Relocating, WY, MT or ID? (Cheyenne, Casper: RV park, extended stay, sales)

[offandaway]

I currently reside in the East and my company is closing their offices in the east. My husband and I have a pick of 4 places to relocate:

1. Casper, Wy
2. Bozeman, MT
3. CDA, ID
4. Idaho Falls, ID


A little background:
We will rent where ever we choose at first to make sure its a good fit for us, so i dont care about housing yet.
I am willing to commute up to an hour
We both love outdoors, hiking, camping ect
The cold does not bother us
Husband hates constant rain (unsure if CDA would have that due to the proximity to WA?)
We hate crowds. alot. Our dream would be to live on a 20 acre ranch with the only neighbors 10 acres away... We're quiet folks
Husband would probably want to find work on a ranch as works on a farm here.
We'd want to live near mountains.

WY seems as though its an obvious fit for us, but our issue seems to be that we love the Powell area of WY and Casper is way to far of a commute for that so we aren't sure of the benefits of Casper?

[sunsprit]

Casper's been very well hashed out on the forum for the last couple of years ...

Have you used the search feature to find out what has been posted so far?

A 20 acre parcel on the plains with your nearest neighbor 10 acres away is not much different than living in a subdivision. In fact, many subdivisions in the area are platted at 40 acre parcels, and in my view ... are still sudivisions. If you are truly seeking "quiet" (and privacy), you'll need to be thinking in terms of a much larger piece of property. Finding one to rent, let alone at an affordable price point, may be very problematic.

"Ranch work" encompasses a huge range of work skills. For the most part, making a living at this is not typically a viable proposition, and not a year around job in most circumstances. I know highly experienced top ranch hands/managers that are fairly footloose due to the less than stable demand for their work. Most have left many jobs through the years when the long hours without a break or time off have left them worn out, dismayed, and still short of cash for all their efforts.

As always, I'd advise you to come visit Casper for an extended stay sometime in the winter months to see for yourself what you're getting into. There's "cold", and then there's low temps with persistent strong winds in the 30-40-50 mph range with gusts of much stronger velocity for days on end which can be quite a different experience. Casper fits into the "windy" realm, and it greatly affects how one deals with winter living and recreation.

[offandaway]

yeah Im still figuring out how to search, thanks!

Where we live, we had to pay an extra 50g for our house just to get one acre of land. Its so overpopulated here that most subdivision houses have .2 of an acre. so to me, 20 seems like a lot. Regardless, when we look to buy a home we'd see what's available but for now we are just renting so we don't need a lot of land to start off, just something to live in.

Hubs can live off my income so the ranch work would just be something to keep him occupied, he's a hard worker and cant stand sitting still so itd be good for him. he obviously doesnt have to work on a ranch, but given he loves the farm work here it just seems like something he'd like

visiting in winter would be great...except we need to move by winter

[jody_wy]

My Daughter loves Bozeman, MT, she dose hunt likes to fish and ice fish. but she also has her dream job training horses .
Idaho Falls or as we call it the city of IF is our main town to go shopping at around 90 mintues drive in good weather. Alot of barley-potato-alfalfas farms, then when you get into the lava flow you will see more ranches, west of IF is high desert. most the development fallows the Snake River Plain. Alot of the farm and ranch work is done with H-2A workers.But there is always ad in the IF paper for ag or potato celler work

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by offandaway

(snip)

visiting in winter would be great...except we need to move by winter

There's still 3 months of winter left here ....

At Casper's altitude, winter is easily 6 months of a typical year.

[NWbyNW]

I would choose the CDA in Idaho. You get a great scenic location, surrounded by trees and mountains, lakes, recreation, but you are not subjected to as harsh of weather climates as seen in the other areas. Also Coeur D' Alene has a promising future for growth. You are also close to all the services, and culture in Spokane, WA. CDA-Spokane is considerably drier then the western portion of Washington that is green and rainy. Spokane is a mix of the two, with less trees, but still green none the less. You also get rivers, lakes, and many recreation opportunities. In the winter, there will be some snow in the CDA. CDA has lots of good shopping, and even more in Spokane. CDA is about 30 minutes from Spokane. It is a real nice area with urban, suburban, and rural areas.

[offandaway]

Are there any smaller towns around casper that I would be able to commute to casper? I live in a town the size of casper now and its a little too "big" for my liking. Also, I read some threads that north casper is the "ghetto." Out where I live, our ghetto is literally that, more people get shot than get in car accidents. Do they mean north casper is the ghetto just because its more run down?

