Move to Colorado
Colorado
Guys I'm going to retire in another year and the wife and I want to move out to Colorado. Looking for the right location. She still wants to work and does parts and sales. I've noticed the price of everything is sky rocketing . Crime rates are high in some locations. Of course we love to hunt and fish and hike and bike and workout. Any idea where might be a good location to start looking. Thanks Bowtech12
My first advise would be Wyoming unless you need to be near a bigger city. That aside, if I was living in CO and wasn't tied to the front range for a job or some other reason, I would be on the western slope but avoid the ski towns. Less people, more like-minded people as a percentage and easier access to vast public lands with less local traffic.
In the central mountains by ski areas the traffic is getting 10x worse in the summer than during ski season!!! The influx of people moving into the state and traveling on weekends out of Denver is staggering and that is on every road out of town!!! Its starting to get really stupid!!!
It just depends if you like a lot of people or not so many? Good luck.
I moved here in 2015. Sticker shock on housing and insurance. Bruising. Front range is tough but the further north you go.......past ft. collins......the better it gets.....east is also better. But if you can the west slope is best for affordability but not for work.
I did time in Denver. Springs would be a better choice. It's fairly conservative too.
Living in the mountains West of Colorado Springs is the ticket! Unfortunately, the secret was discovered and traffic SUCKS nowadays. Room for more bowhunters tho!
Mike, Tricia and move from Ohio 26 years ago (never looked back) and purchase a tourist lodge, as a business on Lake Granby SW of the Rocky Mt Nat Park., but sold that in 2001 for cash and profit, and moved to Ft Collins where I retired. In 1991 there were 3.7 million people in Colorado but now pushing 6 million and in 15-20 years, 10 million and that compares with the 12 million that now lives in Ohio. In 1991 Colorado was going through a recession of sorts but that changed in the mid to late to late 1990- early 2000.
Most of that increase will be along the Front Range from Ft Collins in the north to Colorado Springs to the south with Denver in the middle. As others have stated, I-25 north/south, and 1-70 East/West, especially those near and outside of Denver are mess with stop and go traffic. .
We like the Ft Collins area as it has good access to the mountains and then east to the prairie if needed. I do not go to Denver and if I do , I have to leave very early as the traffic is terrible and at times, I have just turned around to try another day, especially around business let out. What others have stated about going farther west is true but stay away from any ski area as the prices are very high if not impossible. We purchased our home in Ft Collins 15 years ago for $227,000 and would have no problem selling it today for over $400,000. It is a Seller's Market for sure.
So depending on your wants and needs and your life style, and income and investments, there are good and bad options here in Colorado.
my best, Paul
We moved from Monument/CO Springs area to Meeker. It is a small town, but has the third cheapest property taxes in Colorado, prices are still very reasonable, and we now have 1GB Broadband- so we have better tech speed than the Governor does or someone in places like Littleton.
Downside is the big Mule Deer bucks constantly hit my flowers and trees, so growing anything requires wire fence or electric. There are more Elk in the surrounding area than the entire State of Arizona, outstanding Mountain Lion, Moose, Bear, Mule Deer, Elk and Antelope. We have the largest OHV trail system in Colorado and nobody uses it- oh, and 280k acres of Wilderness if you prefer not to kill your trophies out of your camp or riding roads. The White River is probably the best under fished waters in Colorado. The Schools and Hospital are excellent, and the rental rates for business are extremely cheap compared to typical rates on the Front Range. We do get winter here, so snowmobiling and winter activities are abundant. If you want to have world class outdoor activities out your doorstep, we are for you. If your wife needs tons of shopping, culture, and such that is an hour from here so it is not for everybody.
I am happy on the west slope but if you have no ties to Colorado, I would seriously look at Wyoming.
Not to hijack the thread, but where in Wyoming?
Great thread. Wife and I just returned from visiting Col. Spent time looking Ft Collins down to the Springs. Seems a lot of new housing developments everywhere up and down the 25. Suburbia! Ugh
Went out towards Canon and north. Buetiful areas there.
