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You need to turn your thinking around. Fewer icy roads means you will be much less prepared for driving on ice when you will, and here, you will drive on black ice, period, at some time or place.
That is a fact of life here. What you need is confidence. Confidence only comes from embracing the icy roads, not shunning them. Ice is impossible to avoid here. The sooner you learn, the more confidence you will have.
You don't need a special vehicle. Really good winter tires are more important than the vehicle they go on, but the only thing you really need is experience and development of some new driving skills. Black ice is no more or less terrifying than driving in a rainstorm and hydroplaning; the same rules of driving apply to both.
Driving in snow is all about common sense. If it's snowing like a bearcat, dropping a foot an hour, don't drive. If you must drive, then drive only to the limit of your ability and you're vehicle's ability. If the snow exceeds either, find a place to stay until the snow stops.
If you want summer coolness, expect winter snow. The two go hand in hand. If you want to retire in a rural area, you must learn to deal with ice and snow; they can rule your life for days at a time every winter here. If you live in town, others will deal with most of it for you. If you live in the country, you will have to deal with most of it yourself.
We don't have as much rural traffic as city traffic, of course, but out in the country, really a lot of people drive much faster than they do in town because there is so much less traffic.
You want stop signs, especially out on the country roads, because they lessen the frequency of high-speed collisions. And if some kid going 65 mph on a 35 mph road T-bones you in an intersection after running a stop sign, your insurance won't go sky high- his will.
Road maintenance here depends on what kind of road you are talking about. Some counties don't have many paved roads in comparison to their unpaved roads, and some of those are there because they were once farm or logging roads, done with nothing but a pass with a bulldozer.
Paved county roads depend on the amount of traffic they get and the relative wealth of the county. Poorer counties do not maintain their roads as well as those that are better off and are getting more tax money for upkeep.
The state highways are similar; the state depends heavily on federal road funding, and the money goes to where the most traffic is. Sometimes a very narrow 2-lane gets good maintenance because it's heavily trafficked, other times a different stretch of that same highway is allowed to decay because there's very light traffic on it. There is no generalization about the condition of our roads that can honestly be made.
Crime in the country is very similar to crime in our cities; most is property crime, especially theft, but all other crimes are found in the countryside here. Actually, since Idaho is mostly rural, the total amount of crime is probably higher than in our cities per capita.
While we have tract housing scattered all over in the countryside, very little is approaching the scale it happened in California. You won't see thousands of tract homes built here in single subdivisions. You won't even see hundreds of homes built at once here, even in the cities.
Those country subdivisions do have advantages for life here; they commonly have a good well, are hooked up to natural gas lines, better internet lines, and less expensive power lines. Many have HMOs that take care of plowing the streets, most have better garbage pickup, and most are more accessible to a city than life further out in the country does.
Oftentimes, buying an old country house here means you may have to deepen the well, or replace a pump, and/or re-do the cesspool and drain field. Your electrical may be high, natural gas lines non-existent, so you will have to buy propane, which is more expensive, and your internet may be slow and spotty. And the cost of fencing has gone through the roof in comparison to what it once cost. A 3-wire fence can run $1,000 a mile, and a mile of fence isn't what you think it is- that's enough to fence about a 5 acre place or less, and all do-it-youself.
The other thing about buying an old country house is the fact it may not be up to safety codes in the plumbing and wiring. For a long time, many counties didn't require any building codes or safety codes at all here; a couple of farmers who knew how to frame would pick up some extra work building a neighbor's house, and as often as not, the guy who wanted the house wanted it built as fast and cheaply as possible.
That meant stuff like framing the roof with 2/4 boards instead of 2/6 or 2/8 boards, and raftering the too-ligh boards too far apart. Same goes with the floor trusses.
At the same time, it also means that other houses are build like forts, with over-built construction throughout.
I've seen plenty of both here, and a new owner never knows what's behind the wall until he either tears something out or problems develop. Some of those home builders were a lot better than others, and some families saved up materials for many years before beginning construction on their new home.
Until the early 1950s, home loans for the entire cost of a house was not common in Idaho. People either saved until they had enough, or until they only needed a small loan to finish things up. Home loans were something city people got.
As it is now, all the counties probably have codes, but some are still very lax. So is county inspection, in some areas.
I definitely don't want a house that is too old like 2000 and up is fine. The newer the better.
"Those country subdivisions do have advantages for life here; they commonly have a good well, are hooked up to natural gas lines, better internet lines, and less expensive power lines. Many have HMOs that take care of plowing the streets, most have better garbage pickup, and most are more accessible to a city than life further out in the country does."---------This is a plus.
Don't want no old country house that isn't up to code. I don't need 5 acres because that is just more maintenance for me. Forget the tract housing in California and the roads here.
We get black ice here sometimes so if you say is true it shouldn't be a problem. I have a car with wide tires rear wheel drive with most of the weight in front 57/43 so I am used to hydroplanning and fishtailing for the last 26 years on this car. I want to avoid stop and go driving and be able to back out of my own driveway without having to worry about someone hitting me or always having to use the brakes.
