10:03 – Barbara and I spent the day yesterday scouting out potential relocation areas. We left at 9:35 a.m. and headed for Sparta, NC, which is about 70 miles and 90 minutes from Winston-Salem, most of it by 2-lane road. We picked up a lot of brochures at the welcome center/Chamber of Commerce, and then spent an hour or so walking around town and then driving around some of the residential areas. The people were universally friendly and there wasn’t an underclass person to be seen. Barbara and I both liked the place and thought it was a suitable place for us to live.
After having lunch at a nice little restaurant, we headed for Jefferson/West Jefferson, which is another 20 miles or so down a two-lane, further away from Winston-Salem, but nearer Boone, NC. We liked that area as well. It’s about twice the size of Sparta, and not quite so “mountain-y”.
Both areas have chain businesses like supermarkets, auto parts stores, drugstores, and so on, but Jefferson/West Jefferson has more of them than Sparta. J/WJ also has natural gas service to many areas, fiber-optic broadband in and immediately outside town, and other amenities that Sparta doesn’t offer. Both have decent medical care, and neither has any significant underclass population.
One thing that surprised me was the amount of agriculture. I was expecting Christmas tree farms, chicken factories, fruit orchards, wineries, and not much else, but there’s a great deal of general agriculture. Just driving along main roads, we saw hundreds of dairy and beef cattle and huge fields of general crops. West Jefferson even has a roofed structure set aside for a farmers’ market, which runs every Saturday April through November. Despite being in the mountains, this area can obviously feed itself, if worse ever comes to horrible.
Basically, these areas, particularly J/WJ, provide amenities and resources similar to Winston-Salem, but on a smaller scale. I think these areas suit both Barbara and me. I’ll do a great deal more exploration on line, and I’m sure we’ll be making more trips up to check things out further. We want this to be our last move, so we need to be sure before we jump. At some point, we’ll probably take a week off and rent a place up there as a final check. When we’re sure, we’ll buy a home and some property and move up there.