Have 6 more years to retire, still looking
I moved to Loveland(Fort Collins area) in the mid 90's. Raised the family here and loved it. My wife and I were looking to move 3 years ago to Wyoming because of all the people moving in and as others have stated, the traffic is terrible. Two years ago all 3 of my kids and grandkids moved back into the area from out of state so looks like this is where I'll be till the end. --As for Wyoming, I went to school in Laramie back in the 70's. We called it Laracane(for the winds). I really like Lander, and a friend who I went to school with said the winds aren't that bad here. I also have heard great things about the Thermopolis area. I'd look into one of those two places.
Or Idaho - we were coming back from West Yellowstone this summer. I really liked the Driggs area. On the back side of the Tetons. It is beautiful country. Lots of farm land and the edge of the mountains. Smaller towns but still seems to have a lot to offer. Reminded me a lot of the front range with out all the people. If you like a big city feel and/or lots of people Denver or the front range will be for you. But if you want more rural I would look at WY or ID.
You should take a road trip or fly into Denver rent a car and spent a week making a loop up the front range through WY and back through southeast ID.
While you are at it start a thread telling everyone why they should leave CO and move to OH. Especially all the limp wristed liberals that seem to be taking over the state ;)
"Especially all the limp wristed liberals that seem to be taking over the state ;)" I think they all drove up to Wyo today to be in the path of totality....
I just put an offer in on a house in Johnstown last night. Getting out of the Littleton area and heading back north. Some pretty reasonable housing from Erie to Loveland when compared to other areas.
Wyoming areas on my list are:
Saratoga, Cody, Thermopolis, Lander, Pinedale, Sheridan
We checked out Pinedale a few summers ago, we could easily live there.
If my choices on places to live in CO were on the I-25 corridor (from Fort Collins down to Pueblo)I'd just stay in Ohio! Expensive, overbuilt and bad traffic is the norm all the way up and down I-25 and west to the divide on I-70. Grand Junction would be my pick of the larger Cities in CO for affordability and quality of life. Durango and the surrounding towns in SW CO would be nice also, but a little more expensive.
MathewsMan, quit talking, we have enough people here. Your going to ruin it.
Front Range is the best place to live!!!!!!!! Wink wink
Grand Junction is an absolute gem for someone still needing to work but wants activities as well. COL is super low there as well.
I have found the property taxes to be significantly lower in Colorado than compared to the Midwest. I moved to CO from WI 3 years ago as a teacher. The housing prices are certainly higher but taxes significantly lower. Personally, I would prefer to pay more for a home than higher taxes. I've also found your taxes in CO get you a lot more than they did in WI; better schools, natural areas and state run lands, and roads (yes there are some pretty rough roads out there and horrendous traffic...but they beat those in the Midwest)
The still affordable areas; such as Greeley, Johnstown, and surrounding areas will be where the rest of the Front Range is in 5-10 years. In Fort Collins we are seeing the middle and lower middle income folks priced out of their communities that their grandparents or even great grandparents have lived and worked in.
If you're a serious bowhunter , look at the seasons and their lengths, you'll be giving up allot of hunting time in Colorado compared to Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. also Residents in Colorado do not have the advantages that the other states give their residents. As for the special hunts for the more exotic animals the competition is so high for the permits that you won't stand a chance of drawing, or very little. Its getting worse every year. Too many people! Now if you're just a meat hunter, you'll be fine in Colorado, as there are good opportunities for the younger elk. Not that that is bad. Yes there are trophy animals to be had but hard to come by except in the hard to draw units. In the last 35 yrs I have watched the units as I hunted them get more congested and crowded every year and the quality of the hunt decline with the crowding. Too many hunters. And they say we need more!!!! study what I said carefully as one retiree to another.
Come to Colorado. 2 million Californians, 2 million Texans and 2 million Mexicans can't all be wrong.
Seahorse you're a little off. California native transplants number 328,627. Texas native transplants 183,716. Combined they make up only 9.3% of the state population but get 100% of the blame for everything wrong in the state. Most natives of those states I've met are good conservatives fleeing their homes from the mass influx of northeastern liberals that have invaded those states.
