Life in Wyoming - Slower Housing Boom

As we're settling into life in Wyoming, our friends and family from afar often ask "what's it like". In an effort to educate, here's a little bit about it.

It's hard to describe the amount of Nothingness we encounter in Wyoming. So, I'd best start showing you just how little there is out here!

Life in Wyoming is slower and more laid-back than in Phoenix, and, oh yeah! It's colder too! Driving two hours to get somewhere is nothing here... everything's at least 100 miles away! It's one small country town with really long roads in between.

Our house sale fell through in June, we got another offer in October and closed the week of Thanksgiving. Over the course of the summer, we lost $66,000 (between the offer that fell through and the one that closed). So. That was all our profit and I'm still having a hard time letting go of that. Probably because we're still looking for a new home to purchase. Loosing our profit means we're back to looking for a "starter" home in a market that's now booming (thanks to hundreds of new oil well rights opening up in this area). So, when we researched coming up here, the cost of living was lower... not so now. We took a substantial paycut (for the slower way of life) but have been delt a trick hand in loosing our profit and landing in a boom-town. Tom keeps telling me it's all for a reason, but, whenever I think about finding a new home, let's just say I don't think / feel good thoughts / feelings.

The housing situation makes life sound bad... anything but. I'm making new friends for me and the boys. I take them to gymnastics twice a week and tonight Frank's going to his first ice skating lesson. We get out, but we're at home and calm so much more than before. I get a lot more sewing / cooking / crafting done these days (having an apartment with 1/3 the square footage of our last home to clean helps, as does the lack of yard maintenance!) We spend more time together, playing, reading, doing games / puzzles / etc.

Tom is in far less pain (his back was always hurting and now it hardly ever does) and my nervous / stress conditions are practically gone (expect for when I look into buying a home). So, we think those are good things.

The worst of it is that we miss people in Arizona. We had a large circle of friends and several dearly loved family members... of course now we see other family members regurally (they are 114 miles away, we see them about once a month). I doubt we'll ever stop feeling sad about leaving our loved ones behind. Sometimes, you just have to make TOUGH, HARD choices and there simply is no "right" or "easy" answer. I think this choice, to move out of the city, away from our home, was one of those choices.

There now, curiosity satiated? If not, check back for ongoing insights into our Wyoming life! (I'm actually working on a post that will include lots of trivia about our new home.)

Suzy

PS:

I took the pictures last week while we were driving 98 miles to Pinedale. The roads were covered in, no, the road was ICE. Now, while it's true that you can easily slide on this road ice, don't fool yourself into thinking it's a smooth ride. Go back and look at those pictures... the ice is uneven and rough. It's kind-of like driving down a packed dirt road at 40 miles an hour - for TWO HOURS!

While driving to Pinedale, we actually saw -20F at around 10am last Monday. We were just North of Farson at the time.