Moving to Minot, ND. Help!

In My Humble Opinion
1

My otherwise beloved hubby got transferred, yet once again. This time, I get to move to Minot, North Dakota in mid-May. I’m teetering between “Yay! I miss winter!” and “shoot me now.” With an expected 8 to 10 year run, “shoot me now” is in the lead. Not moving again for a while would be nice, but . . . Minot?

Google is not encouraging – No Costco in the entire state, only advertised grocery store within 100 miles is a Super Walmart, lots of houses for sale, none for rent, damn few apartments, and 2000 census says exceedingly WASP.

Does anyone know anything about the area? Share a hot dish recipe? :wink:

2

I haven’t heard anything good about it.

Is your hubby in the military?

One of my friends from high school joined the Air Force and was stationed in Minot - and he absolutely HATED it. Apparently the residents of that town despise the Air Force Base and actively harass military folk. He even said that when we went out around the town, he had a wear a hat to hide his military haircut to avoid getting hassled. The base brings in money for the town, so who knows why the people hate it so much. This was after 9/11 even, so it sounds like the townspeople are real assholes.

My dad was transfered to the air base in Grand Forks, ND (I was born there). While he didn’t like it much at all, he has said a few times that I can remember, “at least it wasn’t Minot.”

I know this doesn’t make you feel any better, I’m sorry.

3

I’ve been through Minott, ND. We slept at the Holiday Inn there after driving for 36 hours straight (taking four-hour shifts) from Flint, MI; I don’t remember much about it, other than that it was flattish and open, and there was a really big air base.

4

I hope you love your husband very much. I’m guessing he is in the air force. I’m sorry but in my humble opinion, North Dakota is the armpit of the US.

If you like cold and snow for at least six months of the year all is good. There is a reason that North Dakota has the least population density in the United States.

I hear the endless sea of nothing looks good in the spring though… Sorry kiddo, I’m mostly kidding but you will need a hobby or just stay on the internet for 16 hours a day.

5

Pretty big mall. Includes Sears, Target, Penney’s.

Mychocolatopia.

Quaint downtown Shoppes in Ye Olde Downtowne. Also Town & Country Shopping Center.

Thriving arts scene.

Venue for both the Norsk Høstfest and the North Dakota State Fair.Hey, don’t knock 'em, they’re entertainment, and they go on for days.

Other stuff to do.

Really, it’s not quite the podunk boondocks that you might think. A population of 37,000 plus the cashflow generated by a big air force base can pay for a lot of operas and twee boutiques.

And, er…

The operative word here is “advertised”, I guess. Google “minot grocery” and “minot supermarket”. There are other shopping choices besides Wal-Mart.

Can’t help you with the winter thing, though. Sorry. My understanding is that it’s like Minnesota, but with fewer months of bad sledding. :smiley:

6

Didn’t Minot’s chew on the power cables of the Millennium Falcon? Watch out for that!

Er, no… those were “Mynock’s”. Never mind.

7

cough Actually, it isn’t. Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska have lower population densities.

8

I’m sorry, after I looked at my posts , that response by me looked bad. Sometimes you just have to move with the one you love.

Pluses- low cost of living. Friendly people, Good food, hopefully you are not a vegetarian.

Minuses- Cold dammit! Windy conditions, Give up on your hair looking anything like when you leave unless you like the look of ** There is something about Mary.** :eek:

9

:: follows links ::

Well, whaddaya know. I always thought ‘Minot’ was spelt with two T’s. I guess we weren’t entirely sane or paying a lot of attention when we arrived.

Remember that North Dakota is more properly known as South Saskatchewan. People from Regina go to Minot to get away from the cold. :slight_smile:

10

Tripler did some serious time there in the last few years, so he’d be good to ask. Yes, I did say “did time”. There are penal facilities that I’d like to see the inside of rather than get stuck in Minot. Fortunately that’s not a possibility unless I’m loony enough to take a job in North Dakota.

This is “Why Not Minot”. Good luck, and may God rest your soul.

11

I’ve only been through Minot, and I strongly suggest you cultivate gourmet cooking as a hobby and invest in block heaters for your sex toys.

12

My wife is from North Dakota. I spent a lot of years there myself. My wife’s sister lives in Minot with her husband and daughter. Minot sucks. You won’t be able to go outside much for half of the year, so invest in indoor hobbies (cooking, reading, quilting. whatever). Popular activities in ND include hockey (which is huge there on both the high school and college levels) and drinking. People tend to be extreme political conservatives and are socially cold to newcomers. I wish I had better news for you but Minot is a cold, barren, lifeless wasteland which is not tempered with a warm or colorful population. It’s known as one of the worst places you can get assigned in the Air Force. It’s an American Siberia.