There are 2,329,855 native Coloradans. So 50% of the states population isn't from CO, CA or TX
Just keeping the facts straight
If most the people moving to CO are "good conservatives" Colorado would not have turned from a mostly red state to a blue one that votes for the likes of Hillary, Hickenlooper, and the first state to legalize weed.
Just keeping the facts straight
You can't argue with the facts, and John laid them out for you.
"California native transplants number 328,627. Texas native transplants 183,716. Combined they make up only 9.3% of the state population but get 100% of the blame for everything wrong in the state."
Yeah, but the Texans take up 10x as much space as everyone else!
Know how to tell if someone is from Texas? .....Don't worry they'll tell you.....
I'll take Texans over Kalifornians any day. I know plenty of Texans where I live, they are not from Austin and are not the problem. None of them are Hillary or Obama fans.
AndyJ, there's another Bowsiter with the same handle who has been on the Bowsite for about 15 years, I think. You might want to change your handle because he's sort of a jerk and a real badass and might not appreciate being impersonated.. :-)
I retired and moved here last year. I work for the FS seasonally so I am out all summer getting paid to hike and scout, most think I'm working. I live in a small town in SW Colorado with little to no crime, good schools and I'm close to NF land. There are a ton of tourists here all year, but they don't bother me. It's expensive, but it's expensive everywhere, pick your poison. I could have gotten a lot more land/house in the Midwest, but I don't want to live there. I'm happy, the family is happy and that's all that matters. I hunt from August to March, big game, small game and fish. I can't complain. It's all about your perspective.
"If most the people moving to CO are "good conservatives" Colorado would not have turned from a mostly red state to a blue one that votes for the likes of Hillary, Hickenlooper, and the first state to legalize weed. Just keeping the facts straight"
and if most folks read more than half a post we'd all get along better. Just keeping the facts straight.. Oh, and take into consideration the 11% of residents born "outside the US".
Signed, Conservative Ex-CA native now living in CO and taking up as much space as I can afford.
Don't stop at asking where folks moved from, ask then where they were born.
canon city. meeker. gets my vote
Hey Zach - I was thinking when Trump gets around to building the wall it should look like this: LOL ;)
Colorado isn't what it used to be! There are so many damn people around now it's insane. Bunch of dumb people too.
Zach, calm down dude. You left Cali because it sucks. You did not bring that suck with you, like 99% of people who leave Cali do. You know what I am talking about.
Ermine, they are not dumb, just stoned.
Plenty of stoned people here when my parents moved us here in the late 70's. It ain't just that.
30 years ago this was #1 on my list of places to live. I wasn't expecting to lose bear baiting, lose trapping, lose the ability to sell a gun to my friend without going through an FFL, lose the ability to buy a normal AR15 mag, my fellow Coloradoans voting for Obama a second time and then Hillary and the list goes on. Most of Colorado is actually still pretty normal, just not most of the Coloradoans.
We used to look at Boulder as the crazy uncle that the family would tolerate because they were whacked but pretty harmless.
I left N Minnesota in '88 and moved to Ft Collins, mainly because of the weather. It ended up being an excellent choice, [for that aspect anyway]
But as mentioned above, its not what it was, but nothing is.
My property tax valuation went up 64% this year, I despise going to Denver, and even driving around town.
Ive flirted with the idea of cashing out after retirement [just over a year] but still pondering that, but the $300k in equity sure is tempting
@AndyJ - Jaquomo is correct about another AndyJ on Bowsite... he prob will be in touch with you. He's elk hunting now. And I heard he just finished running a 100 mile mtn race.
I moved to CO Springs 10 years ago and bought a better place on 5 acres in Black Forest 3 years ago. It is unbelievable how much worse the traffic is every year that goes by.
I have to check the traffic app on my phone before heading to work. Even with starting work at 1:00 PM in Castle Rock, I often have to take another route as I-25 can turn into a parking lot any time/anywhere.
Thinking about WY, but spousal unit wants to move back to WI! God knows they will never have an elk season!
Billygoat, I feel your pain, we do the drive between Denver and Pueblo all the time to visit family. I-25 through the Springs is a pain in the tail...
MathewsMan probably had the greatest response of all time. Meeker sounds like a slice of heaven
PECO, yes I understand that you get it. Some others, not so much.
