The Best of the May Walkabout

Now that we are back home, we thought we'd capture the 'bests' from our trip. Here they are, in no particular order...

The best place we didn't stop, and would like to return to see: Lake Coeur D'Alene, in Idaho. We drove by it on the way home, and thought it was one of the most beautiful places we had seen:

Best souvenirs: Deb's charm bracelet from Carmel, and Steve's Mount Rushmore mug, which matches his favorite Lake Powell mug.

Food...

Best home cooked meal: ham cooked in Coke at Sally's. Best brew pub: Bend Brewing Company in Oregon, where we had a beer sampler, calamari for an appetizer and salmon pizza. Best pizza at Campisi's, in Dallas:

We had pizza with Sally and Art at the original Campisi, known as the Egyptian Lounge when Jack Ruby ate there the night before shooting Lee Harvey Oswald:

In a typical Internet "walkabout", I ended up reading 50 pages of the deposition Joe Campisi gave about his association with Ruby - and all I was trying to do was get a picture of the restaurant back in 1963, when Ruby ate there. So easy to go off on a tangent, on the Internet....

Best hotel: The Driskill, in Austin.

Best chain hotel: Fairfield Inn. After saying in an earlier post that our plan to stay at Marriott hotels wasn't working for us, we stayed at Fairfields in Bend, Seattle, Bozeman, Rapid City and Rockford IL - basically, the whole end of the trip with the exception of Portland, where we stayed at the Mark Spencer. We found the Fairfields to be a good value, plus their consistency was a welcome comfort on the long trip home.

We received our best insight on the final day of the trip, from a nice man working breakfast at the Rockford hotel. It had opened only weeks before, and was lightly booked. They had upgraded us to a suite, and were taking good care of their relatively sparse clientele. When I was getting breakfast, I told one exceptionally helpful gentleman that I was well acquainted with their breakfast setup, since we had stayed at so many Fairfields in the last month. He asked about our trip and why we were traveling so long. I explained that we were investigating possible places to relocate to and he asked me what we had learned from our walkabout. I said 'that no place is perfect', and he replied 'yes -- not until you make it so'.

It was an insight worth driving 7500 miles for.

Seattle: University of Washington

University of Washington is just north of downtown Seattle, on Lake Washington. It is the most beautiful university we've seen on this trip, and perhaps the most beautiful I have ever seen. It is full of coordinated pink granite buildings, all in pristine condition. Below are the Art and Music buildings, sitting across from one another at one end of the quad:


The campus is oriented to frame views of Mount Ranier over the Drumheller fountain:

The Suzzallo graduate library is one of many of the pink granite buildings, and one of the most spectacular:

There is a statue of the university's namesake, George Washington, in the Central Plaza:

Miller Hall, built in 1922, has 44 'gargoyles' that are very contemporary in their look. Here are closeups of two of them:

We were very impressed with the campus, and think having this university in our 'neighborhood' would be a real plus for living in Seattle.

Seattle: Model Evaluation

The final city on this trip that we are considering as a future home is Seattle.

Seattle scores well on four out of five dimensions: accessibility (good hospitals and airport), quality of life (great university, great views, cultural diversity), climate (despite the rain in winter) and job opportunities. In fact, Seattle has the best job options we've seen.

The problem with Seattle is cost of living. Housing is still very expensive, even with the recent declines in prices. Overall, cost of living is 25% higher than Hudson. If you back out the housing differences, it is still more expensive. Taxes are a mixed bag: there is no state income tax, but sales tax is up to 9.9% - living here without a job would be very expensive.

Overall, the model looks like this:

Seatle WA (Decision)

• ●Seattle WA is a good choice for our next home.
• ●AND [1 of 5] : Seattle WA has a good climate.
• ●AND [1 of 2] : Seattle WA has moderate winters.
• ○OR [1 of 2] : The number of days each year at or below freezing should be 10 or less.
• ●OR [2 of 2] : The average winter temperature should be at least 10 degrees warmer than Hudson OH.
• ●True
• ●AND [2 of 2] : Seattle WA has a good balance of sunshine and summer heat.
• ●OR [1 of 2] : Seattle WA has moderate summers in exchange for lots of sunshine.
• ●True
• ○OR [2 of 2] : Seattle WA has lots of sunshine but hot summers.
• ●AND [2 of 5] : Seattle WA has an affordable cost of living.
• ●AND [1 of 4] : Seattle WA has health insurance available for less than $1500 a month.
• ●True
• ●AND [2 of 4] : Seattle WA has lower taxes than Hudson OH.
• ●True
• ●AND [3 of 4] : Seattle WA has a lower cost of living index than Hudson OH.
• ●False
• ●AND [4 of 4] : Seattle WA has good housing for less than $750,000.
• ●False
• ●AND [3 of 5] : Seattle WA has good work opportunities.
• ●OR [1 of 2] : Seattle WA has good fulltime work opportunities.
• ●True
• ●OR [2 of 2] : Seattle WA has good freelance work opportunities.
• ●True
• ●AND [4 of 5] : Seattle WA provides a good quality of life.
• ●AND [1 of 2] : Seattle WA can provide a healthy lifestyle.
• ●OR [1 of 2] : Seattle WA has neighborhoods that provide a walkable urban lifestyle.
• ●AND [1 of 2] : Seattle WA has at least one neighborhood with a walkscore greater than 90.
• ●True
• ●AND [2 of 2] : The neighborhood with a walkscore greater than 90 has a crime rate no greater than 125% of the national average.
• ●True
• ●OR [2 of 2] : Seattle WA has areas with affordable nature 'compounds'.
• ●False
• ●AND [2 of 2] : Seattle WA can provide an inspirational lifestyle.
• ●OR [1 of 3] : Seattle WA has a high quality university.
• ●True
• ●OR [2 of 3] : Seattle WA has cultural diversity.
• ●True
• ●OR [3 of 3] : Seattle WA has beautiful scenery and views.
• ●True
• ●AND [5 of 5] : Seattle WA has good accessibility.
• ●AND [1 of 2] : Seattle WA is within 2 hours of a major airport.
• ●True
• ●AND [2 of 2] : Seattle WA is within 30 minutes of high quality hospitals.
• ●True

We have not ruled Seattle out, mostly based on the work opportunities, but we both agree that the city would mostly make sense if one of us had a job offer before we came. We've looked at real estate, and so far we have not found a house that we like that is within our budget.

Portland to Seattle

When we left Portland for our drive to Seattle, we decided to go via the Oregon coast. We drove west, and in about one and a half hours we were in Cannon Beach. It was chilly and windy, but sunny. The Oregon beaches are really spectacular, with fine white sand, whitewater, and dramatic rock formations. This one, at Cannon Beach, is called Haystack Rock:


Even the 'plain' stretches of beach are beautiful:

We didn't have much time, so we settled for having lunch (salmon sandwiches) and vowing to return if we move to Portland.

Then we headed north into Washington and stopped by to visit an old school friend of Steve's, Tom, who lives in Longview. Tom lives in a pretty little valley where he's created his own small tree farm. This is the kind of view he sees every day:

With our side trips, it took us most of the day to reach Seattle, a trip that with good weather and traffic can take only two to three hours.