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I really try hard not to bash places because no place is perfect and I personally don't care if someone likes another state better or not but this has gone far enough.
Explain what you mean by this . And all of that stuff you described is also in Michigan except MI doesn't have as many mountains and isn't a deep red state like ID. And did you just call Idaho a densely populated state? The largest city there (Boise) is even less dense than Kalamazoo. And the entire state has less people than Wayne Co alone.
Lol yea, because Idaho has soooo much more to offer than Michigan . I'm pretty sure Grand Rapids has more amenities then Boise. And outside of outdoor activities... Detroit has more amenities then the entire state of Idaho. And if we need hunting, camping, ect up north is a short trip away but STILL in Michigan.
Yea someone has to stay, there has to be a few people left in Michigan... or maybe like idk 10 million people vs 1.6 million in ID. Yea, despite the many issues in MI... ID is more empty and irreverent on the national and world stage than Michigan will ever be.
Yeah.....you got the same vibe from his post as I did. It's pretty obvious why he has a distaste for Detroit, while finding ID the type of place to live.
I think the Grand Rapids metro area has more people than the entire state of Idaho.
But I guess if you refer to your fellow human beings as two-legged animals, you probably prefer to be around fewer of them.
With that being said, @f5fstop please stop with your thinly veiled racism, thanks. Please do not post comments like that again on this forum.
You're fine MS313.
Grand Rapids is almost bigger. West MI (GR and Kzoo combined) is for sure bigger and has a huge shoreline lol.
Quote:
Yeah.....you got the same vibe from his post as I did. It's pretty obvious why he has a distaste for Detroit, while finding ID the type of place to live.
Left in 1978 to Northern Cal with mother and family, came back in 96 to settle in South East area. Things I like are: greenery every spring and summer, clean air, red robins, late sunsets, no crowds, community programs, education, job market, real people and courteous drivers, thunderstorms. Things I hate, the roads, ice on the roads when my life comes to a halt in the Winter, negative temperatures, bats, mosquitoes, smokers, people that don't seem to care about their appearance or weight, Michigan M, hunting, hitting deer, coney dogs, tight social circles, wearing a coat 3/4 of the year as well as clouds from October till April, two lane highways with short merging lanes and pot holes everywhere.
I left in 1981. I've made my home and family in Texas and here I will stay. I want to come home, but there's nothing for me there now. All my family have died, friends have moved on. I have met up with some old friends on Facebook that are still in MI, but scattered throughout the state. We all grew up on the East Side of Detroit, and I wouldn't dare go back there now, not that there's anything left, anyways. Perhaps we could have an "old neighborhood reunion" sometime?
Alas, its true....you can't go home again......live and love while you can
My wife and I left the Michigan (Flint) for job transfers in Charlotte, NC in late 2011. We had lower paying jobs and were more looking for a change in work than leaving the state. Our income went up. We enjoyed the different climate. And we loved the condition of the parks, roads, and proximity to the mountains and ocean. We moved with a 2-year-old and moved back to Michigan with another kid on the way. For us, the decision to move back was based on a few things. 1) We were using a lot of vacation time to come back to Michigan for family stuff. 2) We have a ton of family in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. 3) We wanted our kids to experience things like the great lakes, camping in Michigan, etc. 4) All of our social circle was still in Michigan.
We agreed to move back only if I could get a decent job near Flint and as luck would have it, I found a great job at the end of 2013. There are times that I don't want to live in Michigan but we really have no reason to leave unless we want to experience something new. I switched jobs a year after moving and work for a University that pays great and has killer benefits including free education for my spouse and children. We live in a great suburb that is safe and quiet. We bought a pop-up camper. We are 15 minutes from either of our parents. Life is good.
My only issues are things like road conditions, winter/grey days (though I am so busy the season flies by), and that I miss living in a larger city with more options (as in not just one dance school for my daughter or things like that) and that the economy seems to be stalled since the recession.
When my wife graduates with her second bachelor's degree, we may move but perhaps just to another part of Michigan. I guess it comes down to being content. We're happy where we are. We think our kids have decent opportunities to succeed.
Oh man, this thread, what an amazing read. I don't have a ton to add, just wanted to echo what a lot of people have said already.
I left in 2010 because when I graduated college in 2008 there were no jobs. I ended up substitute teaching in 2009 and liked it enough to become a teacher. At the time Michigan had no jobs and a ton of requirements to get credentialed, while California was the opposite, so I moved out there and taught for 5 years.
