Our Final Stop
May 25, 2014 03:12 PM
On June 4th of 2010 we arrived back in Denver after two years of travel. We’d made the decision to settle in Denver, expecting it to be our home for life. This is all documented in the post I wrote at the time, Full Circle. Then on April 3rd of 2013, having again sold our house and stored most of our belongings, we hit the road again, documented at On the Road Again. We left expecting to be on the road two or three years, enjoying the country and also looking for the perfect place to someday settle into retirement. Well, the “two or three years” was a bit of an overestimate. Here we are a little over one year later, about to settle again.
Why? I believe I said it well in the On the Road Again post: “Time passes, things change. Decisions that were right when they were made—decisions that changed the direction of your life—are revisited. The endless conflict between the known and the unknown, between security and adventure, demands new decisions.”
As we’ve traveled the country over the past year, the search for a retirement home has gradually become more of a focus for us, with “settle someday” becoming “settle someday soon.” There are a number of reasons why this has happened, my age and faltering eyesight being two important contributors, but mainly due to the fact that we just weren’t having as much fun as we did first time around. We’ve found ourselves saying, “Been here, done this” on a regular basis. There’s still a lot of the country we haven’t explored but most of it is much the same as we’ve seen. The call of the open road has faded.
There’s also the important fact that we miss having friends around to enjoy. On the road you make acquaintances, but a week or two later most are just a memory. Those you remain in contact with remain friends, but they’re soon halfway across the country. We’d really like to stay in one place long enough to get to know the people and find our place amongst them. So finding a home has become important.
As you probably know, we considered the west coast but found California too expensive, Oregon too cool, windy, and wet, and the Puget Sound area too expensive and too cool, windy, and wet. Colorado stayed on our list of places, but it’s an expensive place to retire and winters are simply too long. We went to Asheville expecting it to be THE place but came away disappointed; it’s a great place to visit but not the place for us to retire. Florida is wonderful, but hurricanes and sink holes and rising sea levels and the crazy increase in the cost of flood insurance caused us to scratch it from our list. Austin is a great place and I have two sons in the area, but it’s also an expensive place to retire, the summers are too hot, and global warming is quickly turning Texas into a desert.
Which brings us to Northwest Arkansas, Bentonville, to be specific. Ann and I met and married in Arkansas and lived here a number of years. It’s one of the most beautiful states in the country, the cost of living—particularly housing—is amazingly low, and we have a lot of friends in Arkansas. Bentonville, home of the Walton family and Walmart, is a growing, thriving town of about 40,000 people. We love the social and cultural energy of the place, to a large extent fueled by the Walton Foundation’s support of the local community.
The old downtown square area is one of those “feel-good” places you enjoy coming back to again and again. It hosts the weekly farmer’s market and regular entertainment events, and is home to “Walton’s 5&10,” Sam Walton’s first store, the ancestor of the thousands of Walmart stores scattered across the globe.
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded and supported by Alice Walton, daughter of Sam Walton, is a world-class art gallery and the centerpiece of the town’s growing artist community.
The city, with the support of the Walton Foundation and a number of other local philanthropists, has established 16 city parks, hundreds of acres of open spaces, and over 30 miles of walking/biking trails, with more to come. Oh, and two brew pubs are under construction. In other words, it’s got just about everything Ann and I have been looking for.
The fact that we already have quite a number of long-term friends in the area is also very important. We’ve observed over the years that for some reason we’ve tended to stay closer to our Arkansas friends than others we’ve met. There’s a warmth and accepting manner about the people here that makes it easy to make and keep friends. The people of Bentonville are noticeably friendly and outgoing so it should be easy to make new friends in Bentonville, probably through volunteering with local community organizations.
Given all the above, we’ve decided to move to Bentonville. A couple of weeks ago we made an offer on the perfect home to retire to and the sellers accepted our offer. If all goes well, we’ll close on July 7th and, following a few days of painting and replacing carpet with wood floors, we’ll move in. Our “new” home is in a great neighborhood located along the spine of a wooded ridge in the northern part of town. It sits on a half-acre lot with plenty of old-growth trees providing a park-like feeling. It’s a 2,900 square foot four bedroom home with a nicely finished walkout basement and two decks. Being an older (1987) home, there are a number of things we want to update but we love the home as-is and plan to make changes gradually as time and budget permits. After a lifetime of moving from place to place, I think we’ve found the place to spend the rest of our lives. Only time will tell.
