It smells like fish and weed ALL THE TIME.

Sine poena nulla lex.

Sine poena nulla lex.

C@LAg said:

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Spotted Ag said:

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It smells like fish and weed ALL THE TIME.

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weed. a lot. .

fish, no. unless you are within 100 feet of the waterfront.

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And coffee. Sometimes you get the trifecta of fishy coffee flavored weed.

C@LAg said:

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wbt5845 said:

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PlanoAg98 said:

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One positive that I can add, Seattle does have a good active A&M club. You'll have some Ags to watch all the football games with at game watching parties.

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Great newsletter too

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do you work on it?

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The 2007 Coach Fran newsletter scandal originated with a member of the Seattle A&M club.

Sine poena nulla lex.

I knew the individual who was involved up there - great guy but surprised he'd drop that kind of coin on a newsletter. The inside info did help with gambling,, though.

Don't forget the vampires and werewolves. Place is a death trap for people.

Sine poena nulla lex.

C@LAg said:

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Bob Knights Liver said:

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Don't forget the vampires and werewolves. Place is a death trap for people.

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you forget the sasquatch.

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Don't be a dumbass. What the tooth fairy was busy??? These are real problems for real people!

Moved out to the Seattle area for about 4 years. Oddly enough 3 other couples from our church did the same about the same time. One of the most beautiful areas when the sun shines, no mosquitos, no roaches. That said, the sun doesn't shine enough...AT ALL. Short sunny season and months of gray. Do you love cloudy days for day on end? Of the 4 couples, only 1 stayed and the husband loves the IPAs. Rest of us moved back so 25% chance you might like it based on our group and this was before the recent mess in Seattle. Homeless is a huge issue there. Huge. That's without getting into the politics. Also, very tight knit family groups there. Difficult to break into friend groups. Search "Seattle freeze".

C@LAg said:

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PlanoAg98 said:

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Seattle Freeze

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The freeze is 100% true, but gets much less so every year. With the growth of MS and Amazon, and the huge influx of people from elsewhere, it is very easy to make friends and sex buddies at work, so the Seattle freeze really applies when interacting with the old timers here.

Plus the rise of social media has done a lot to melt the concept.

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City motto of "Moderate Amount of New Friends" reflects the shift.

I've been here 20 years. I have no desire to leave.

Sine poena nulla lex.

C@LAg said:

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The city and county. For Kitsap.

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Nice choice if the work thing works out, like if you can wfh.

Sine poena nulla lex.

C@LAg said:

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the plan is WFH 2 or 3 days a week, so still get to do a a lot of ferry rides.

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Eek, yea, that's the main reason I haven't seriously considered the west side of the sound.

Sine poena nulla lex.

Rent, don't buy.

PlanoAg98 said:

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Has nobody mentioned bikini baristas yet? Still not worth it. Rain, traffic, cost of living, etc....

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Had an office there for years. The coffee served by bikini baristas is piss. The townies that have rioted and looted are the vocal minority - most think they are idiots. Lots of spectacular green space and even more meth labs. Nation's highest suicide rate due to long, depressing, winter season. Wouldn't want to live there.

Sine poena nulla lex.

OP, I really liked it there. Ex-Mrs Fife hated it though which is a big part of why I'm in Charleston now. The area you've been looking into is pretty decent, however the commute to the other side of the lake is absolutely brutal. From what I'm told Amazon has a pretty high turnover rate so renting is a better idea than owning IMO. I found it exceptionally hard to meet people there except for a bunch at work from other places on long term domestic travel assignments.

Most of what I experienced has already been said except for the trail system in King County. A while back they paved over a bunch of abandoned rail lines and they make excellent biking/jogging/walking/... trails. My favorite was the Cedar River trail which ran from Renton to the aqueduct near Maple Valley.

Summers are perfection, winters just kind of depend on what you like. It doesn't normally actually rain, at least not like you're used to in Texas. It's more of a mist. There are sun breaks from late morning until early afternoon too. Snow is entirely dependent on elevation.

There's a lot to do aside from the city itself. On one side there's the peninsula, on the other once you get past Leavenworth you get into a high prairie kind of environment and if you keep going east towards Northern Idaho you'll get into the Rockies. It's a lot like it is in Colorado but less arid and colder, lots of hiking and biking there too.

You can also get to Canada pretty quick if you drive or take a ferry to Vancouver or Victoria.

I miss the hell out of the area but don't think I'll be able to move back.

Becoming miserable

Sine poena nulla lex.

I lived there part time about ten years ago - in my experience, it is going to be binary. You'll either love it or hate it. Summers are way too short and awesome. Winter drags on a long time. It is hard to drive to work in the dark and drive home in the dark. Try to avoid the bridges for going to work unless you're going to get up really early or be part of a commuter pool. Commuting on 405 is also hell. West Seattle, Mercer Island, Bellevue, Kirkland, and Redmond are good places to live. They have gotten really expensive.

