There are a lot of reasons why I am happy that I was born in the state that I was born in. I have been to quite a few other states but I have only ever lived in this one and I think I am very fortunate that this, by happenstance, is the place where I have called home for over 40 years.
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For starters we have both mountains and the beach here. Sure there are other states that can claim that they have better mountains or better beaches but there are very few that have the right balance of both in the state. I can be at the beach one day and hiking in the mountains the next as well.
We also have a very manageable population in that there aren't too many of us. Outside of Charlotte and the RDU (Raleigh Durham) area, none of our cities are hyper populated. This means that traffic jams are a rarity and that is especially the case over where I live on the sound of New Bern. When I talk to friends of mine that live in "famous" places to live such as New York or Los Angeles, the stories they tell me about traffic jams and loads of people being all around kind of frighten me and I can't imagine living in that sort of environment. You could offer me a place to live for free in either one of those places and I would rather pay to live where I do.
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We've got a lot of great and most importantly FREE places to visit in nature and there are plenty of lakes and rivers here as well.
We also have all 4 seasons but none of them are too extreme. Sure we'll have a couple of really cold weeks in January and February, but for the most part we avoid any sort of extreme weather hot or cold.
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This is from Asheville but, which is at a slightly higher elevation than near sea level where I live but you can see that none of the temps are that extreme. It rarely gets below freezing where I live and in all the years that I have lived here I have only experienced a singular time in which there was so much snow that businesses, schools, and other things were forced to close. A lot of snow can be fun I guess, but I don't think anyone is going to argue that it can be a real pain in the ass.
We also have relative freedom here but I suppose the benefit of that kind of depends on how you feel about overall way of life. The fact that we have a nice mix of conservatives and liberals here kind of ensures that none of our policy makers are ever going to do anything too extreme. Hell, I don't even mind the fact that our governor is a Democrat. He knows better than to do any "gun grabbing" or other liberal ideas here because even his supporters generally agree with many conservative ideals. Our near 50/50 mix of political supporters is what makes us one of those famous "swing states" and while most people tend to think about this in a Presidential sense, it also affects the way things are done in the State of North Carolina. Our communities tend to be a nice mix of both and none of them are too extreme. We don't have any right-wing militias and we also don't have BLM riots that take over the streets. This isn't because the authorities are all up in our business either, it is because the good mix of right and left that we have in this state tends to take care of things on its own.
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I don't want this post to end up being political but this is just an example. We are damn near 50/50 split in nearly every election. This was true as far back as I remember and I think it is a good thing. Nothing too extreme happens really anywhere except for maybe Charlotte because everywhere outside of college campuses have a true sense of being moderate. I think the rest of the country would really benefit by having a similar political makeup as here.
Although I've talked about it many times before, our lack of any real affiliation with any one major party lead to us being able to decide on our own, basically county by county, whether or not we were going to adhere to Covid regulations. The governor here did what most other governors did and that was to shut things down. Over here in the East we adhered to this for maybe about a month but then as a community we decided that we were not going to do them anymore. The media attempted to vilify us and the governor denounced us stating that we were killing our own people but yet he never sent the national guard out or tried to compel the sheriff to try to force us to bend the knee to the emergency laws. We decided as a community what was best for our community and honestly, that's the way I feel it should be.
There aren't many other states that did this but lo and behold we are still alive and kickin over here and for the most part North Carolina remained and remains a peaceful place to live.
Even though I have lived in basically the same place for over 40 years, I wouldn't change a thing. If someone were to offer to pay for me to have the opportunity to permanently move to anywhere else in the world, I would choose to not leave. That's how great it is.
So if you ever feel like where you live is dragging you down whether it is because of weather, nature (or lack thereof), population, or politics, I think you could do a lot worse than relocating to North Carolina
Flyover country is the best country, IMHO. Despite Oregon is a corrupt shithole of vile Commies at the state level whose campaigns were largely funded by Sam Bankman-fraud and literal stacks of cash from drug dealers, that only really affects the big cities and college towns. By about March, 2020 we had had enough of the lockdowns and mask mandates in rural areas, and they pretty much went away.
Dread the coming pogroms to depopulate rural areas. Roads and shipping are critical to freedom, and vulnerabilities.
Thanks!
