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Comment by kyleblarson | Hacker News Reader

I live in a tiny town in North central Washington state right by North Cascades National Park. We have about 200 full time residents. Originally built our house as a weekend place (about 4-5 hours from Seattle) but started working remotely in 2011 and was getting sick of Seattle going the way of San Francisco so we decided to move full time. I have to go to SF a lot for work and the travel can be tough with mountain passes, weather and flight delays out of the tiny airport I use but it's 100% worth it to be within a 5 minute drive of hundreds of pitches of climbing and right in the middle of the largest maintained network of nordic ski trails in North America.

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Note, find a SO before moving to a tiny mountain town.

what is SO?

Significant other

yes, and be ready to get social fulfillment from them too.

I think I'm from that town you're talking about. Is it the one named after a goat, near a larger one named after a wasp?

yes

I couldn't handle the cold there! If winter sports are your jam though, it's a good place to be. I recommend hitting up the Arrowleaf, if you haven't. one of my homies runs it

I'm thinking of moving to that same general area. Right now I'm in Utah because that's where my first real job was, but my family lives near Seattle, Idaho, and Montana and I want more sun than Seattle and more green than everything in between.

I've thought about moving close to Leavenworth/Cle Elum or down south on the border of Oregon near Hood River/The Dalles.

We're still in the planning stages, and I'm rounding up some more clients just in case my main client stops working out (and I'm working on some startup ideas as well).

I just wanted to say that I'm super jealous that you're living in the area that I want to end up.

This sounds like my dream. :) Have you had to change jobs while being remote?

I'm torn between having my kid (4 now) grow up in Seattle w/ access to great schools and dozens of different educational & extracurricular activities, or to grow up someplace less hectic, where he can run out the front door in the morning and play outside all day.

Depending on how much free time you have, you could always homeschool him! The educational/extracurricular activities part is hard though -- I was homeschooled and got a lot of my 'socialization' through team sports, which can be harder in a rural area.

No kids yet?

We loved the location we were in, but the school districts were awful.

No kids yet but haven't ruled it out. It's actually a great place to raise them. The local public schools are one town over and are very well supported by the diverse population in our valley. The high school actually has a shooting range for ski biathlon. https://methow.org/ edit: added link

A distressing number of rural towns in WA and CA are meth towns. Some of them are in the process of being cleaned up and gentrified.

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