Blah, Blah, Blah

Wow, that last post was looong. But I think I stayed on topic for that most part, so it's all good. Our plans at this point are so up-in-the-air at this point that we don't even know what we're doing. So far we've come up with the following locations:

• Southeastern AZ (where my acre is located)
• St George, UT
• Spokane,WA/Coeur d'Alene, ID
• Tacoma, WA (where a cousin of my mother's lives)
• And Rural Colorado. But I think that at this point it's kind of one of those castles in the air that Louisa May Alcott frequently referred to in her books. Ooooh! A pertaining quote!

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

--Henry David Thoreau

Of course my vote is all for Colorado (except I did mention once that I thought we should move to Romania). Right now what we're doing is hoping and praying. Tomorrow my mom is going to call about some rentals in St. George, UT since that's the closest and therefore most feasible of the five.

But enough with the Realism already lol. I've been researching a lot of places and even considered other places outside of Colorado, but I keep coming back to Colorado. The more I research, the better I like it. Why? Well, it's fairly natural disaster-free: it's not particularly earthquake prone, no tsunamis or Hurricanes (since it's nowhere near any oceans), it's mountainous and therefore tornadoes are unlikely. Also, out of all the states, it is the only state where all of it is above 3,281 feet. Its lowest point (where the Arikaree River flows into Kansas) is the highest of all the states low points: 3,315 feet.

It's amazing the things you can learn from Wikipedia.

Of course Colorado has the Rocky Mountains which naturally makes it my favorite (shhh, don't tell her that Idaho and Wyoming and Montana do, too!). There are points against it of course: Daylight Savings Time is one big one. Arizona doesn't have that and that's one thing I really like about it. Also, it gets really cold in some places. Cold doesn't necessarily = bad thing, but cold + short growing season does = bad thing. Greenhouses are a solution, but having all your gardens and orchards in greenhouses just seems...sad...

Also, the testing part of the homeschooling laws are just dumb (Arizona and Idaho don't have homeschool student testing). I do see the upside to testing (making sure that the children are actually learning), but, in my mind at least, the downside is worse. You see, if you're homeschooling your child because they're doing poorly in school, then if they don't improve enough to pass that year's testing then back to school they go. There are ways around this evaluation (like having a teacher who's a family friend come in and do it in a non-testing way), but it's still a drawback. On the brighter side, they don't require school/teacher supervision for the actual schooling part.

On another subject, I really need to stop researching the world.

At this point, I'll never find just "one" place to live when I decide to find a "Forever Place." You see, I've always loved Arizona, especially southeastern AZ where I was born and live for the first 10 years of my life. It's a pretty laid-back state. It's hot, but I've never minded and in October, the temperature is perfect. And best of all, I like that there's NO DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!

Then there's Colorado. I like the Rockies. I like clear mountain air. I like how cozy and comfortable it feels to be so far inland. I like mountains and snow and pines and wilderness and the harsh, cold, rugged beauty the Rockies possess.

Well, that was hard enough to choose, but then what do I do? I go and start researching the Olympic Peninsula, specifically Clallam and Jefferson Counties. This just makes it that much more difficult, especially when I start reading up on that area on City Data. Why? Because the way the people there talk, it sounds brilliant. There's rain all the time and the ocean and there are also MOUNTAINS (IDK if I've said this before or not, but I can't stand living without my mountains. In Southern AZ there are the Gila Mountains, in CO there are the Rockies) where I can go if I want more than a half inch of snow at a time. Their economy is almost non-existent and best of all, there are few people (AKA, "seclusion," something I like better than anything in a home).

Washington State sounds so marvelous, with a few exceptions. It's far away from my family in the extreme sense. It's close to the ocean which is good and also bad because it doesn't feel as safe as the tops of the mountains in the middle of the country does. Also, I have no idea what the laws are or what kinds of alternative energy are best for the area (if the area is usually cloudy, then that rules out solar energy...or does it? and what about wind? and if neither are good, then what else is there?). Also, in the winter the days are a lot shorter than out here where I live because they're farther North.

The only solution is to combine all my favorite parts of my favorite states....but that's impossible and mutually exclusive. Like, how do you get the sun of the southwest and the overcast weather of the northern Olympic Peninsula? That's just one example. You also can't have the ocean and still be hundreds (or even thousands) of miles from it.

I guess the only solution is either to keep looking for place that's a good compromise (Idaho? But the name is so weird!!) or else to visit them and continue researching until I find the place that feels like home the most. I suppose ultimately it doesn't matter where on God's earth I go to homestead, so long as I find a pleasing bit of land free of the issues rural land sometimes comes with (clearcut land anyone?) and where it is legal for me to even have chickens and other farm-type animals.

But still....when I choose some place to stay for a long time or maybe ever, I want it to be a place that will make me happy. And that has pleasing weather. That's why I like Washington. Weeding is so much fun in the rain (or in the early morning after a rainstorm). But then that's where I come into the Rockies because the beauty there is so much different than Washington's...which -- in its turn -- is vastly different from the beauty you find in Arizona...and you can't really have all three at the same time....