So for many years I have been tossing around the idea of moving to Montana or Wyoming. I love the wide open spaces, the mountains, just something about it. I grew up in the butt numbing cold of Western New York....no it ain't all city. Wide open spaces, nice rolling hills, dairy farms and corn fields everywhere. This was many many years ago.

Now I'm in Tennessee and have to say I am thrilled with where I live. Nice country home in the boonies, luckily the mega subdivisions are staying north of here......for now. Sorry construction, contractor subdivision builder guys but I wish it would sssslllllllooooooowwwwwww way down. It disgusts me to see all this nice farm land being bought up for yet another 500-1000 home subdivision that requires more walgreens, gas stations, shopping centers and of course another mega smiley mart. Then as the city/county officials give out another building permit for this they overlook the fact that the schools and highways will not sustain the project. Heck, one sub I went to was building a school within the sub because the local school was'nt gonna be able to handle it.

Tennessee is growing like a weed, especially middle TN. I see more tags from Kalifornia, Michigan and cars with Brooklyn stickers than I care to. Maybe they are nice folks, but I can only imagine what ideals they will bring with them. "Oh this is so inconvenient, we need a walgreens at the end of the street now, the dairy farm smells bad, theres a tractor driving down the road making it take longer to get to the smiley mart which is so, so far away". We have to drive 70mph down a country road that is posted for 50 and frequently has people riding horses, atvs, farm tractors....but that is causing an inconvenience to them? For the most part my house, cars are all unlocked, I have a gate at the end of the drive...just a chain, no lock and that's how I like it. We wave at each other when we pass in the road, don't know who half the people are but we wave. You can tell the "outsiders" they don't wave back.

Anyhow, been telling my wife we'll have to keep our options open. Either move farther out into the bush around where we are at. It already takes me 40 minutes to get to the interstate.....actually..not a big deal for me, it's a nice drive and one of the reasons I picked this house...thought it would be way to inconvenient for 95% of the population. So we'll either move farther back into the 1 lane country roads and increase that distance and inconvenience for others or we were talking about Montana or Wyoming.

I'd buy an existing house or buy land and build a house......keeping the land as original as possible and putting my house in the middle of it. Ok, real long post, sorry. What do you guys and gals think of your home states of Wyoming and Montana?? How is the cost of living. I know the population is low. How is the growth rate? Are subdivisions popping up all over the place? What could an experienced mechanic in heavy equipment or the automotive trade expect to make per hour? Most of my experience is heavy equipment, CAT especially but I'm also an experienced GM service tech, master tech and all that blah, blah stuff. I'm willing to drive 75 miles each way to work. What kind of towns would I be looking at around Casper, Wyoming or Billings, Montana? I checked Wyoming Machinerys website and they had a job opening for a mechanic in Casper doing pretty much what I did at the Cat dealer here in TN, building components, like engines, trannies, hydraulics, etc.

Sorry this is such a long post any imput would be appreciated!! Thanks,

Shawn

 

it sucks in both wyoming and montana, don't come here

 

I grew up in central MT. It was a great place to grow up, then I moved to eastern MT. Not much going on out there. Cost of living is low, but in turn jobs pay chump change. I'm guessing around Billings you could expect wages in the 15 to 18 dollar per hour range. I have a buddy who is an ASE cert, Blue Oval cert mechanic working at the Ford dealer in Billings who makes 17 per hour. I moved to OR 5 years ago for a job. I make about 90,000 a year now doing the same thing I was doing there for 20,000. But now in hind sight I would give anything to go back to that slower paced, friendlier lifestyle. All in due time. But to agree with smoke pedal, it sucks out here. You should stay in TN. The wind blows hard constantly, 30 to 40 below in the winter, plus the windchill, for a month straight.

 

I figured the easiest route would be to increase my commute and just move further out here. The cold weather, not a big deal. The only thing that really gets me about moving into snow land again......road salt and rusted out vehicles, nuts and bolts that won't come loose. Kinda gotten used to the fact that a 15-20 year old car here in TN is still pretty easy to work on underneath. No bolts, rusted in two and such like back up in Western NY.

 

In Cheyenne the cost of living is high with few jobs paying high enough to live here. Real estate is stupid high around here too. If you need a job you can go to Rock Spring/Green River. Jobs are a plenty but no place to live or land to buy. Casper has jobs and decent priced homes it's a little ugly there though. Thermopolis (where I'm originally from) is small (pop. 3247) lots of buisness opurtunity and oil field jobs. The land is inexpensive and so are houses. There really going up right now though. The only problem is it seems the economy goes up and down alot. There are plenty of other places in beautiful Wyoming to live I just don't have any experience with them. If you want land it's here but it's getting bought up fast. If I had the means I'd by up as much as possible to keep it out of the grubby hands of rich out-of-staters.

 

Montana and Wyoming are expensive places to live right now. Stupid Hollywood morons killed Montana. A friend of mine was born and raised there and can't afford to move back to his hometown. Wyoming has some of the worst housing prices. Ive looked at Gillette and Casper and it just doesn't make sense to waste my money to move there.

I love Montana and Wyoming and would love to move there someday, but the cost of housing is just out of this world in some places. Stupid Californians ruining the entire midwest. Wish they would go back.

Well, thats my rant! Have a good holiday everyone!

