The Best Places

Santa Fe, to me, is one of those “nice places to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there.” Sky-high real estate prices are just part of it. At over 7,000 feet in elevation, it’s not the warm desert climate we’re looking for. And I thought Northern Californians were over the edge when it came to their new-age ways; I’d pit the residents of Santa Fe against them any day.

Having said that, Santa Fe has incredible architecture, great restaurants and plenty of opportunities for outdoor recreation. If you can afford it, can handle the above caveats and don’t mind all the tourists and traffic, it could be the city for you.

Colorado Springs was one of the last stops on our trip, and it nearly won us over with its outdoor recreation opportunities. There’s tons of mountain biking, which you can probably reach from home via one of the most extensive networks of greenways and bike paths that I’ve ever seen. And none of the other cities we are considering is so close to great skiing.

A vibrant downtown is another strong plus, and we saw some nice old neighborhoods close in on the north, west and east sides, though the north end was a little pricier than we want to pay. Still, Colorado Springs had some of the best home prices we’ve seen, with comparable homes running perhaps $50,000 less than those in Albuquerque.

There’s no shortage of shopping opportunities in Colorado Springs –  you can get nearly anything you want, though there are no Costcos or Trader Joes, which surprised me. Of course, they do have Sam’s Clubs, Wild Oats Markets and Whole Foods.

So with so many pluses, why wouldn’t we move to Colorado Springs?  It really is appealing, but here are the downsides…

While there is a lot of open space, there’s a trade off — urban sprawl. Colorado Springs isn’t as dense as Albuquerque, though it may be just as easy to get around in. Neighborhoods didn’t seem to have as much of a sense of identity either. In some ways, Colorado Springs is white bread to Albuquerque’s multi-cultural vibrancy. In Colorado Springs, we saw more evidence of Hispanics in the kitchen, with white kids serving and white guys managing. Albuquerque, on the surface anyway, seems to embrace the mixing of cultures. Lastly, Colorado Springs just isn’t the desert, and that seems to be where we want to live.

(Image courtesy of Experience Colorado Springs at Pikes Peak)

I could give each of these their own post, like I did Truth or Consequences, but like T or C, we didn’t really spend much time in these towns. They were simply waysides as we drove to Colorado Springs and back. If we would have seen much that interested us, we would have taken the time to investigate.

Las Vegas, New Mexico, seemed economically depressed, with nary a good restaurant in sight. And we didn’t even investigate Raton that much — it was off our list due to its isolated location, a couple of hours south of Colorado Springs. I only mention Raton because I saw it show up on another “best places to live” list recently.

Pueblo was the larger and more interesting of the three. The drive through on I-25 takes you by some very run down parts of town. Clearly though, they are making some major investments in downtown. Still, it wasn’t enough to make us want to invest more of our limited time there. But for someone wanting to be in a smaller city, yet close to the larger resources of Colorado Springs, it could be a good choice.

We made a return trip to Albuquerque for a couple of days before heading north to Colorado, giving us a chance to explore a little more, check out some neighborhoods, learn about traffic patterns, etc.

A few interesting things we learned about real estate:

• We have a real aversion to the west side. A rush hour, gridlocked drive into Rio Rancho, a soul-less place with no discernable downtown, cured us of any interest in that area. They are considering building a dowwntown, which we’ve seen pulled off somewhat sucessfully in Windsor, California, though Windsor is significantly smaller than Rio Rancho. And even if they build a downtown, traffic will still be an issue.
• Albuquerque has a commuter light rail service.
• We found a great website with lots of advice from folks about the best places to live in Albuquerque.

We also found a wonderful international grocery story, the Talin Market, which uses the tagline World Food Fare — rightfully so, I might add. It was enough to bump Albuquerque into strong contention with Silver City for our best place to live.

Next stop, Colorado.

