I just accepted a job in Seattle, and I’ve been wanting to move to WA for a while, because I have family in Spokane (but I don’t want to live there because of the climate). I’ll work almost entirely from home, so I’ll have to come in to the office only a couple times a month for meetings. Given that, and how expensive homes are in Seattle, I’m willing to drive a couple hours if it means I only have to pay half as much for my house.
Which means I am open to living almost anywhere near the I-5 corridor between the Canadian border and Chehalis, WA.
So my priorities are:
Reliable, high bandwidth internet connection (so I can’t be so far out in the sticks that I have to use satellite or something)
Mild climate and clean air
Low cost of living
Low crime
Night life and cultural activities are not important, since I’ll be in Seattle a couple times a month anyway. And no kids, so I don’t care about schools.
I realize that no one place is going to have all five of what I want, but if you good Dopers can tell me about places that rate highly in two or more of my list, I can at least get a start on deciding what kind of compromises I’ll have to make.
Comcast serves the entire I-5 corridor, and Pierce County has a publicly-owned cable company that provides internet as well, so you should pretty much be set no matter where you live in the region.
If you were hoping for a “mild” climate, you chose the wrong part of the country to move to.
Kidding aside, though, the climate along the eastern side of the sound is pretty homogenous - it’s hot and muggy from May until early October, and the mercury rarely makes it above 50 at night no matter what time of year it is. From mid-October until late spring, it’s chilly and it often drops below freezing after dark. It’s liable to start raining at any time on any day of the year, and snow is pretty rare, though we seem to get one doozy of a snowstorm every 3-4 years or so (in 2012 I got 20 inches dumped on my lawn overnight, and in 2008 we got 7 inches in one night that didn’t melt for two weeks due to an arctic front).
As far as air quality goes, anywhere outside of downtown Seattle is pretty good. I personally love the mornings in winter when the skies are clear and the air is about 15 degrees, because it just feels so crisp and clean breathing it in. The only real trouble areas I know about are the general vicinity of downtown and south Tacoma, where the paper mills produce a distinctive scent at night that reminds one of rotting seaweed and hamburger meat that’s been sitting out too long, and the eastern edge of the Olympia/Lacey area, which is home to one of the largest mushroom farms in America and smells the part.
In general, the further away you get from the Seattle/Tacoma metro, the less your cost of living will be. I live in Olympia and my rent is dirt cheap compared to my coworkers in Tacoma, and you can do even better if you’re willing to head down to Centralia or Chehalis. The added cost of that, of course, comes in the commute, which is especially dicey in the part of the I-5 corridor between Lacey and south Tacoma where it seems like a single motorist pulling over to the shoulder to close his gas cap can instigate a 15-mile backup.
Thanks very much for the links. The prices do look very reasonable. I’m a little leery of having only one road in and out, though. Do you know what Highway 16 is like during commute hours?
Yeah, I know it’s not Hawaii, but it sure beats Spokane. But I’ve been looking at Lacey, and it seemed to be significantly colder than Seattle in the winter, so I was thinking maybe you didn’t have to get very far away from the water before the climate got less mild.
VERY good to know; this thread has paid for itself already. I grew up in Spokane and visited the Puget Sound area several times when I was a kid, so I knew about Puyallup, but I sure didn’t know about Lacey, which up to now had been the top of my list. So I guess back to the drawing board.
What I figured. I found a great website that shows the traffic on I-5, and it was brutal around JBLM during yesterday’s rush hour. Still, if it’s only a couple times a month, I think it’s worth braving it to save maybe 100,000+ on my house.
West Seattle. I know there’s a ferry on Fauntleroy, but the last time I was there (a friend’s funeral a few yeas ago) the line was literally a mile long, and I just don’t have the temperament for that.
So it looks like 16 forces me to go through Tacoma to get to Seattle. I don’t mind that part so much; it’s the bottleneck at the bridge that worries me. I keep seeing that clip of the Tacoma Narrows bridge in my head.
Obviously they replaced the first bridge decades ago, and added a second one a few years back to handle more traffic. I don’t think that’s the bottleneck; but the last time I was out that way I-5 through Tacoma could get pretty backed up.