The blame CA rhetoric just gets old when you know that most folks that were born in CA have conservative values. CA and CO are very similar in the fact that they have 2 counties that pretty much dictate their leanings. Except for Owens, CO has voted D for Governor since 75. I'd have to research the population, but just a guess that not many CA folks were here back then.
Billygoat, have you seen the big WT buck roaming around BF? I sold a lot earlier this year off Hodgen and Remington area. Great lot but not enough land for all my critters. Sure glad my commute every morning is from my bedroom to the kitchen for coffee to my home office.
I looked at presidential election back to 1950. The only time CO voted for the democratic before Barack Hussain Obama was in 1992 when Clinton got 40% of vote, Bush got 36% and Perot got 23%. Then 1964 for Johnson. So in that period 12-2. With Perot being the reason for one of those two.
There is no doubt that a higher percentage of people moving to CO lean to the left. It does mean all. Zack I am sure you tend to meet people and spend time with people that are like minded. I know I do. Unfortunately that does not make the people we surround our else with is the majority. I look at my office I am surround by people from NY, WI, CA, ME, CO. I am from OK. There are only two of us that voted Trump the other is CO native. There are others I could not tell you but ones I know who they voted for I am very much the minority. This is not Denver or Boulder. I work in Loveland.
I moved to Colo from Wyo around 30 years ago. It was pretty much culture shock moving to the front range! Lots and lots of traffic and the mountains are loaded with weekend warriors! The reason I moved from Wyo was because it was tough being a single male (few females that weren't divorced with kids) and the wind drove me nuts! If you move to Wyo you better like wind because it blows 10 to 40 mph around 360 days a year! I lived in Casper, Laramie, Buffalo, and Rawlins. It didn't blow quite as much in Buffalo. When you drive out of any town in Wyo's city limits you will likely be alone! I return and hunt Wyo just about every year...although nonres tags are pretty pricey.
The nice thing about the front range is there is around 2 additional months of summer weather and the wind hardly blows like Wyo. It's possible to hunt Colo elk every year but you can do OTC elk plus deer in Wyo as a res....with likely a lot less company! If you've hunted Colo OTC elk you are probably aware that there is an insane amount of hunting pressure on public land. The few limited elk units that exist often take 5 to 20 years to draw.
If I had the choice I'd live in Alaska 3 months, Wyo during hunting season, and excape somewhere south for the winter! I CAN"T STAND Wyo WIND....especially in the winter!!!!! Colo weather is pretty mild except maybe a month in winter and a couple months of 90s-100s in the summer (on the front range).
Colorado....California of the Rockies.
I have a cousins who is a whacked out former California born and raised resident who worked on the Obama campaign both times. Has a pic of herself and Joe Biden hanging on her wall. Guess where her and her weak, meak , freak of a husband just moved to....Colorado.
Sure thing...how do I go ahead and change my name? Maybe the other AndyJ would want to run a race with me?
"Blame California" does get a little old. Most people leaving CA actually have conservative leanings. It's a shame, there are actually a TON of great people in CA who get overshadowed by the kooks in LA, Orange, San Diego, and the Bay Area. Unfortunately Colorado has the same issue with urban populations (aka Boulder, Denver, Ft. Collins) controlling the overall political appearance of the state.
"Blame California" gets more than a little old. There are still more people here in Colorado from other States, than if you added every native Coloradan and Californian combined (48%). Cant blame elections on that. Most "Native" Californians I've met here are here because they feel like they got pushed out of CA. And I've still met less than 10 Californians in the last 20 years living here. I joined the Army in 1992 partly because I couldn't afford to stay in CA. Interesting fact about California is in 1970 it had a population of 19,953,134, now its population in 2016 is Est. to be 39,250,017. That's 20 million more in less than 50 years! t Looking back at Presidential elections, it was a solid Red state until 1992 when Perot gave the vote to Clinton as well there 46%, Bush 33% and Perot 21%. Now I looked up the 10 largest cities in NY State and saw what happened to the populations there from 1970 until now. Easy to see why CA grew so much and so fast at the same time. I had new kids show up from just about every state show up in school. Mainly from NJ, NY, CT, IL, and especially Ohio. Even had 3 kids in my neighborhood from OK for JohnMC (wink). With so many people from back east moving to CA, its easy to figure out why the State lurched so far to the left politically. Example: Nancy Pelosi who moved there from Maryland.