Related post:

• Albuquerque

Silver City, New Mexico has, by far, the friendliest people of any town we’ve visited on this trip. From the moment we flew into New Mexico, I noticed how friendly people were, but no place has made us feel as welcome as Silver City. Heck, people are even nice to us when they learn that we are from California and are interested in moving here!

A burgeoning arts scene is driving downtown redevelopment here. While there are still a significant number of vacant store fronts, over 30 galleries have brought a real vitality to Silver City. The town is definitely in the midst of a renaissance. Motels were full on a weekday, and there aren’t that many houses for sale. Someone relocating here might need to buy a new house, but there seems to be no shortage of those. And while we didn’t have time to fully explore the local real estate market, costs don’t seem to be too high. (Read more…)

Las Cruces is turning out to be a mixed bag. On the one hand, it sprawls across the landscape and has little in the way of a downtown. Though it’s a university town, we didn’t see the usual strip of nightclubs, record stores and ethnic restaurants.

On the other hand, with 80,000 residents, Las Cruces has nearly everything you need in terms of retail and services. Real estate seems to be quite reasonable here - we saw a nicely renovated bungalow in a historic district today for just over $200K. And while we’ve yet to see a truly hip part of Las Cruces proper, the historic town of Mesilla, a few miles south, is very cool. There are a lot of neat old adobe homes in the area, though they do seem to bring a premium.

We got in a nice hike to Baylor Pass, but some unusually late (and strong) spring winds made for a breezy hike, and they are spawning dust devils across the landscape.

Las Cruces is nice, but I’m not sure if it’s nicer than Albuquerque. I guess that at the end of the trip, I’ll need to do some comparing and contrasting.

Next stop, Silver City.

As I mentioned in my New Mexico road trip post, the town of Truth or Consequences (T or C to locals) was on our list. I say was because we drove through it yesterday and were far from impressed. It looks run down, impoverished and isolated.

I’m not sure what possessed Men’s Journal to put it on their 50 best places to live list, thoughI can perhaps see why they made it one of their best hideaways since no one would want to go there!

We had planned on spending a couple of days in T or C, but a drive through was enough. Hey, maybe we’ll actually get up into Colorado now.

Greetings from Albuquerque, where we’ve spent the past couple of nights. The largest and fastest growing city in New Mexico, Albuquerque suffers a bit from sprawl, but there are some pretty cool parts of town once you look. We drove through Nob Hill and checked out the houses, and even got into a couple of open houses in other parts of the city. We weren’t overly impressed with what we saw — the ones we went into weren’t exactly bargains.

A few things did appeal to us though. For one, after living so far from anything, it’s nice to see a town that has a Trader Joes, Whole Foods and Wild Oats market!

Yesterday was Easter, so lots of places were closed, especially restaurants. But we did okay; the food has been pretty good, though we’ve been stuffed as a result. The Karnita’s breakfast at Garcia’s is to die for!

In an effort to work some of it off, we got in a hike at Petroglyph National Monument. The picture of the chile ristra was taken at the visitor center. This morning we had breakfast at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (the breakfast burrito was excellent), and took in the gift shop briefly. Now it’s off to Las Cruces, which I’ll report from next. We’ll end up in Albuquerque again near the end of the report, so I should get in another post on this area next week.

Maybe it’s just that it’s Easter, but traffic has been pretty low key. It looks like they spend a good amount on public infrastructure, a welcome change from California.

Well, the wife and I have taken off for nearly two weeks in New Mexico, looking for our “best place to live.”  Why NM? Licensing hours. My wife is a therapist, so a big consideration is counseling licensing hours. We would have looked in Arizona, but their requirements are onerous.  And Colorado still seems a little cold to us.  We’ll try to get a full post up on licensing requirements in our target states at some point, but for now, just know that it is steering us to New Mexico.

We’re trying to maintain a degree of flexibility in our itinerary, but the tentative plan calls for us to hit Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Santa Fe, Silver City and Truth of Consequences. I plan on posting from each town along the the way.