I wouldn’t dismiss the ferry quite so quickly. Even if the line looks long, you’re not creeping forward every few seconds like on a packed freeway; you can park the car and read (or whatever) until the boat is ready to load, and then you move forward a huge amount. You might even be able to bypass the line if you walk on, and then walk or take the bus in Fauntleroy (depending on where your office is).
You didn’t mention your price range, but Long Lake south of Port Orchard has very reasonable waterfront properties. The Internet connection is solid. Summers are wonderful, and you can wakeboard, ski, fish, or watch the many seaplanes take off and land. There are eagles overhead, otters in the water, and a variety of other wildlife.
The Fourth of July on Long Lake is unbelievable - about fifteen families go all out, spending thousands of dollars on the big professional-type fireworks, trying to outdo each other. I’ve never seen any city show that even came remotely close to this spectacular display.
It’s just ten minutes north to basic shopping or ten minutes south to Gig Harbor for more upscale choices. Traveling either way will give you views here and there of both mountain ranges and even Mount Rainier on a clear day.
I live near Port Orchard and work from home. I used to commute to Seattle five days a week via the ferry. 16 isn’t too bad–not any worse than any of the roads in Seattle. Seattle has a unique problem in that the main roads run north and south between the waterways. It is going east-west that is the issue as it is via bridges or ferries. Since the addition of the new Narrows Bridge the 16 commute is tolerable–before that it was a nasty bugger. Something about that old Narrows Bridge that just seemed to scare or spook people and they slowed down, which cause backups all the way to the freeway. Now with the addition of the other bridge we don’t seem to have that.
Once you hit I-5 in Tacoma it is bottled up again for a bit but clears out. Frankly if you are only going in a couple days a month I would do the ferry from Southworth. You can either drive on, or park there and take the bus from West Seattle and/or get off on Vashon and take a passenger boat directly to downtown Seattle.
If you have questions about the Kitsap area PM me.
My original intention was to move to Seattle. The way events transpired, I ended up in Birch Bay. My office is 110 miles away in Seattle, and I go in twice a week.
I have Comcast for cable and Internet. It’s annoying the way they randomly raise their rates, but it’s been reliable.
Temperatures are pretty mild, as they generally are all along the coast. We do get snow. We’re very close to the water, so it’s cooler here in Summer than it is just a couple of miles inland.
Pretty low cost of living. Houses cost about a third what they would cost in Seattle.
Crime, such as there is, in this area seems to be in Blaine. Here’s the police blotter.
Night life and cultural activities? Forget about it. If you want any kind of night life, you’re better off in Bellingham. That was my second choice after Seattle, but I lucked into this house by the beach. Housing is more expensive in B’ham than here, but less than in Seattle. One of my cousins bought a huge, new (built in the late-'90s, at the earliest) house overlooking Lake Whatcom, upstairs, downstairs, basement, garage, and deck for half a million. That’s a more upscale area.
It seems that weather is milder up here than in the Seattle area. Cooler in Summer, not quite as we as south of the Chuckanuts. We can get more snow in Winter, though.
Frankly, it’s a little too quiet up here for me. I lived in San Diego as a child, and lived in L.A. for 17 or 18 years. It’s nice not having to listen to traffic, sirens, booming music, screaming kids, and so on; but I miss the amenities of the big city. It sure is pleasant on a Summer’s day though. And the fireworks displays on the 4th of July and Canada Day are impressive.
Sequim (pronounced “skwim”) might be a little far out. I think it’s a couple hours of driving and a ferry ride to Seattle. Even though Sequim is the center of the Olympic Peninsula rain shadow, even places like Port Gamble and Whidbey Island get quite a lot less rainfall than Seattle proper, so those might be some closer-in options. Here’s a map of average rainfall: http://media.komonews.com/images/080826_rain_map.jpg
If your office is in West Seattle, though, it’s hard to beat the convenience of being down by Port Orchard. The ferry lines usually aren’t that bad and if you can figure out a way to ride it as a passenger instead of driving it’s a downright relaxing commute.
It never occurred to me before today that I might not need a car in Seattle. That really would be a major consideration, because parking would probably cost more than the ferry.
Verizon wired part of Shoreline, bits on the east side and most of Snohomish county for FiOS just before selling to Frontier. I have been with them from the beginning and find them superior to Comcast. Fiber to the home is great.
There is commuter rail from Everett to Seattle and decent rapid bus lines down highway 99, so the area west of I5 and north of Seattle has decent commuting options.