But this is America, and people have the right to move to wherever they want (unfortunately sometimes). Funny thing too is I don't think anyone cared where I was born when my uniform had US Army on it!
Zach I haven't seen that buck, last whitetail I saw was May, 2015. That was a very wet year. The headwaters of Kiowa Creek are right in my back yard. I understand if you follow the creek to where the presence of water is more reliable, the whities are, too.
My wife's commute is same as yours-jealous...
I live in Wyoming and its sucks living here. Your way better off in Colorado.
colorado sucks. youre right about the crime, its out of control! i dont feel safe. avoid at all costs. wyoming is your best bet.
blaming California, blaming Texas, and blaming liberals all gets old. we should probably stick to hunting on here, something everyone can agree on. states grow because people want to live in good places with good jobs and opportunity. with the influx comes both positives and negatives. you dont like it? too liberal? too much weed? too many texans? feel free to pack up and leave. i hear theres plenty of room in "good conservative" states like Louisiana and Alabama and the like (theres also a pretty good reason theres a lot of room there).
Typical limp wristed liberal - lets make fun of the south and people there. Anyone else getting PMs from this clown?
I was stationed at Redstone, Huntsville Alabama in the mid 80's. I liked it there.
About a month ago, I moved to Highlands Ranch from SW Illinois. We picked that spot because of the good schools, proximity to my office, and the soccer environment for the kids. I can still easily get to hunting and fishing areas when I want to get away. We've brought the kids out to CO on vacations 2 out of the past 3 years and they love it like I do. When the opportunity to take a transfer for work presented itself, we jumped on it and moved before the school year started. The traffic situation is real, but the benefits make it tolerable. As bad as some of you make the front range sound, this area still makes Illinois look like Venezuela...and the financial situation there is close to it. The roads are in great shape...albeit crowded. The schools are funded. Every restaurant that I can think of trying out is within 30 minutes of the house. Property taxes on a house are less than half of what it is in IL. There are business moving here and unemployment is low. I can leave the house at 8AM, take mountain goat and sheep pictures with the kids on Mt. Evans and be back home for a nap by 2PM. Heck, there is an archery range 2 miles from my house by Rock Canyon HS. I have been out here hunting muleys the past 2 years with good success. I have a late plains hunt set up for my daughter and myself and a rifle antelope hunt planned. I'm still trying to figure out a plan for elk. I might just get a cow tag and pick a unit. I kept my IL lease to get my whitetail rut fix in November, but hunting the west is what gets me going these days. If anyone wants to get together for a beer, let me know.
Bowtech 12, a friend of mine is a realtor out of Ft. Collins. Not sure the name of the business. But, his name is Jake Clendenning. Check him out, he also does a lot of hunting.
BillyGoat, he was in the area of Meridian and Hodgen last I heard. My in-laws are over off Elbert road near the county line. They have a WT doe that has been there 3 years now. Has had 2 fawns 2 of the 3 years I've seen her. Not sure if she's getting freaky with a muley or a WT is roaming around.
Bowtech what's the word? You've had a bunch of good honest responses but nothing but crickets on your end? Why bother asking?
JohnMC - this guy is a man of real genius here. never made fun of the south, i said theres plenty of room there, and for a reason. not as fun to live there as it is in colorado, in my opinion. and i think people moving here backs that up. so great point on me making un of the south. im from the south. and what was it i said that made you call me limp wristed, which is a nice way of sliding in an underhanded gay insult? if liking public lands, being outdoors, and hunting elk makes me limp wristed, then it seems like there are quite a few of us on here. lets all take some time to thank JohnMC for his intelligence and continued positive contributions to this community of hunters. thanks John Cannon!
Just to be transparent when it come to intelligent post. You save yours for PMs then call people F%*^ing morons etc.
By the way your post about the south was plenty clear.
