compared to rivers like the Guadelupe or San Marcos.

I am mostly in Houston, because of the better paying job scene, but if I had a chance to move to SA, I would do it in a minute. We have family there and are in SA probably 2-3 times a year, so I feel I do know it pretty well.

Houston USED to be a great place to live...maybe in the early 90s and back, but today, it is crowded and crime ridden and housing prices are getting crazy.

Houston definitely has more people than the early 1990s (though traffic was bad back then too), and it's definitely more expensive, but I'm not sure the crime prevalence is any worse than back then. Houston has always had pretty high crime for an economically successful city.

[S.Allen]

Maybe, but lately, I have know of many people that have had their cars broken in to. People that said this had never happened to them. Happened to me twice in the last few years and I have never experienced this - even working on the East Side or near downtown.


Evening news says violent crime in Houston is up 24% over a year ago.

[LocalPlanner]

Originally Posted by S.Allen

Maybe, but lately, I have know of many people that have had their cars broken in to. People that said this had never happened to them. Happened to me twice in the last few years and I have never experienced this - even working on the East Side or near downtown.


Evening news says violent crime in Houston is up 24% over a year ago.

Violent crime has definitely increased in the last couple years (here and around the nation). I believe the rate is still well below what it was here in the early 1990s though.

Property crime may well be worse now than in the early 1990s. Some time in the 2000s, local law enforcement kind of gave up on really pursuing it - it's almost never cleared, if I'm not mistaken. Auto burglary has been pretty much out of control since the 1990s. Around here - regardless of whether you're in the central city or the suburbs - NEVER leave anything valuable in the main cabin of your vehicle, especially at restaurants or entertainment places, and NEVER purchase something valuable at a store and then make another stop on your way home. Most apartment complexes also have an auto burglary problem and have during that period as well. It's been that way here for a good 20 years. I don't know the stats, but it wouldn't surprise me if Houston hasn't been the auto burglary capital of the U.S. for a couple decades now, it's that bad.

[detachable arm]

Who is anyone kidding... San Antonio crime is up there too.

I think SA is better than Houston for outdoors but not by much. The Hill Country is nice but overrated, and has been overdeveloped over the past 20 years. You can access Corpus in a couple of hours from SA, which has somewhat better beaches than Galveston.

Around here you can do Brazos Bend, Galveston (recommend East Beach), the marshes near Louisiana, or go a couple hours up into East TX for the Piney Woods.

[TallGreengrass]

Why are you leaving Michigan?

[Ghost Town]

Originally Posted by detachable arm

Around here you can do Brazos Bend, Galveston (recommend East Beach), the marshes near Louisiana, or go a couple hours up into East TX for the Piney Woods.

A lot more than that.
Sam Houston National Forest, W G Jones State Forest, Huntsville State Park, Stephen Austin State Park, Lake Houston Wilderness Park, George Bush Park, Jesse Jones Park, Spring Creek Greenway, Baytown Nature Center, Armand Bayou Nature Center, Sheldon Lake State Park, several nature preserves in Cypress, Woodlands, Spring. Few wildlife refuges.
That's in addition to the list of lakes that I provided before.
You just gotta know places!

[Grainraiser]

I live in Dallas but went to college in Houston. I would choose San Antonio over Houston if was the outdoorsy type because they have more options. Getting use to Houston summers is going to be a challenge for you. It took me a full two years to adjust to that humidity. It gets hot in Dallas but Houston takes summer weather to a whole new level. San Antonio has Corpus to the south and Austin to the north. Plenty to do for a young family. Hell I would move from Dallas to San Antonio if I could.

[kwr]

Originally Posted by Grainraiser

I live in Dallas but went to college in Houston. I would choose San Antonio over Houston if was the outdoorsy type because they have more options. Getting use to Houston summers is going to be a challenge for you. It took me a full two years to adjust to that humidity. It gets hot in Dallas but Houston takes summer weather to a whole new level. San Antonio has Corpus to the south and Austin to the north. Plenty to do for a young family. Hell I would move from Dallas to San Antonio if I could.

Dallas is typically hotter than Houston temp wise in the summer and still humid. Dallas, Austin, Houston and San Antonio are ALL hot in the summer. Below is a post I made in another thread.

Average yearly relative humidity (%)
Daily City Morning Afternoon

67 Austin 84 49
65 Dallas 82 49
41 El Paso 50 27
65 Fort Worth 82 49
75 Houston 90 55
67 San Antonio 83 48

If your sole focus is outdoor activities, I’d move to non-TX city with mountains for hiking.

[RocketSci]

If you are a beach/boat/water person then summers are manageable in the Houston/Gulf Coast area, but if you are a hiking/camping person summers are definitely uncomfortable, to say the least. Our tent camping season ended by Memorial Day, as temps and humidity (day and night, along with bugs, etc) became just too much for us to deal with. By fall, when things started cooling in late October, the daylight hours were too short to enjoy more than a day trip, and after we once got caught in a storm front that blew through we decided to end our fall camping in Texas entirely. There are no cooler mountain or spring-fed creeks or rivers in the Houston area, all are warm muddy rivers and bayous with dangerous living things in them, or man-made reservoirs like Lake Livingston or Lake Conroe. For cool streams you need to head toward San Antonio.