[georgiainwyo]

One thing I know is that CDA and Bozeman would be much more costly to live in. Rent would be a lot higher. My sister lived in CDA and payed a lot of rent for a little basement apartment. It is no doubt a gorgeous place to live, but you pay a premium for that. Bozeman is similar. Casper and Idaho Falls would be more economical.

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by offandaway

Are there any smaller towns around casper that I would be able to commute to casper? I live in a town the size of casper now and its a little too "big" for my liking. Also, I read some threads that north casper is the "ghetto." Out where I live, our ghetto is literally that, more people get shot than get in car accidents. Do they mean north casper is the ghetto just because its more run down?

I travel extensively throughout the region, and virtually everywhere I go, every town, every city gives an impression of "safe" to me. That includes the South side of Cheyenne, which is clearly an older neighborhood of smaller homes that were built to a lesser quality level than an area like the "avenues". Pride of ownership shows and the activities of the people living there don't intimidate others.

But when I call on accounts in Casper, I'd have to say that the north side there leaves me concerned. It's houses are similar in construction to the south side of Cheyenne, but the activities of the people take on a noticeably different tone.

For example, I was there in January, and was headed to a restaurant on the north side, suggested to me by one of my clients. He forgot to mention that they didn't open until the dinner hour, so I had arrived early seeking to have an early dinner before heading over to the RV campground where I was staying for the sales trip. With recent snowstorm activity and another storm coming through, I wanted to be settled in as early as possible. Rather than wait in the parking lot of the restaurant, I toured the neighborhood around and found a nice two-block square city park where I could walk my dog and get some exercise, too. In comes several pre-teen and young teenagers, horsing around on their bicycles ... but the games they were playing with each other were physically violent. The yelling and dialogue they were having was their impression of how to be "tough guys", straight out of a hollywood b gangster movie. There was clearly a hierachy of kids in the group, and the middle ones appeared to be "enforcers" of some sort who were intimidating the lower ones about "respect" for the leaders. It was all sort of a "lets be gangsta's" type scenario.

Now I'd normally shrug this off as kids being kids, perhaps lead on by less than great role models. But the punches and running over the lesser ones over totally made up pretexts was past the level of role playing ... these kids were beating each other up while talking smack and how they'd "taken care of ____ ".

At some point, they spotted me and my dog across the park from them and decided that I, too, must be "fair game" for their role playing/intimidation. They also noticed my RV parked on the street and decided that they'd start messing around with it ... starting out with moving mirrors around and popping the windshield wipers. Perhaps with a goal of ultimately causing some damage ... who knows?

I've seen this type of vandalism behavior before and the point is to mess around and destroy other folk's property just for the sake of tearing them down.

OK, it's now getting dark and I'm walking back to my RV. The bigger kids appear to be menacing and trying to threaten/intimidate me, trying to grab my 20' leash for the dog from me, and so forth. It was like they were trying to find the limits of when I might do something which would be their excuse to get physical with me, and they kept trying in the several hundred feet as I walked back to my RV. Keep in mind this was a group of about 9 -11 kids at any point in time, and the older ones were my size. I just kinda' did my best to ignore them and kept on walking to my RV, urging my little dog along as she was interested in all the sights and smells there. Got to my RV and got in without further incident, but was not particularly thrilled with the experience. These kids learned this behavior somewhere close to home ....

Never anywhere in the entire region I travel, even in towns that have a reputation for having gang activity ... have I ever encountered such an overt display of wanna' be threatening and intimidation. And I've been in restaurants where gang type adults have been playing their games among themselves ... but they kept to themselves and their "respect" games never were to threaten me.

I'm told by my friends that live in Casper that what I encountered was not wholly unusual or rare. They've suggested that I not go into that area alone, especially at night. Given that the restaurant meal I had there was pretty poor ... I've little reason to ever go back to that area again.

I'd also mention that in prior years when I've flown into Casper and stayed at motels there, asking about a mexican restaurant ... I've been told about several that were supposedly really good. But the proviso was that I not go there alone, or if I did, the motel offered to shuttle me there and pick me up when I called them when I was ready to leave. As it happens, every one of the restaurants I was referred to were pretty bad, so again I have little reason to return to that northside area. For the moment, I've found some decent little restaurants in the downtown area and will head back to those on my next trips.

[Brian_M]

A couple other considerations would be the no state income tax in WY, and no sales tax in MT.

Bozeman was a great place back in the mid 1990's when I was in college there, but recent trips through there left me sad for the changes. It feels like a shell of a place now, inflated with a lot of money and ideas that aren't original to the area/town and what I liked so much about it back then is just stretched really thin.

I don't know about either place in ID, haven't done much more than pass through ID.