Boulder and Fort Collins

[cjsmith]

This weekend Rob and I checked out Boulder and Fort Collins.

General impressions:
- Boulder: not nearly as overwhelmingly white as Boise
- Fort Collins: overwhelmingly white, boisterous college town
- spectacular thunderstorm every afternoon
- overwhelmingly Christian (you can't buy wine or buy a car on Sundays; WTF?)
- pretty if you're close to the mountains, but not much is
- very spread out: if you live in one town you don't visit the other often
- LONG drive to nearest big airport, and extra-annoying security there
- fun walkable downtown (if ya have feet)
- close to skiing and lots of hiking (good if ya have feet)
- very near Rocky Mountain National Park
- good potential for finding a house we like
- friendly aviation community with not much earning potential
- friendly people (though Boise was even more so)
- full complement of the same big box stores you can find in larger cities in America
- significant variety of restaurants
- no Challenge square dancing potential ever

We'd rather live near Boulder than near Fort Collins, just from the atmosphere of the places and Boulder's proximity to the mountains. Boulder is, of course, a bit pricier. As our real estate agent put it, the place used to be full of hippies, and now it's a few aging hippies and a bunch of trust fund babies.

We had the (mis?)fortune of visiting Fort Collins on the weekend before classes started. The place was a mob. We couldn't park anywhere, flocks of pedestrians were all over, hotels were full, and every few blocks there was a powerful PA system delivering thumpy music to drunk crowds. Ambulances were standing by and I'd be surprised if they went without customers. It is possible Fort Collins would be a bit less awful on any other weekend of the year.

We did see our dream house. About twenty minutes from downtown Boulder, up in the hills, on a couple of acres with a seasonal creek, an aspen grove, beautiful wooded hillsides and hiking trails, and even a cave. This one stole our hearts. It's a little farther from town than we'd like, and we'd still have to figure out how in the world we're going to support ourselves in our new habitat, but man, that place was lovely.

Comments

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I was surprised that Rob dropped ABQ from the mix because of home prices here. They're significantly lower here than in Boulder or even Denver.

But glad you made the trek there! City shopping can be fun! I did that with my first partner in 1980 and 1981 before we settled on Albuquerque. HIS prerequisite was that it had to have a decent (vinyl) record store!

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say we dropped it - just moved it further down on the list. I think we'll still come out early next year. The thing with ABQ seemed to be that in order to get any decent land (say > .5 acres), you have to be pretty far from the city. So you end up with a long commute, or a small lot, but it's hard to get both. Also the whole water thing was a bit of a turnoff.

It's true that downtown Boulder is very expensive, but it's not so bad up in the hills. The "dream house" we found is about a 12 minute drive from the edge of town, $450K, on two gorgeous acres with a private forest. It doesn't seem like we can do that in ABQ. Or maybe we just had a bad real estate agent.

Speaking of which, the guy you recommended never returned my email.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

Which guy was that? I think Danny recommended someone different than I did. He suggested Jim Sutton and I suggested Steve Benoit...

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

Steve. I don't think I tried to contact Jim Sutton.