I had a love/hate relationship with California for a lot of the reasons Coldjensens said earlier. I loved the weather, perfect every day. I loved being able to go to the pool, go golfing, go on a hike, and never have to even check the weather channel. It did get boring after a while. I also didn't like how we because we didn't get rain, everything was always dry. Nonetheless, this was a huge improvement from the weekly lawn mowing, snow shoveling, car-rusting weather in Michigan.
While weather was good, life wasn't. Going anywhere - the grocery store, gym, restaurants, banks, there was always overcrowding. The grocery store had long lines, the gym had too many people taking up the machines, the restaurants had slow service and a wait for a table. And driving anywhere in the morning or evening would always take twice as long due to traffic.
It wasn't just that it was overcrowded, it was overcrowded with selfish, flaky, superficial people who didn't care about you. I got tired of paying $2000/mo for a 1 bedroom apartment in Oakland and realized that saving for a down payment for a house was never going to happen when the state was taking 10% of my salary for the teacher retirement fund and 5% for state income tax. So I left for Nevada, where none of those things existed.
My experience so far in Nevada is the same as canudigit in Phoenix. It's cheap here. I pay less than half in rent compared to California. I get to keep 15% of my salary that would have otherwise gone to the state. The roads are always in good condition. I saved up money and paid off my student loans after a year. I have a great, stable job. Financially life is much better here.
However, now that I don't pay $800/mo to Sallie Mae, $2000/mo to my landlord, or $900/mo to the retirement fund, I'm more cognizant to what REALLY bothers me about the West Coast - the high transiency and culture. From 4 years ago when I bought my house out here, I've had new neighbors in all directions. No one talks their neighbors out here. While I do appreciate the diversity of Vegas, I do feel that it feeds into the lack of trust we have for one another, because we all come from different backgrounds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by canudigit
Probably most important yet the least tangible: I had never lived somewhere where most of the people were from somewhere else, which is common in most of the popular areas of the Sunbelt. There is something about being surrounded by people who have shared a lifetime of common experiences with you. Weather, special events, local sports teams, vacation spots in the general region...it is just very comforting to be around people who "get" you and where you are coming from and know the things you are referring to immediately when you talk about them. A couple of people in Phoenix told me that it can be such a lonely place because the population is so transient and people just don't invest in relationships with their neighbors. I could definitely see that. People move there for often very superficial reasons and they don't have a lot of knowledge of the area nor care to. They move to sit in the sun under a palm tree and not have to shovel snow. To me, life is about so much more than those kinds of things. I'm not faulting someone for doing that, it just doesn't feel right for me. I learned the hard way after moving away from all of our family and friends that sitting by the pool under a palm tree doesn't mean jack when your family is back home, on a gloomy day in late March, having a birthday party or laughing and freezing their way through the first baseball game of the season. It's people, ultimately, that make life worth living, not weather or surroundings.
This hit home for me, particularly the last sentence. I miss the people of Michigan so much. People cared back home. Not just about themselves, but the community. They cared if the school didn't have funding for something. They cared if an elderly neighbor needed help shoveling their driveway or mowing their lawn. They cared if their parks were being vandalized or turned into condos.
What was important to me when I was in my early-20s - getting a well paying stable job with benefits, paying off my student loans, owning a home, buying a new car, getting out of the snow - is not as important to me in my late-20s. I now realize the importance having family and friends to go through your life with you.
It looks like Michigan has a lot more openings for teachers in 2017 than in 2009. I'm seriously considering moving back, even if it means giving up a great job out here.
Oh man, this thread, what an amazing read. I don't have a ton to add, just wanted to echo what a lot of people have said already.
I left in 2010 because when I graduated college in 2008 there were no jobs. I ended up substitute teaching in 2009 and liked it enough to become a teacher. At the time Michigan had no jobs and a ton of requirements to get credentialed, while California was the opposite, so I moved out there and taught for 5 years.
I had a love/hate relationship with California for a lot of the reasons Coldjensens said earlier. I loved the weather, perfect every day. I loved being able to go to the pool, go golfing, go on a hike, and never have to even check the weather channel. It did get boring after a while. I also didn't like how we because we didn't get rain, everything was always dry. Nonetheless, this was a huge improvement from the weekly lawn mowing, snow shoveling, car-rusting weather in Michigan.
