Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Northern Utah for retirement

I've been missing your 4-wheeler pics, tikkanut.

Haven't seen any deserted MX beach pics lately, either. ??

I’ve seen several comments about Logan being colder than many areas. When I was traveling there last yeRbit would often be within 10 degrees of my house in Missouri, both summer and winter. The difference being one was near 100% humidity and the other near 10%. (Maybe slight exaggeration). I do know that 15 degrees in Utah barely warranted much more than a jacket. 15 degrees here in Missouri I’m donning a vest and a heavy Carhartt. It was very noticeable. Even more reason it’s awesome out there.

Something to keep in mind for sure. I first moved to Boise in 1998. It was a wonderful small city then full of very nice and considerate people with affordable housing and good hunting within 30 min drive.

Boise is very different now. Still great compared to many places but much more crowded and expensive. My brothers neighborhood now has many Somali and Sudanese refugees.

There was a pretty violent attack at a birthday party near my brothers house where some lunatic from LA I believe attacked a bunch of refugee kids from the middle east at a birthday party. I think a 3 year old died. No one could have even imagined something like that in Boise 20 years ago. It's a much more diverse place now with more refugees from California and other 3rd world countries.

It is a good idea to pick a place maybe smaller and more rural than your ideal because it will likely grow like crazy. There are nice areas that are a bit isolated by being far from interstates that can still be nice. Someone mentioned Salmon and that is a great isolated little town.

Keep in mind that smaller towns can be a little harder on kids. If your kids are attractive and well adjusted socially they'll do fine almost anywhere. If they are a little quirky or socially awkward they may have better chances at finding a social group in s bigger area.

Some towns in Idaho are very nice and accepting and some are very harsh and Cliquey. Oakley Idaho for example, if you weren't from one of a dozen families that thought they were awesome you couldn't be part of their group. Their high school also seemed very cliquey. 20 miles down the road in Burley I felt like everyone was much less cliquey and accepting of almost anyone. Although Burley has really gone down hill in 30 years.

Aberdeen was another terribly cliquey town where if you weren't from a handful of farm families they acted like you weren't worthy to be seen with them. Some people have lived in small towns their whole life and have never left so they have what I call a big turd in a small cesspool attitude. Their attitudes come from their own ignorance and insecurities as they still try to perpetuate their high school bad a reputation well into old age.

If you move to a small area try to rent the first year. Most are great but if you get a bad one there may be one that suits you much better 20 miles down the road. I'm still amazed at how different things are in Rigby verses Rexburg. Rexburg is almost all Mormon and everyone kind of knew your situation but my neighbors could be trusted and many were willing to help anytime you needed it.

We had 20 plus people show up at our house in Rexburg to help us move. The neighbors in Rigby had told everyone around we were coming and told us they would all help move us in but only 1 guy showed up. No worries though, a couple of our old neighbors in Rexburg came down to help move us in. They saw no one was there to help and had at least a dozen more people drive down from Rexburg and help us.

In Rigby the locals that have been here a while keep more to themselves and their extended families. Lots of others now live here that are in our same boat being new though. Some of the people that have never left here are still living their high school days.

Some like to discount me as some city guy because I have a master's degree and have lived in several other countries. They think I can't know guns or cars or farming or whatever. It's getting fun now that they are asking me for help with their guns and stuff.

Local guy was giving me that city boy crap and was caught pretty off guard when I jumped in his backhoe and dug my own waterline while he watched. He said did you used to run one of these? I said not much, I was usually in a 988 loader or a trackhoe but I've ran a few this small. I then showed him how I still had a class A cdl with doubles triples and tanker endorsements. He called me the other day and asked if I could drive his dump truck somewhere for him. I was out of town or I would have.

Some of them think that if your not from here your not as cool as their mountain dew commercial country wannabe awesomeness. They tend to get a little pissy the first few times you out shoot them. I'm used to it though. When I was a kid in Burley my friends in Declo had that small town pride too. It took a while but they learned to accept the fact that a guy can have a college degree and still shoot and hunt right with them.

Bb

Bull chit. I lived just south of Provo in a little town called Spanish Fork for a while and never met a more friendly and welcoming people than the Mormons there. If I hadn't had to move back to TN because of family matters I would still be living there.

My buddy, I'm pretty sure you have met him at the rifle range you guys have there (nice range) anyhow he's originally from Ashton and his wife's family from SLC. So they were kind of outsiders. Far as people saying us lds/Mormons push our ways onto people are wrong. His best friend moved up from Texas, landed a full time job at the wal-mart in rexburgh and is doing great. But what you described as cliques in small towns you described the County I grew up in, in Easter oregon. So that can be found anywhere in small town USA folks still clinging to their high school glory days.