So this blog is nearing its end. We’ll put our motorhome on the market as soon as we move into the house and our travels will officially be over. I expect to make one or two more posts as we wrap things up. After that, maybe we’ll start another Web site focused on crafting a new life in Northwest Arkansas. Or maybe not.
Alan
Why? I believe I said it well in the On the Road Again post: “Time passes, things change. Decisions that were right when they were made—decisions that changed the direction of your life—are revisited. The endless conflict between the known and the unknown, between security and adventure, demands new decisions.”
As we’ve traveled the country over the past year, the search for a retirement home has gradually become more of a focus for us, with “settle someday” becoming “settle someday soon.” There are a number of reasons why this has happened, my age and faltering eyesight being two important contributors, but mainly due to the fact that we just weren’t having as much fun as we did first time around. We’ve found ourselves saying, “Been here, done this” on a regular basis. There’s still a lot of the country we haven’t explored but most of it is much the same as we’ve seen. The call of the open road has faded.
There’s also the important fact that we miss having friends around to enjoy. On the road you make acquaintances, but a week or two later most are just a memory. Those you remain in contact with remain friends, but they’re soon halfway across the country. We’d really like to stay in one place long enough to get to know the people and find our place amongst them. So finding a home has become important.
As you probably know, we considered the west coast but found California too expensive, Oregon too cool, windy, and wet, and the Puget Sound area too expensive and too cool, windy, and wet. Colorado stayed on our list of places, but it’s an expensive place to retire and winters are simply too long. We went to Asheville expecting it to be THE place but came away disappointed; it’s a great place to visit but not the place for us to retire. Florida is wonderful, but hurricanes and sink holes and rising sea levels and the crazy increase in the cost of flood insurance caused us to scratch it from our list. Austin is a great place and I have two sons in the area, but it’s also an expensive place to retire, the summers are too hot, and global warming is quickly turning Texas into a desert.
Which brings us to Northwest Arkansas, Bentonville, to be specific. Ann and I met and married in Arkansas and lived here a number of years. It’s one of the most beautiful states in the country, the cost of living—particularly housing—is amazingly low, and we have a lot of friends in Arkansas. Bentonville, home of the Walton family and Walmart, is a growing, thriving town of about 40,000 people. We love the social and cultural energy of the place, to a large extent fueled by the Walton Foundation’s support of the local community.
The old downtown square area is one of those “feel-good” places you enjoy coming back to again and again. It hosts the weekly farmer’s market and regular entertainment events, and is home to “Walton’s 5&10,” Sam Walton’s first store, the ancestor of the thousands of Walmart stores scattered across the globe.
The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded and supported by Alice Walton, daughter of Sam Walton, is a world-class art gallery and the centerpiece of the town’s growing artist community.
The city, with the support of the Walton Foundation and a number of other local philanthropists, has established 16 city parks, hundreds of acres of open spaces, and over 30 miles of walking/biking trails, with more to come. Oh, and two brew pubs are under construction. In other words, it’s got just about everything Ann and I have been looking for.
The fact that we already have quite a number of long-term friends in the area is also very important. We’ve observed over the years that for some reason we’ve tended to stay closer to our Arkansas friends than others we’ve met. There’s a warmth and accepting manner about the people here that makes it easy to make and keep friends. The people of Bentonville are noticeably friendly and outgoing so it should be easy to make new friends in Bentonville, probably through volunteering with local community organizations.
Given all the above, we’ve decided to move to Bentonville. A couple of weeks ago we made an offer on the perfect home to retire to and the sellers accepted our offer. If all goes well, we’ll close on July 7th and, following a few days of painting and replacing carpet with wood floors, we’ll move in. Our “new” home is in a great neighborhood located along the spine of a wooded ridge in the northern part of town. It sits on a half-acre lot with plenty of old-growth trees providing a park-like feeling. It’s a 2,900 square foot four bedroom home with a nicely finished walkout basement and two decks. Being an older (1987) home, there are a number of things we want to update but we love the home as-is and plan to make changes gradually as time and budget permits. After a lifetime of moving from place to place, I think we’ve found the place to spend the rest of our lives. Only time will tell.
So this blog is nearing its end. We’ll put our motorhome on the market as soon as we move into the house and our travels will officially be over. I expect to make one or two more posts as we wrap things up. After that, maybe we’ll start another Web site focused on crafting a new life in Northwest Arkansas. Or maybe not.
Alan
I love getting feedback from friends and visitors. Please shoot me an email.