Family friendly small town in WA? (Seattle, Vancouver: 2015, crime, unemployment rate)

[texasdiver]

Seriously, you should take a second look at Juneau if you can find teaching jobs there. It is turning into a fairly diverse place. You have native groups, a growing Hispanic population, a Filipino community, other Asian Americans from all over, and so forth. You can live way out the road north of Juneau where the weather actually is a good bit nicer and be pretty rural. But still have the city nearby. I'm just not sure how easy teaching jobs are in Juneau. I'm guessing pretty hard because it is such a desired place for lifestyle. You won't have your ice fishing. People don't do that because they can fish all winter on the local fjords that are salt water and never freeze over. So people are out in January fishing for winter Chinook or halibut.

Plus, you have several daily non-stop flights to Seattle so it is MUCH more accessible to the lower 48 than say Dillingham. In fact, Juneau isn't really any more remote than the places in Montana you are looking at. In Montana you still have a 2 hour flight to Seattle or Denver to get anywhere else. So not really any different from Juneau. In fact many parts of Montana are much more isolated because you'll be driving for hours just to the nearest regional airport to get out of the state.

[CrazyDonkey]

Try Spokane area/NE WA - much cheaper rents/r.e. values compared to W WA. Kettle Falls, Colville, Chewelah, Republic, etc.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

Seriously, you should take a second look at Juneau if you can find teaching jobs there. It is turning into a fairly diverse place. You have native groups, a growing Hispanic population, a Filipino community, other Asian Americans from all over, and so forth. You can live way out the road north of Juneau where the weather actually is a good bit nicer and be pretty rural. But still have the city nearby. I'm just not sure how easy teaching jobs are in Juneau. I'm guessing pretty hard because it is such a desired place for lifestyle. You won't have your ice fishing. People don't do that because they can fish all winter on the local fjords that are salt water and never freeze over. So people are out in January fishing for winter Chinook or halibut.

Plus, you have several daily non-stop flights to Seattle so it is MUCH more accessible to the lower 48 than say Dillingham. In fact, Juneau isn't really any more remote than the places in Montana you are looking at. In Montana you still have a 2 hour flight to Seattle or Denver to get anywhere else. So not really any different from Juneau. In fact many parts of Montana are much more isolated because you'll be driving for hours just to the nearest regional airport to get out of the state.

What's this, about salt water not freezing over in the north? Russia missed that particular memo.

[509]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

Plus, you have several daily non-stop flights to Seattle so it is MUCH more accessible to the lower 48 than say Dillingham. In fact, Juneau isn't really any more remote than the places in Montana you are looking at. In Montana you still have a 2 hour flight to Seattle or Denver to get anywhere else. So not really any different from Juneau. In fact many parts of Montana are much more isolated because you'll be driving for hours just to the nearest regional airport to get out of the state.

Yaak MT to Spokane WA...3 hrs 16 minutes....156 miles.

You can fly anywhere from Spokane.

[puff5655]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

Seriously, you should take a second look at Juneau if you can find teaching jobs there. .

Texasdiver, we lived in Haines for a year, so we spent plenty of time in Juneau (including 3 weeks straight while I waited to have my baby there). It's beautiful, but very crowded, and real estate is out of control. Many people love it, but it would have been a bad fit for us. Haines was gorgeous and people were polite, but I wouldn't say friendly----

one example that best illustrates this...
-In Haines, my husband spent the first 2 months there being social, trying to make friends/get someone to take him fishing. He went to every bar, community events, chatted up neighbors (he's a very social/likable guy), nothing... That whole year we went to a total of 2 dinners and that was our social life.
-Before we got to Dillingham, our future coworkers got in touch with us. They offered to pick us up from the airport, show us around, and help us move in. They invited us for dinner, playdates, berry-picking, and FISHING. Before we even got into town! That's when we knew we had made the right choice. :-)

Everyone else, thank you so much for being so helpful!

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by puff5655

Texasdiver, we lived in Haines for a year, so we spent plenty of time in Juneau (including 3 weeks straight while I waited to have my baby there). It's beautiful, but very crowded, and real estate is out of control. Many people love it, but it would have been a bad fit for us. Haines was gorgeous and people were polite, but I wouldn't say friendly----

one example that best illustrates this...
-In Haines, my husband spent the first 2 months there being social, trying to make friends/get someone to take him fishing. He went to every bar, community events, chatted up neighbors (he's a very social/likable guy), nothing... That whole year we went to a total of 2 dinners and that was our social life.
-Before we got to Dillingham, our future coworkers got in touch with us. They offered to pick us up from the airport, show us around, and help us move in. They invited us for dinner, playdates, berry-picking, and FISHING. Before we even got into town! That's when we knew we had made the right choice. :-)

Everyone else, thank you so much for being so helpful!

