Would love tips for Placerville/Diamond Springs area. (San Diego, Folsom: apartments, house)

[terankai]

Hi All!

After a 10 year post-college hiatus in Oregon, I am thankfully(!) returning to live and work in California. I am moving my family to the Placerville area in the spring. Although I spent most of my life in California (San Diego, San Luis Obispo), I am just now learning the ins and outs of Placerville.
We will be sending the kids to Mother Lode School District, so we have the covered.

I would really appreciate ANY tips people could offer like:
-Cons and watch-outs
-neighborhoods that have lots of kids
-local hotspots-hikes, bikes and waterholes.
-buyers agents
-or anything you can think of.

Thank you all so much

[justducky2]

Mother Lode school district is a good choice . That does, however, limit where you will live.

Cons/stay away from (IMHO):
In Diamond Springs, stay away from the area around Pearl Place apartments. Scary. Also, parts of Fowler Lane are not so great.

In Placerville, the upper part near Grocery Outlet, although this is out of the school district you want. Oh, and the "Duck Tract" across from the wastewater treatment plant. I think this area (Mallard Ln, etc) might be in Mother Lode's district.

I've had a friend comment that the supervision of the Boys & Girl's Club in Placerville is rather lax, she wasn't happy with it (no flaming posts from anyone, please, I'm glad it's there for kids who need it, this is just what someone told me .

Neighborhoods with lots of kids: well, that's hard, because there are all sorts of "neighborhoods" in the Mother Lode district. Some are more rural, with 5 or 10 acre lots, makes for hard getting around by kids by themselves (many parents do planned "play dates" up here). There are some conventional neighborhoods, and some historic neighborhoods. I'll have to think about that one and get back to you.

Hotspots - there's so much to do up here!!! We LOVE whitewater rafting on the South Fork American River. Also, if you want to hike near the river, there is a great hiking guide that I got for my hubby from the REI in Folsom that has hikes along the American River. There's also lots of hiking in the Eldorado National Forest, east of Placerville. We love the Crystal Basin, north of Highway 50, as well. There's also Lake Tahoe area, and the Cosumnes River, and, and... We love Apple Hill in the fall, in Camino. We love following the "farm trails" and getting fresh produce (love Graham's Shed right now with mandarins and navel oranges in the microclimate of Gold Hill near Lotus). For the kids, there is organized soccer, girl's softball, boy's baseball, football, etc. Biking, well, there is the El Dorado Trail. We don't like to bike hills, though, so we usually go down to Lake Natoma and the American River. I highly recommend the summer day camp put on by CSUS at Lake Natoma, all water sports.

Buyer's Agent: Well, I know some realtors I would stay away from with a 10 foot pole, but I'm not going to name names here!!! However, when we bought our home, the seller's agent was Marilyn Goff. She was a really good negotiator for the seller, whereas our realtor rolled over. We decided that if we ever sell/buy, we'd like to have her on our side!!! Other than that, though, I don't know anything else about her, except that she has a LOT of listings. Don't know any other agents to recommend, maybe someone else can help.

I'll think about your questions some more...but....have to go batten down the hatches for a VERY big wind/rain storm tonight.

[terankai]

I appreciate the time you gave replying to my post. It seems like this area is a great place to raise kids...so much to do. I guess what we will do is on our house hunting trip, we will just look for signs of kids.

Thanks for the outdoor tips. I was there on a detail last spring and am just amazed at the outdoor opportunities there are.

[mntnmama]

I live in Diamond Springs and the previous poster is correct. Motherlode is a pretty small school district so you do have a small radius. We moved here 5 yrs ago and love it. Whats your price range/rent range that will clarify what area you should be looking at.

[lolalay]

Hi! We are moving our family to Placerville/Camino/Pollock Pines area (possibly Somerset) in the next year or so. We want to build a home on some acreage (we want horses). What area should we focus on that has a good school district, is relatively close to 50, and has 10+ acre lots? We drove through the area and think it is just beautiful! Recently, though I keep seeing info about asbestos? Is that only in the El Dorado Hills area? It seemed like the perfect area for us until we heard that!

[hydro]

Most areas up where you are talking about building don't have the serpentine rock anyway, but check this map:

CAPCOA has a map showing where the concentrated areas of serpentine rock and fault lines along(where asbestos is likely to occur) along west slope of Sierra. http://www.capcoa.org/Docs/noa/%5B16...o%20County.pdf

You are going to hear all the nay sayers mention how asbestos naturally occurs anywhere in CA and how ridiculous it is to think about it blah blah blah, but when you are breaking ground and creating dust is exactly when it is important to know about.