As we run out the clock on our last few months in Tennessee (a little over four), things are falling into place to get us back to Oregon. But, things in the outside world are changing rapidly as well and for some things we have no way of knowing what the state of things will be when end of August finally rolls around.
Here’s what we have accomplished and decided so far:
- Housing: The biggest issue we’ll have after arriving in Oregon will be finding housing, and housing out at the coast is very limited . . . and expensive. If we are still determined to lived out by the ocean we will be looking for an apartment along northern Oregon coast, focusing on Seaside, Cannon Beach, Manzanita, and Newport. However, we are starting to believe that moving back to Portland may be the wiser choice. Lots of driving will be required if we live at the coast, and we won’t have the access to healthcare we would in the city. In Portland we can position ourselves in a neighborhood where we can walk to many of not most things we need and have excellent healthcare close by. We’ve rented a sweet Airbnb in Portland for a week after our arrival to look around and see if Portland is where we want to stay. If not, we’ll head out to the coast.
- Travel: We were initially planning to take a six-day road trip out to Oregon from Tennessee. That plan evolved into selling our car here before we left and renting a car to drive west and then turning it in when we got to Portland and leasing a car there. One day though, completely out of the blue, I wondered why we didn’t just fly out to Portland instead and save a lot of hassle. We ended up buying airline tickets a few weeks ago for fraction of what we would have spent on a rental car, hotels, gasoline, etc. for the road trip. Tickets to Portland from here were very affordable and I love that we’ll be on a nonstop flight. We now have our fingers crossed that flight doesn’t get cancelled which is a possibility, but we paid extra for refundable tickets this time, just in case.
- Transportation: The road trip plan was going to cost us a LOT which honestly made us unhappy, as did the whole process of driving a car west – we knew we’d be worried about prices and whether we could find gas in places. We finally decided to keep our car but will instead ship it to Oregon from here, a process that takes about a week and will cost us w-a-y less than renting a car here and leasing a new car in Oregon. Our current car doesn’t get the greatest mileage but we don’t drive much these days (we spend less than $150/month now on gas even with Brett picking up our grandson and bringing him home every day from his not-that-close-to-us school). Financially it just made the most sense to keep the car especially since we still love it. We’ve arranged shipping and are happy with the price.
- Moving: For now we’re planning to do a full-service move and will set that up in late May/June. We have so few things to move these days that we should be completely packed up and moved out of our apartment in just two or three hours. If prices really go sky high though we will go with a container move even though it will be a hassle for us on both ends of the move.
There will of course be many more things to add to our preparations as we go along but for now most of the big stuff is locked in. We are watching prices and saving as much as possible to make sure this move happens as smoothly as possible. I think we will be in the first stages of a long, deep recession by the end of August, if not already, but our goal remains to get to Oregon no matter what. In the meantime, we will continue with planning that keeps our costs as low as possible, and hope for the best.