Most parts of Western WA will be like your experience with Haines. Pt Townsend, Sequim, Poulsbo, and maybe Olympia (?) will be a bit better, but don't expect a welcoming committee, like Dillingham gave you.

Part of it's about having realistic expectations. Part of it may be about people in a remote area banding together to help each other, as a survival tactic. Also, Dillingham's fishing is truly exceptional. It's the life of the community, from what I understand, and the salmon runs are a wonder of nature; particularly concentrated in that area. You need to be aware that you scored a truly unusual place to live in a number of ways. If you go around using that as your standard by which to measure other locations, you'll find you've set too high a bar.

That doesn't mean you can't find a place where you can be content, though.

[rkcarguy]

Kind of what I've seen with teaching positions in WA is that there is always openings in area's like Seattle where the cost of living is very high and on a teachers salary you won't have much of a life.
The small towns where the cost of living is affordable, rarely have openings and when they do they are fought over with many applicants.
Generally, anyone considering moving to Washington needs to do their research, as when comparing income potential to cost of living most people are going to be in for a rude awakening.
For example an acquaintance of mine moved here from Alabama for a state job offering $28/Hour, only to be able to barely scrape by in a studio apartment. Unable to save any extra money to eventually put down on a condo it was clear things were just going to be a treadmill of hand-to-mouth financial life, and they recently packed up and moved back to Alabama.

[509]

Originally Posted by puff5655

Texasdiver, we lived in Haines for a year, so we spent plenty of time in Juneau (including 3 weeks straight while I waited to have my baby there). It's beautiful, but very crowded, and real estate is out of control. Many people love it, but it would have been a bad fit for us. Haines was gorgeous and people were polite, but I wouldn't say friendly----

one example that best illustrates this...
-In Haines, my husband spent the first 2 months there being social, trying to make friends/get someone to take him fishing. He went to every bar, community events, chatted up neighbors (he's a very social/likable guy), nothing... That whole year we went to a total of 2 dinners and that was our social life.

Sorry to hear that about Haines. It is he one spot in Alaska I really liked. Oh well, doesn't matter anyway.....Alaska doesn't have any sage.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by 509

Yaak MT to Spokane WA...3 hrs 16 minutes....156 miles.

You can fly anywhere from Spokane.

You illustrate point exactly. Juneau to Seattle is a 2 hours 20 minute flight and you can connect to a lot more direct flights out of Seattle than Spokane. So, in point of fact, Juneau AK is more central and less isolated than Yaak MT. You want to get anywhere outside the Northwest you can probably get there faster and easier from Juneau than most places in Montana. Or especially bush towns in Bristol Bay like Dillingham.

That said, it appears that Juneau is not to the OPs liking. So it's kind of a moot point.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by puff5655

Texasdiver, we lived in Haines for a year, so we spent plenty of time in Juneau (including 3 weeks straight while I waited to have my baby there). It's beautiful, but very crowded, and real estate is out of control. Many people love it, but it would have been a bad fit for us. Haines was gorgeous and people were polite, but I wouldn't say friendly----

one example that best illustrates this...
-In Haines, my husband spent the first 2 months there being social, trying to make friends/get someone to take him fishing. He went to every bar, community events, chatted up neighbors (he's a very social/likable guy), nothing... That whole year we went to a total of 2 dinners and that was our social life.
-Before we got to Dillingham, our future coworkers got in touch with us. They offered to pick us up from the airport, show us around, and help us move in. They invited us for dinner, playdates, berry-picking, and FISHING. Before we even got into town! That's when we knew we had made the right choice. :-)

Everyone else, thank you so much for being so helpful!

Sorry Haines was such a bad fit. I never really stopped there except to wait for the ferry. But my experience in Juneau was the opposite. Most social place I have ever lived. But maybe that was just the office culture of the agency I worked for and the groups I fell in with. But I always had fishing partners, diving partners, hiking partners, biking partners and so forth. And lots of social invites. More than I could keep up with. Much richer social life than I find here in SW Washington.