While weather was good, life wasn't. Going anywhere - the grocery store, gym, restaurants, banks, there was always overcrowding. The grocery store had long lines, the gym had too many people taking up the machines, the restaurants had slow service and a wait for a table. And driving anywhere in the morning or evening would always take twice as long due to traffic.
It wasn't just that it was overcrowded, it was overcrowded with selfish, flaky, superficial people who didn't care about you. I got tired of paying $2000/mo for a 1 bedroom apartment in Oakland and realized that saving for a down payment for a house was never going to happen when the state was taking 10% of my salary for the teacher retirement fund and 5% for state income tax. So I left for Nevada, where none of those things existed.
My experience so far in Nevada is the same as canudigit in Phoenix. It's cheap here. I pay less than half in rent compared to California. I get to keep 15% of my salary that would have otherwise gone to the state. The roads are always in good condition. I saved up money and paid off my student loans after a year. I have a great, stable job. Financially life is much better here.
However, now that I don't pay $800/mo to Sallie Mae, $2000/mo to my landlord, or $900/mo to the retirement fund, I'm more cognizant to what REALLY bothers me about the West Coast - the high transiency and culture. From 4 years ago when I bought my house out here, I've had new neighbors in all directions. No one talks their neighbors out here. While I do appreciate the diversity of Vegas, I do feel that it feeds into the lack of trust we have for one another, because we all come from different backgrounds.
This hit home for me, particularly the last sentence. I miss the people of Michigan so much. People cared back home. Not just about themselves, but the community. They cared if the school didn't have funding for something. They cared if an elderly neighbor needed help shoveling their driveway or mowing their lawn. They cared if their parks were being vandalized or turned into condos.
What was important to me when I was in my early-20s - getting a well paying stable job with benefits, paying off my student loans, owning a home, buying a new car, getting out of the snow - is not as important to me in my late-20s. I now realize the importance having family and friends to go through your life with you.
It looks like Michigan has a lot more openings for teachers in 2017 than in 2009. I'm seriously considering moving back, even if it means giving up a great job out here.
I'm glad you could identify with my experience in Arizona. I've only been to Vegas once briefly so I've never seen an actual neighborhood there firsthand because we were only there long enough to fly in, rent a car, and drive to San Diego. However, I know that in our neighborhood in Phoenix the houses all had two or three car garages and back yards that were walled in with concrete block fences, which seems to be the norm in subdivisions out there. People would come home in the evening, pull into their garages, shut the door and never be seen again until they drove away again the next morning. We would go for a walk on a summer evening because when the temp dropped down into the 90s in the evening it actually felt good and temperate to us because of the low humidity. It was rare that we came across anyone else outside unless they were doing something like watering their flowers and they almost never acknowledged us or said hello unless we said it first. It was so different from here where people are usually so open and friendly. Our time in Phoenix was a very lonely time for us between how the people there were and missing our families. We have never regretted for one second coming home and we won't move away again. Lesson learned.
I left MI at 15 when my parents moved to NC. By the time I was established in a career they were getting to a point where they needed family nearby (health issues and the like). Now that they've passed, I'm hoping to move back to MI, ideally somewhere in the northern LP. Finding a job is, as is so often the case, the issue. Oh well. I have a decent job now that allows for a lot of new skill acquisition, so with any luck I'll find something in the next year or so.
It's nice to hear from some of the posters that moving back has worked out for them.
My sister moved from Chicago--where most of the family still resides--up to Marquette, Michigan in the late 1980s when her husband got a job up there. When they divorced 12 years later she moved back to Chicago, but missed Marquette so much she went back a year later. Can't say I blame her. Marquette is beautiful city. I'm so glad she's there because it gives me a great place to visit.
Only in the summer or fall, though. I spent a winter up there once and one was more than enough. Sometimes they get so much snow there is literally no place to put it all.
Lots of snow in Marquette, but the highest average annual snowfall in the UP is in the Houghton/Hancock region and nearby environs of the Keweenaw Peninsula- around 200 inches, with the highest amount of around 400 inches observed during the winter of 1978-79.
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. And all of that stuff you described is also in Michigan except MI doesn't have as many mountains and isn't a deep red state like ID. And did you just call Idaho a densely populated state? The largest city there (Boise) is even less dense than Kalamazoo. And the entire state has less people than Wayne Co alone. 
. I'm pretty sure Grand Rapids has more amenities then Boise. And outside of outdoor activities... Detroit has more amenities then the entire state of Idaho. And if we need hunting, camping, ect up north is a short trip away but STILL in Michigan. 