13

Ah, Minot. It was the Big City that Piper Parents took me and Piper Bro to for winter getaways. The cross-border shopping, the indoor pool at the Ramada (you could swim while it was snowing outside!), the funny accents of the North Dakotans (we didn’t tease them though, since we were guests). Later on, Minot was the city I went to with my buddies to get the latest in electronic gadgets - that’s where I first saw a CD player.

Cold? pshaw. It’s the balmy south.

Flat? well, yeah, of course - the world is flat, so you can see the sky. What’s the big deal?

Low population density? you say that like it’s a bad thing. Minot’s got some elbow room.

Really, I don’t know what all the grousing is about.

14

You could go look at the statue of Sondre Norheim in the Scandinavian Heritage Park, who developed the Telemark and Christie (parallel) turns for alpine skiing before economic circumstances forced him to move to North Dakota where there is no alpine skiing.

15

They have several Christian radio stations to get you through those long winters.

16

Hallgirl2’s hubby is stationed there, and she moved about two or three years ago (while they were still dating) to be with him. I’m telling ya’, there are some things I just simply wouldn’t do for love or money, and from the sounds Hallgirl2’s been making, moving to Minot, North Dakota is one of them.

From what I’ve heard, what taterbug3918 says is along the same lines as what I’ve heard from Hallgirl2. The town needs the income generated by the military base, but hates them for it.

A few other things:

–Unless you’re living on base, the town rental properties are few and far between and are largely NOT pet friendly. They tend to be expensive as well because…well, the military are the ones to rent them (mostly) and the owners know they can get the rent.

–Nothing good to report about Minot State University. (Hallgirl2 did two years there.) I could go into greater detail about the quality of “teachers” Hallgirl2 had for her Marketing and Communication classes, but this isn’t the Pit.

–It’s bitterly cold in the winter with lots of snow. Summers tend to be quick and humid. Did I mention that the winters are bitterly cold with lots of snow? You’ll need to learn how to plug in your vehicles, drive on ice and snow (Hallgirl2 says they have no clue how to plow or salt a road), and bundle up like Eskimos.

–Yep, Walmart and Target are the big shopping places.

–Jobs outside of the military are limited to places that pay minimum wage with little or no benefits. Hallgirl2’s first Minot job was at a hotel reservation desk, during which they worked her Every Waking Minute. She quit to go to a national hotel chain’s call center, where the working conditions were…well, like working in a “typical” call center. She recently gave her notice to them, and they weren’t happy, seeing how good help is apparently hard to come by.

On the other hand, Hallgirl2 has made some good friends, some military related, some not. She’s also visited Canada a few times, and she now appreciates Pennsylvania (something she never thought would happen).

Did I mention the bitterly cold and snow winters?

17

I thought this was interesting (from one links of the above posts):

March 1, 2008
Minot Chamber Chorale “Mid-Winter Songs”
Concert
MSU Ann Nicole Nelson Hall

March is* “Mid-Winter”?*

18

I lived in Minot for three years, and loved every minute of it! I’ll post more later, but I left in the summer of '03, and since then the place has grown. There is apparently a new Super WalMart way south of town, but with all of the stuff in town, you’d never really need to go there.

Minot is a great place. Great small town, with a small town, family feel–but still lots of stuff for adults to do seperate from the kids. The summers were warm (and balmy at times), and there’s literally a sh*tload of stuff to do in the outdoors. Yeah, the winters can be brutally cold, but we got around that by not going outside when it was too damn cold for our taste!.

I’ll post more later, but I will say this: I envy you. I’d go back, except my wife would divorce me–she just hates snow. I didn’t mind it at all.

Tripler
The cold just helps keeps out the riff-raff and the damned hippies from California.

19

There’s one in every crowd, I tells ya.

20

What is this bitterly cold business? It’s the warm south, I keep telling you. We see their temps during the winter, and say to ourselves, “man, it’s only -20 C in Minot today - lucky sods!” Then we ship a Canadian Arctic cold front down to them, in a spirit of neighbourliness. :smiley:

As for the lack of salt, well, salting roads doesn’t work in our winters on the northern plains - too cold. Gravel and sand, yes, and ploughing.

Humid summers? that I don’t get. Normally summers in this part of the world are hot and dry.