Whoever suggested renting first is spot on. You may try it for a month or two and then decide it's not for you.

infinity ag said:

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I am considering a move to the West Coast as that is the place for my kind of jobs. Seattle is among the places I am considering. I have been in the downtown area but I cannot live there. The suburbs when I look through Google Street View seem like it's in the middle of a forest. It's just trees and trees and vegetation everywhere. Is that the case everywhere? If you are a Seattle area resident, is that something you like?

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I lived there for over 4 years.
I grew up in San Antonio, lived in Dallas, then Mountain View, CA and then the suburb of Sammamish outside of Seattle.

I was used to sun and lots of it prior to the move to Seattle which I had to make for my career.

The omnipresent cloud cover and low light really wears on you.

Even natives would suffer from Seasonal affective disorder during especially bad winters. I had 2 aunts from the Hill Country that had moved there in the
1960's and we had one winter where we didn't see any blue sky for 90 out of 91 days. Even my aunts were going crazy.

Don't go up during the summer. Go at Thanksgiving where it rained the entire 4-day holiday every year we were there.

If you despise sunshine and don't want to see more than 90 days of full sun a year then go. But don't lie to yourself.

During that bad winter a couple moved across the street from Texas. They left after 8 months and the hubby had a great job. Two others on our street did the same.

I assume that you work in the internet/software/IT field if you're talking about Seattle, especially living in Issaquah (which is closer to Microsoft in Redmond, which is nice.)

One thing to keep in mind is that Amazon is slowly withdrawing from Seattle, because the far left wing city council doesn't know how to treat geese that lay golden eggs. A lot of those jobs seem to be moving across the Lake to Bellevue, which would make the commute from places like Issaquah less onerous. https://mynorthwest.com/2151392/rantz-amazon-takes-step-abandon-seattle/

I did two tours (five years) at Fort Lewis, and my in-laws lived in the Renton highlands (about 15 minutes east of SeaTac airport) until last year. They de-camped for Kingman, AZ after my FIL retired because state politics has lurched increasingly leftward since the 2004 election (which was a mail-in ballot enabled fraudulent fiasco). Basically, the I-5 corridor from Olympia north to Snohomish is doing to the rest of the state what Chicago does to Illinois. The only thing that has been keeping WA from going full California is a single seat in the state senate, and the 2020 census might well change that for the 2022 election.

If you live west of the Cascades, fires aren't really an issue, because everything tends to stay wet. And yes, the suburbs are that full of trees, and ones that are much taller than pretty much anything in Texas. (My house in Lacey had 3 or 4 50+ foot tall fir trees in the yard.)

Fireworks are illegal, but you can buy them on most of the Indian reservations. Just be careful where you light them off.

If you hunt and fish, the laws are very different than in TX. WA has tons of state and federal public lands, as well as lots of timber company land that's open for hunting as long as they aren't actively logging in that area. But it's all divided up into Game Management Units (GMUs), and tags are only good for a specific GMU. Fishing is also more tightly regulated, especially salmon.

Tons of places for camping and hiking and things of that nature. Just make sure you have good wet weather gear.

Real estate is expensive due to limited supply (everything is wedged between the mountains and the water) and ever increasing demand. I sold the 3/2, 1400 sq ft house in Lacey that I bought for $144k in 2001 for just short of $240k in 2010, and I'm sure things have only gone up from there.

Make sure you get the terrorism rider on your homeowners insurance policy.

As far as hunting goes, deer feeders are not allowed. While living there, I had a buddy who was a big deer hunter. He had to track deer on foot. He was excited on trips when he saw a deer. My hunting days in Texas was deciding which deer you wanted that was hovering around the feeder. IIRC, you can take mountain lions/cougars with any deer license.

Langenator said:

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I do remember a funny story about one of the local Native tribes securing permission to hunt and kill an orca. Part of their heritage, rite of passage, and so on. I'm pretty sure the local enviro-types expected the hunt to be done from kayaks with hand thrown harpoons.

The tribe used Zodiacs and a .50 BMG rifle. The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the tree (and whale) huggers was epic.

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That's awesome.

Sine poena nulla lex.

Marauder Blue 6 said:

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Look at Olympia and Tacoma too. They're close enough to enjoy the benefits of Seattle but far enough away from the crazy.

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I live in Olympia. If you are commuting to work in Seattle you are going to have a real bad time. I-5 is the real deal as a life force destroying soul sucker. And this is coming from someone who dealt with the Capital Beltway for 15 years. There is a ridiculous homeless problem all over the west. It is definitely impacting the way of life for everyone. If they ever figure that out the summers before fire season (September if it happens) are lovely. Lots of skiing possibilities. Whistler even has a very reasonable lift ticket for WA residents. It is a beautiful state.

Langenator said:

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I do remember a funny story about one of the local Native tribes securing permission to hunt and kill an orca. Part of their heritage, rite of passage, and so on. I'm pretty sure the local enviro-types expected the hunt to be done from kayaks with hand thrown harpoons.

The tribe used Zodiacs and a .50 BMG rifle. The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the tree (and whale) huggers was epic.

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Ok, now I'm curious. A .50 round has to dig a much larger hole than any harpoon could hope to manage.