I am with you there. It was weird...we'd leave my property and drive down our mile of dirt road with 30" berms on each side, and get to CDA and there was about 2" on the ground, which melted once the sun came out. So I do agree with you there.
But if this is a person who doesn't care for a lot of snow, I would first steer them away from anything north of Lewiston...where we'd go play soccer in the winter because it was the only place nearby with any non-frozen grass...and winter temps in the mid-40's, not mid-20's like everything north.
Very interesting north of Lewiston. I know a friend in Grangeville Idaho but is in the rural part below the city of Grangeville. They aren't familiar with the northern part of Idaho.
I don't like lots of sun and I hate heat 80 degrees and up. An air conditioner will take care of that.
I do prefer cool or colder weather to extreme heat.
Very good explanation Sage...and another aspect of winters up here is that because the sun rarely comes out and temps rarely get above freezing (even if they don't get too far below freezing sometimes) the snow just does not melt much at all. Even if you don't get a lot at once, it can still accumulate and stick around for a long time. It is quite the opposite of CO for example. The snow is also usually very wet and heavy, which makes shoveling even a few inches a backbreaking chore.
Either the southeast side- the Snake River corridor, as its called- or the upper panhandle would do you very well. Between them, the south is generally sunnier in the winters than the north, but most of the state is quite sunny in the summers and very dry. You won't have humidity problems here, except for the lack of it.
However, 3,000 as a limit is going to cut you out of a lot of very prime territory here. It you can take another thousand feet, you will find a lot more of what you want. Most of the state has an elevation of between 2500 to 4000 feet.
The other thing is the snow. You simply cannot expect to get only 2 feet a winter here. There may only be 2 feet on the ground at a given period, but over the course of a winter, 3 or more feet should be expected. Snow here is like rain in Texas; it falls heavy or lightly, evaporates (even as ice- just like inside your refrigerator's freezer), melts and runs off, then snows, freezes hard, melts, and snows some more.
Just like Texas dreads a dry winter, so do we. Snow is our major water for the year. Sometimes you can have a winter with 4-5 feet continuously on the ground all winter, sometimes only a few inches. If you become an Idahoan, snow is just another season. Some newbies love it, some hate it, and most learn to simply live in it.
Idaho isn't exceptional in this. It's the same in all our surrounding states and eastward as far as the Great Northern Plains. But our winter scenery is as spectacular as it gets, and, speaking as a native, I much prefer a cold winter to a hot summer; when it's cold, it's easy to stay warm. When its hot and you are down to bare skin and still hot, life is a lot harder to bear.
Boise is the only general exception to this. The Treasure Valley of central Idaho is warmer year round than the rest of the state, and even then, snow should be expected. It's also typically the hottest place and the most humid as well, and it's where the single highest concentration of people is found.
There are a string of small and large towns running north and south along the S.E. corridor; Pocatello, Idaho Falls, and Rexburg are the larger cities, but there are many small towns in between them all. It lies at the edge of a great central plain, along the east side of the Northern Rocky mountains. Westward is open steppe- similar to N. Texas prairie, except more sagebrush, while eastward is more alpine and hilly. The closer to the mountains, the more mountainous it becomes.
Upland hunting abounds in central and southern Idaho. This is the area where our famous potatoes are grown. Lots and lots of farmland broken up by rocky, brushy country.
This is mostly trout country. The upper Snake River drainage is the largest and richest trout fishery in the United States, and stretches beyond our boundaries. The Snake River is the larges and longest inland river in the west that drains to the Pacific. The other, the Missouri, drains eastward. So Idaho also gets steelhead, kokanee, and a few other species of salmon as well. We have some bass in our southwest watersheds, but trout is our fish, and we have 2 native species.
We have international fly fishing associations here in the corridor, especially up by the border where Idaho, Wyoming and Montana meet. But I know of no high school fishing clubs here; about every 3rd or 4th person you would meet here goes fishing/camping/ hunting all the time, including kids. Especially kids, as it's typical family recreation everywhere here.
I live in Idaho Falls. Kids go down to the Snake, which runs through the middle of town here, and pull out a 4 pound trout anywhere they can drown a worm. 10 miles west is good upland hunting. I did both a lot as a child and a younger man, but I always fished the many creeks around here more than the river, and also did a lot of duck hunting along the same creeks. I went out on the Arco desert to mostly hunt Chukars, Pheasant, and Hungarian partridge. Idaho Falls' professional baseball team is called the Chukars. They're a native bird to this area. The wheat and hay fields are great hunting territory in the fall after the harvest.
The panhandle- essentially the area between Bonner's Ferry and south to Lewiston or further south (the term 'north Idaho' is pretty ill-defined here) is more alpine, with softer, less craggy forested mountains and several large lakes. Much like Texas, the panhandle here is a much smaller area than the rest of the state.
