Thinking of moving

[Goodwin17]

FH and I are thinking of moving before too long to either WV, VA, or NC.  I've never lived anywhere, but Alabama.  Who here is from these states, and if so can you tell me some nice places in your state to live, and/or places in your state to stay away from?  I'm trying to stay away from really big cities. 

[KKCondrey]

Well up until April I had lived my whole life in NC.

I grew up in the Newton area (same county as Hickory if you've heard of that) and about 40 miles from Charlotte. It is a small but growing town and you have your share of large cities with in an hours drive of it so you would never be board. It's about 70 miles from Asheville, NC (nice area, 2 shopping malls, small-medium size airport, colleges) about and hour from Winston Salem, NC fairly large city but nice. One of my best friends lives there and my dad is about 10 minutes from there so I use to visit it a lot.

If you do decide on NC let me know where and I'll see what other info I can dig up for you.

I also lived in Cullowhee, Sylva and Tuckasegee while going to school at Western Carolina. When dh started working for Ryan's he got sent to the Lumberton store (an hour or so from Wilmington, NC and Myrtle Beach, SC). So I've lived in the mountains, the piedmont/foothills area and near the coast of NC.

Any questions just ask away and I'll try my best to help

[Guest1]

Born and rasied in VA! LOOOOVE it there! Didn't realize how much I loved it until I moved to El Paso, TX! We have two colors here, brown & a little more brown - and two seasons, summer & not quite summer!

Fredericksburg, VA (where I originate) has all 4 seasons with definitive separation...occasionally, we'd get hurricane remnants (rain, wind) but not usually anything more...

I worked in the Cardiac Telemetry unit of Mary Washington Hospital which was awesome! It's a fabulous hopital to work in & for - there are alos oodles & oodles of private practices in Fredericksburg & the surrounding area...

The city is situated equidistant from Washington, DC & Richmond, VA - convenient enough for day tours of either.....

Olde Towne Fredericksburg is breathtaking in & of itself - like walking back in time to the Colonial days! Speaking of Colonial, you'd be in "day trip" range of Jamestown, Yorktown, Glouchester, and other historical cities...all offer "events" like Daffodil festivals, etc....plus the mountains!!!!!!

Guess I'm sounding a little biased, huh?! I think we've pretty much decided we'll retire back east - probably Glouchester....

Check out the Fredericksburg link here & best wishes for you both on your search for a new "home"!!

http://www.ego.com/us/va/fb/

[Ellise]

We lived in NC for quite a whilw. Are you looking for something near the beach? If so the New Bern is very nice, big city attitude small town reality. Central NC I would recommend Burlington/Graham?Snow Camp area, all small towns close enogh to big city shopping. Western NC I Love Hendersonville, Columbus, Forest City, Spindale, Bervard.

You know SC isn't too bad either here in the Upstate region. Close enough to the Mountians of NCabout 30 minutes & Tenn about and 1 1/2 hours. Beautiful counrty in NC,SC, VA.
Best of luck to ya. If you need any info on the areas I mentioned let me know.

[voodidit]

NC here too, All of the areas Kat mentioned are great and I live in Forest City with is a small town area and we are within 30-60 minutes of large cities, Asheville, Charlotte, Spartanburg SC, Hickory and more. Weather wise it's almost perfect, not a lot of snow here in the winter but close enought to the mountains to drive up to ski for the day, never overly hot in the winter. And the county motto is small town friendly, what more could you want!

Plus I live here

[Jessie]

We lived in the Burlington area of NC (one of those small towns mentioned) for quite a number of years before heading to the midwest, we moved out this way because in our opinion it was growing too fast and in that area there were many problems arising with crime and the way of living (we are more quiet people with old fashion ways and values and just wanted to be with a less stressful way of life). Now don't get me wrong, it's a nice area but it had changed so much over the 15 years we lived there it was time for a change for us and mostly because our children came along. I guess every city changes, but this area just grew too fast for us.

I think the best thing to do is to search the internet to help you find a town you think you may like. You can find house listings at realtor . com, and let's say you want to check for a house in Graham, NC. Put in that city and state, then if you click on any house shown., on the bottom it says city report, click on that , on the next page is community close up, and you can put in your zip code and where you want to move to and it will give you the difference between what you are living now and the city you are thinking of moving to, if you look more into it, it will also give you school reports and other things also. When we left Graham, they had about 12,000 residents now they are up to 22,000, and we didn't leave that long ago. It's amazing how transplants (big company transfers, and we were one of those, lol) and migrant workers who now stay year round now, have increased the population in that area, but these are "bedroom" communities, sitting in the middle of both R/Durham area and Greenboro (the big cities) We do love the beaches of NC and the mountains and we go back every year for a visit.

No matter where you decide to go, it can be a scary thing but also very exciting and I wish you the best of luck

[Goodwin17]

Thank you all so much for you support and encouragement. I'm going to do some research later this week. You all have given me some great ideas of places to investigate. This makes me feel better.