Davis to Travis AFB??? (San Francisco, Sacramento: homes, theater, schools)

[mojokitty]

What is the commute like from Davis to Travis AFB?

[Curmudgeon]

During normal commute hours, NASTY, and just as bad coming back!

[mojokitty]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

During normal commute hours, NASTY, and just as bad coming back!

What is considered "nasty"? An hour? Hour and a half?

[enigmadsm]

I just pcs'd out of Travis...while I never commuted to Davis during the morning many times I went would be during a Friday evening or a sunday night coming back to travis.

I would say it generally took 35 minutes, and maybe another 15 minutes to get to Sacramento.

there are a couple of back roads you can take if there is a ton of traffic on the highway, it does get backed up pretty easily though.

I would check out Vacaville! I loved it there and its only 6 miles from base. Has basically anything you want other than the University at Davis...

[mojokitty]

Does Vacaville have many locally owned shops, dining options? Is there housing near these "downtown" areas? That is what we are looking for. Plus, I want good grocery stores/kitchen store options as I'm a foodie and love to cook. Also, if there are stores that sell organic and free range meat, that would be helpful. We are also looking for excellent schools. My son is 5 and we have come to realize that location and schools are very important to us. Does Vacaville still meet those requirements? We like music, art, etc. and would love to be close to these types of things. Thanks again for any help.

[enigmadsm]

In my opinion Davis is more of a college town than Vacaville.
Vacaville has Walmart, Albertsons, Target, Safeway, Sams Club, Costco probably 4 dozen different sit down restraunts, every fast food you can think of, a few bars if that is your thing. And they do have a few different organic foods/farmers markets. In either place i didn't notice too many locally owned stores or restraunts a lot of chains, but I'm sure if you looked either one would have some.
They also have the outlet mall there with Banana Republic, Guess, Nike, etc.
There is an indoor ice skating rink, a 16 theater movie cinema.
For the kids they have the nut tree village (which also contains shopping/restraunts), a free outdoor playground with a life size chess board/pieces, a merry go round, ride on train, stationary cars (firetruck,police car, airplane etc).

Vacaville has about 30,000 more people than Davis. so if anything Vacaville has MORE shopping/homes etc than Davis. I felt like it was a VERY safe place to be.

Downtown Vacaville has a park that has live bands come to play almost weekly, including in the summer they host the Fiesta Days, which has many vendors/food/music artists etc. very family oriented and the 4th of July they close a couple of blocks down and had a great fireworks display.
They have a HUGE park for hiking/horse stables/dog park etc right off of the freeway also.
For art i'm thinking you'll need to venture out to San Fran and Sacramento, which aren't too bad commutes on the weekend.

San Francisco has some of the most fun things to do and visit, from the fisherman's warf, to the 6 story mall that contains the LARGEST theater screen in the country, and 2nd largest in the world.

We used to go down to the Berkeley pier on occasion and cast a couple of lines with squid as bait to fish for leopard shark (they are about 3-4ft long and mostly harmless) that would be something fun to expose your son to its a real good time! you can catch and release, or if they are over 3ft than you are allowed to take them with.

I've never been downtown in Davis (at least that i know of).and the only times i really went there was to either check out some of the local bars or the snowboard shop and to drop off/pick up a friend. As far as i know they have the university and that's about it. It could be much more than that, but its a good 20 minutes farther from base than Vacaville and would be a lot more hectic. You can get anywhere in Vacaville from Base in less than 20minutes. Off of Vanden Road out the back gate there is a small strawberry stand on a tiny farm that sells DELICIOUS bags/crates of strawberries.


Hopefully someone else can comment on the quality of schooling in each. I have heard good things, but my son was too young to experience it.

hopefully that helps!
Oh and don't forget to check out Lake Tahoe in the winter time for some EPIC snowboarding/skiing! Squaw Valley is free for Active duty mil Sunday-Thursday, Northstar is free Sundays and Alpine meadows is free 7 days a week. All of which are normally $100 a day. And its about a 2.5hour drive. The lake is stunning as well.
There is plenty of whitewater rafting through Outdoor rec too.
If you venture down to walnut creek, they have a really nice outdoor mall with all the high end stores you can think of.
And Santa Cruz and Monterrey beaches are 1hr45min to the southwest they have great sand and AWESOME seafood!
Not to mention Napa is the best wine country in the US IMO, they have awesome tours in castles, train rides with wine tasting etc.

Congratulations on your Assignment and thanks for making me jealous/miss one of the best places i've lived! I'm stationed at Mountain Home now outside of Boise Idaho, and its a lot better than I was imagining, and really not a bad assignment at all, but Travis was amazing.
Are you active duty By the Way? If so, what is your job? I worked in the hospital, David Grant is a large facility! EDIT: I see you're in San Antonio right now, so it won't seem big compared to Wilford Hall lol.
Oh and being that its an AMC base, most of the flights going overseas depart from Travis or McChord, I've heard getting midweek hops to hawaii and Japan are fairly easy.

[enigmadsm]

Wow, I wrote a lot there! Hopefully it helps.

[mojokitty]

Thanks! That helps! We are stationed at Lackland, my husband works at Wilford Hall. We were told as of now, that we will be moving to Travis next...who knows if that will change. I just like to prepare and research an area before I move. I've heard both good and bad things about Travis. More good than bad. Like I wrote, we are just looking for something a little different than what we have now. Is downtown V-ville nice?

Thanks again for your help!

[enigmadsm]

yes, its not a large downtown city, but very walkable and always something going on.
What does your husband do at Wilford Hall? I work in the Lab. I have a few friends stationed at Lackland in the lab also that just PCS'd from Travis.

I couldn't think of a single bad thing to say about Travis other than the ops tempo, there are frequent exercises. But the weather is great almost year around, the BX is big (nicer than lackland's IMO), there is green grass everywhere on base, the TLF is very nice if you have family come to visit.