Gentlemen,

Thanks for all this knowledge and experience. You have expanded my area of interest and I will make efforts to see them all. I had written Idaho off as having too many Californians already. Most of them had made a lot more in the equity lotto than I will and so have probably snatched up the better places. But they may have different tastes than I do, so I will look around. I have not yet been to Idaho or Montana.

As for the Mormon community issue, I know that I will be the outsider moving into their area. I have had good luck with LDS kids coming by as missionaries. I am concerned as any parent would about the girls getting along and making friends. The renting idea is a sound one.

It's just too bad I can't afford multiple homes.

The ostracizing thing has not been my experience with Mormons. There are a lot of Mormons here in Salmon and I don't feel ostracized by them at all. Some will want to proselytize you let them know you're not a candidate for conversion they'll give it a rest. In that respect, I've found them much less obnoxious than your garden variety bible-thumper.

Good advice from Rocky......so & tooooooo many new homes being built.......it all takes W A T E R ....

Buy an established home with all your utilities & water

The winter of 2018-19 was a blessing for Utah & all of the west..we need it every winter !

Nearly all the reservoirs this spring/summer in Utah just dumped water.....

Our irrigation company had 'free' water from mid April until Aug 1st.....or it went downstream.......

Plenty of places to consider.....I'm a transplant myself....Oct '79 from west PA.....never a moments regret !

Soooo much wide open space......in my part of Utah..........stop in some time......show you my land/your land !

Utah is a land of contrast........my first ex wife & mother of my children once said 'Utah is a man's land'

She now lives in Mesa AZ close to the malls & all that BS.........

right on, you've thought about this.

just watch "Napoleon Dynamite" even the local kids are ostracized if they are a bit different.

There is a desire for conformity that is normal anywhere, but in a small western town can seem very exaggerated.

Like a non-miner's family moving into a mining town, if there was such a thing left anymore.

My buddy's ex wife once stated about Utah...........

'You see one rock & you've seen them all........

Tell that to the natives 2000 years ago......

Tikka is also much closer to lake Powell a very good thing imo

don't fish/recreate there..............

but should..............

where does the time go ?

give me my SxS & a full tank of fuel........

two Ribeyes and several cold beers...........

forgot the pic

Damn Tikka that looks nice. Here in Heber they just announced there building a ski resort on the Heber/Midway side of the Wasatch. This valley will be completely ruined in 10 years.

move to Kamas ?

The way I see it is,...the Communists who inhabit the Pacific Coast are going to cause a massive exodus from the place over the next couple of decades. (It's already begun, actually)

If you want to escape being caught up in it,...and landing in the next Colorado,...you're going to have to get east of the Mississippi.

That doesn't mean that every place east of the Mississippi is Shangri La. There's plenty of liberal schittholes over here also.

But there's pockets of America that still exist over here that doesn't require you to spend 2/3rds of the year sloppin' around in snowshoes.

Kentucky still has quite a bit that is still reasonably priced. (Jackson Purchase in the western part of the state to the Bluegrass region in Central Kentucky) I don't know how long it's going to last,....but it's going to last longer then Utah.

Utah Idaho, and Nevada is at ground zero of the exodus that's occurring on the Pacific Coast. Those three states are destined to be inundated with Californians and Mexicans in the upcoming years.

The traffic is so bad already it’s aggravating. Kamas is growing out of hand as well. The billionaires are pushing the millionaires out of Park City. 1500 new homes being built around the Jordanale. We will have an inversion layer like SLC and Boise in no time.

Picks are great by the way.

Bristoe, one of my retired co-workers just move to Tennessee almost sight unseen. A lot of Californians who are sick of what our home has become are getting out. The problem is, California has been a bubble of Los Angeles fantasyland. A lot of people are going to have problems adapting to someplace that is not a mall. Expect a bunch of frustrated Vols to move your ways like Goths being pushed out by bigger tribes.

I understand that. But Central Kentucky isn't in the middle of nowhere. You can live in a very private, rural area in Central Kentucky and still be close enough to an urban center to get anything you need.

You don't have to move away from civilization to have privacy in Central Kentucky. I live about 8 miles from the county seat of the county I live in. It's a town of about 40,000 people,.....supermarkets,..major drug stores,..dentists, doctors,....they're right down the road. But in 15 minutes I'm out in the country.

The problem is, the majority of people who move to escape California, try to change wherever they land to mimic California.