 

DodgeGuy, I don't disagree with you at all for wanting to move out here. I live in NW Wyoming, about 22 miles from Cody and about an hour and a half from Billings. I'm about 15 miles from the MT border. I live in Park County, which I prefer to other surrounding counties (Big Horn, Hot Springs, Freemont). It is gorgeous here. I live in the Big Horn Basin which is basically a high elevation valley. Powell is about 4600 feet with mountain ranges on all sides. I am 70 miles from the East entrance to yellowstone park which we buy a yearly pass to for 50 bucks. Powell has about 8000 people in it with a community college and all the amenities one really needs (grocery stores, etc). I relocated here with my wife and 2 small children in May of 05. We moved from the Sacramento area of California. Much like you, I lived in rural parts of California most of my life (I'm 30) and was getting disgusted by the rate of the growth of concrete around me. The pay difference between here and CA was hard to get used to. But after a while, it seemed to really settle down and I was able to manage. I am a General Contractor and after about a year, my business had taken off. The cost of living is quite different to say the least. First off, the state of Wyoming has no state income tax, none whatsoever. That helps alot right there. Right now, Park County just increased the sales tax from 4% to 5% to help fund a new swimming pool at the new high school being built in Powell. And I am paying about 3.80 for a gallon of milk if that puts anything in perspective. As far as jobs go, I hear ads on the radio probably 3 to 4 times a week looking for heavy eq mechanics of your skill level. The labor pool here is pretty small and stagnant so it is sometimes very difficult to find someone who is certified in anything. I think you could probably expect to get anywhere from 18 to 22 per hour depending on who you went to work for. For the top dollar, you would probably want to look into repairing the oil field equipment for someone like Haliburton, or look into fleet/eq mechanic for WYDOT (Wyoming Dept of Trans.). Homes are very affordable. In 05 when we moved, I bought a 3600 sf home built in 97 on 3 acres. It has an attached 6 car garage and a 30 x 50 heated shop. 260K. Couldn't believe it. Homes in town are going for anywhere from about 60K for fixer uppers to 150K for brand new 3 bed 2 baths. I think if you approach it with a good attitude and a postive outlook, you will do just fine out here. Sorry for the long post all

 

Yes, worst place on earth. Too cold, too many bears, and diesel is really really expensive.

 

Well heres my 2 cents: Ive lived in wyoming my entire life in Lander and Riverton theyre not big 6700ish in Lander and 12000ish in Riverton; Landers at the base of the mountains so it gets more snow than Riverton but is a better looking town with the trees and such. As for jobs, the oilfield is starting to pick up around there but Im not sure how long itll be there as its mostly older oilfields around there.

I live in Green River and work in Rock Springs, housing costs WAY too much here because of the boom, same goes for Pinedale. Not many trees, which sucks, but if you like sagebrush and the high desert, this is your place. Your best bet paywise is fixing oilfield equipment at and independent shop that the bigger companies farm out their work to. I work at Halliburton, we dont have a single "real" mechanic in the shop and youd be lookin at 14-16ish where i work, but you would have full insurance (dental,medical, prescription drugs, life, etc.) and at an independant shop a relatively new tech can make around 21 but im not sure about insurance.

Another booming place is Gillette with coal and oilfield work, I think thats about the richest part of Wyoming. Caspers always been growing for as long as I can remember; its not too bad there but theres alot of people. Anyway, that got way longer than I thought it would, sorry about that.

 

best I can offer is a couple weeks I spent in Rock Springs. Unless you work in drilling and can tolerate greenies, I didn't see anything there.
The housing I saw for sale was high for what they were.

 

Talked to the wife today. She is having a hard time with the whole cold weather thing. She is from Hiroshima, Japan and I'm guessing, BIG guess that it's somewhere in line with North Carolina as far as latitude...longitude??? Not sure which. It got cold in Hiroshima but I don't think...I know it was nothing like what would be seen up in Montana and Wyoming. My home state of NY, Western NY near the Great Lakes got nasty cold. I remember going out hunting one year and it was -20 with a wind chill of -55. Actually did not know that until I got back to the house and did not see ANY wildlife in my 3 hours of being out.

I actually thought about moving back to upstate NY, land is fairly cheap but the taxes to support that hole called New York City are outrageous. Plus all the industry is moving out at a record breaking pace.....so jobs would be hard to come by and the pay sucks bad. My Uncle worked for the same place I do and he made something like $12-13 per hour. I make almost $18 starting out.

Oil fields?? They roughnecks make some pretty good money don't they? Butt busting work from what I have heard. Maybe I should become a politician and try and put the brakes on the growth in this county?? To much big money going around, pocket lining and all that, one voice would be one vote no and however many other votes saying yes with the green backs in their pockets. Oooopppps, getting political.....I'll stop there.

I was not bad mouthin' all Kalifornians, Yanks in general....(yes, I am originally a yank. I was born and raised there in the poor house in the sticks) I just want them to understand that moving to the sticks is just that. It's not convenient to do anything and generally the locals like it that way. They don't want Walgreens and smiley marts next door, subdivisions bringing their taxes up, over crowding their schools and the low lifes that tend to migrate in with all of that.

We are country folk, we like our mountain views, our front porches, rockin' chairs and peace and quite(minus the atv's and such). We like cool summer evenings on the porch with cold sweet tea or lemonade(Beer is optional) We like looking off our porch and actually seeing stars and not just one or two of them. We don't mind the smell of the dairy and cattle operations. When we drive by I tell my kids, "smell that good country air!!". We know when we go to town you get everything you need cause ya don't want to go back and we are OK with that. We wave at the farmer driving his tractor on the road between fields and wave as we pass slowly. We don't blow our horns, speed by in anger and flip him the bird, we know who helps put food on our tables and bread in our bread box. We enjoy our community and the people in it, chatting with strangers at the local gas station about whatever....which does not have electronic card reading pumps nor do they have a cash register. This is how we live and how we like it. If you want the Walgreens and smiley mart move back into town.

I guess this is how I like it. I would suspect that others livin' out in the sticks like it for the very same reasons and probably more. That pretty much sums up how I feel.........

Shawn