It might be a pain to travel if you are in these places but then again, I don't really want to travel anywhere:)
I have been considering alternatives to my present home. I need a change of pace. Going from the northwest to the southeast would be significant.
I'm not a huge fan of the Cato Institute, but I put a fair degree of trust in their Freedom in the 50 States index. NC looks pretty middle-of-the-road by their measures. Not great on most fronts, but not the worst. Washington and Oregon are pretty bad on most fronts except for drug decriminalization, and Idaho is sorta OK except for the minor issues of taxes and drug prohibition and police and library infringements.
Thanks for those links. That's really interesting information. I guess I would consider NC higher on the list because of other factors such as affordability as well.
I hope I am in a community, in upstate New York State, that is open to doing what your county did.
What did this look like. How did it come about. In the town, village, county meetings?
In Oregon we just quit doing it. Meetings are just vectors for the Delphi method, and can just be ignored effectively. I bet N. Carolina did the same.
Where I lived in 2020, I was one of very few who stopped doing "it," and I feared I would find my tires slashed, because I was very vocal about it back then. Where I live now, in a very small town upstate NY, I expected many to have stopped doing it all, but very few did. For instance, when our deranged governor announced that masks would be mandatory Monday morning, nearly everyone wore masks Monday morning. I'd like to find some way to get more of us to continue living our lives the next time this rolls around. I remember reading in a @beelzebub post back then that there was a deliberate county-wide decision to not participate in covid measures.
kudos to you for having the courage to stand out in the pack. I am happy that you appear to be much happier in your new small town!
It came about funnily enough, when we were ordered to close the Elks Lodge for Covid concerns. This is a tight knit group of relatively connected people and one of our members is the Sheriff. We met in secret with the Sheriff in attendance, had beers and talked about how we were going to organize a non-compliance. This spread to other parts of the community and we had overwhelming support. We then gathered in the streets in front of county hall to let city council know that we were not going to comply and the law enforcement that turned up didn't arrest anyone. Shortly thereafter the Sheriff made a public statement about how he was not going to enforce the governor's orders and that was that.
There's more to it than this of course, but the governor made a statement in response but took no further action even though he does have the legal right to remove the sheriff. I think that the governor knew that if he did this it would make the entire state angry and they would vote him out. The Sheriff likely made this decision in part to advance his own political career because he made national headlines when he did this, at least briefly. He also did it because I think he saw the writing on the wall and that if he stood in our way of freedom that his current term would be his last.
Thanks for that info - shows the value of clubs. I don't know any of the local law enforcement, but have heard our sheriff is a "constitutional" sheriff, who would not enforce unconstitutional laws. I haven't heard of anyone being arrested for non-compliance, but I moved here late 2021 so I may have missed it.
Our biggest problem here is with the board of health. Our deranged governor and her health commissioner sidekick gave tax payer money to counties that would enforce mask mandates. This county was surrounded by counties that refused the money, but my department of health took it and harassed the businesses that would not require masks - there were only a few of these, but you can be sure those were the businesses I patronized.
How does a head of a department of health have the power to enforce regulations with the force of law? I don't know if it's an elected position. But in trying to find out just now, I learned that a distant family member of mine is an employee of the department. I'll ask him.
Yes, but you have the Atlantic (the stormy sea) right there!
And what is up with all these pictures you guys take? Do you all just love using green filters? :-p
Sounds ideal having a bit of coast plus mountains and not one or the other. I must admit I do miss Cape Town for what it offers but when I move it will be out of the country.
any idea what country you would like to move to?
Ooh, I love this! In fact, I often think of relocating (from the Midwest: no mountains, no coastal beaches, in fact hardly any beaches at all).
I have an author friend in Gastonia (near Charlotte), and the map makes it look like she's hours away from the coast, but NC is not as big as the average Midwest state. So, no, she's maybe an hour from the beach. And there's a "Folly Beach" - what a great name!
She lives on a mountain.
I'd hate the humidity of summer. But. Can it be much worse than summer in the Midwest?
Relocating - my husband still loves his job and isn't ready to retire in a few years.
He could keep going past age 70.
Thanks to @owasco for all the reblogs - how many things I have failed to find on my own!
You make a great curator, @owasco.
Well i've been very happy here for all of my life. I am sure I am biased but how many people can say that they really like almost everything about the State that they live in?
Sorry for late reply, I have been very busy in my real life lately :)