The big difference is Idaho is cut in half by impassible mountains, so there is very limited access between the panhandle and the rest of Idaho. There is only one 2-lane highway that connects north and south and stays within the state boundaries. All other roads leave our boundaries for part of the way going north and south.
The south has an amazing variety of terrain, and this is a big state. To really look us over would take 2 weeks, and a lot of driving, especially on our 2-lanes. Our Interstates won't give you much of a picture of what it's like here, as they were routed in the few places where big wide highways could be built.
I am a fisherman and I prefer cool weather to sunny hot weather.
FYI, a while back there was a thread about what is the southern "border" of the panhandle. That overwhelming consensus was that Moscow is in "North Idaho/Panhandle" (and I agree) and that Lewiston and Orofino are the northernmost part of "central Idaho".
Moscow is economically and socially linked to the CDA/Spokane metro area as well.
Moving on with the thread though...
I agree with D1975 that you'd want to stay south if you want more sunny days and less snow. While SOME winters (like this past "non-winter") only get a few inches at a time, it DOES hang around all winter.
While there is no "average" winter here, it is quite common for temps to remain below 32F for 60-90 days over the winter, with maybe a couple warm snaps getting up into 35'ish range...just enough to make for freezing rain on snow. And with the occasional sun break that we all love, it's predominantly overcast here from late October through mid-late April.
To move to northern Idaho, you need to really love winter...or at least come to grips with staying inside for several months each year and finding indoor/gym/social activities, or you won't last long here.
these temps sound fine to me as I prefer cold to hot weather. Also consider I will be retired and will not be commuting to work.
I live in Central Idaho in the Salmon River canyon at about 1500 feet elev. The average snow level is at 3500 feet. It snows here as often as it snows in Seattle and it is almost always melted within 24 hours. If you don't like winter, just stay low. Then, when you feel like it, you can go up above and visit winter.
We get about 1 week of sub-freezing temps each winter. Other than that, the ground doesn't freeze. When I moved here from Minnesota, I got rid of my snow shovel and my winter coat.
We typically get temps up to the 60's in Dec and Jan, 70's in Feb, 80's in Mar, 100's from June thru Sept. Last winter, we had 80 degree temps in February.
In the summer, it is as hot and dry here as the appropriately named Hell's Canyon. If you have access to water, the gardening is phenomenal.
I enjoy the 90 minute-each-way weekly drive to Lewiston for supplies. I get to drive thru scenery that most people only get to see once a year if they take a road-trip out west. It also beats sitting in rush-hour traffic moving at a one mph pace for three hours. Sometimes the drive goes by so quickly that we continue on to Moscow/Pullman.
"60's in Dec and Jan, 70's in Feb, 80's in Mar,"
This sounds good to me. I would go to Costco for most of my shopping.
Idaho County has no zoning or building codes although state permits are required for plumbing, electrical and HVAC work. Your insurance company is probably the only one who cares if you complete the state inspections. The only land use restrictions in the City of White Bird are no pigs, stallions, and free-range chickens and I know the chicken rule isn't being enforced.
I doubt that there is a place in this entire country with more freedom to use your property as you please. I can build a 100 story office tower 1 foot from my property line and there is no one I have to ask first.
On the subject of winter driving, I learned to drive in Minnesota where studded tires are illegal and driving on ice and deep snow is routine. We've learned the touch, the feel, and the response. If you don't drive past the limit once in a while you won't know what the limit is and how to react.
My friend in the rural part of Grangeville told me something to this effect that anyone can build a house where they want to in regards to no zoning or building codes. I wouldn't like that.
The freedom here allowed me to build my dream retirement home without any preconceived designs or drawings. I realized I was spending too much time making drawings and building models so I decided to just start building.
I started with the size and shape of the footprint dictated by the building site. Then, as I built each floor, I would stand there and look around to decide where the rooms, windows, and walls would be located. I tried to cantilever each floor out as far as the surrounding trees would allow. I had no idea what the final design would look like until it was done. The style evolved organically.
I kept building upward until it became too dangerous and difficult to go any further. I topped out at 4 1/2 stories (45 feet to the peak of the central tower). Some people think I am crazy to build a "retirement" home that is more than one story. My response is that the knees are like everything else, if you don't use them, you will lose them.
I also designed the heating/cooling systems to operate organically. The house captures the extreme daily temperature cycles with an 8 hour phase shift. The cooling system cost nothing to operate and has no moving parts. On a typical 110 degree day, it is almost too cold inside the house. Sometimes we even open the windows to let some heat in.
The Salmon River canyon here is oriented N/S so the sun goes behind the ridge early in the evening and the temperature drops down to the 70's for the rest of the evening and down to the 50's by morning. The few hours of blistering heat during the afternoon can be rough if you have to do any physical work. Even then, the air is so dry, you hardly break a sweat, and if you get wet, the evaporation will literally freeze you.
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Boise IdahO? 
much too crowded.
