Homeschooling kids in the Hailey area? (Twin Falls, Jerome: ski resort, fit in, renting)

[MissLiss]

Hello! We have been thinking of moving to Idaho with our two little boys for years, and I've lately been looking into the Hailey area because of its natural beauty, availability of land, good healthcare (St Luke's in Ketchum is well rated), clean air with four seasons, moderate political climate, low crime, and of course - it's Idaho! However, I am worried about community since it's such a small town and on top of that, we're homeschoolers. From what I've read, a lot of people in the area just visit for the winter too.

Can anyone share thoughts on raising kids in the Hailey area and how hard it is to find friends? Is there any homeschooling community to speak of? We are conservative/libertarian leaning, religious, anti-big government, gentle/crunchy parenting, live and let live, love-everyone, gun-owning people, and from everything I've read, I think we would fit in *pretty* well, but I'm also worried as we'd be moving from California. Would we be likely to face a lot of anti-California sentiment?

Thanks for any thoughts

[volosong]

No worries on the anti-California thing. We don't like it, but most of us hail from there anyway. It's more tongue-in-cheek than anything. Also be aware that Hailey and Blaine county are pretty much as far to the left as anywhere in the state. Probably more so than anywhere else. According to the data side of City-Data

https://www.city-data.com/city/Hailey-Idaho.html

Hailey has gone for the Democrat presidential candidate since Clinton II, (that's as far back as City-Data shows).

Sorry, can't help you on the home schooling thing. Subject just came up yesterday. Perhaps do a quick search.

p.s. My great-great grandparents are buried in the Hailey cemetery. Nice town, but kinda pricy.

[banjomike]

Hailey is like Vail in Colorado or Jackson Hole in Wyoming; it's the place where the movie stars and the rich folks live in their vacation getaways.

It's one of a string of small towns that all lie along the Wood River in its canyon. Ketchum, Hailey, and Bellevue are all so close together they can be thought of as one city, and all 3 are close to the Sun Valley Ski resort, the reason why all the movie stars live there.

It's pretty enough, but there are lots of spots here like it, and the reason why the hospital is so good is because rich people want good hospitals that are close by. The same factors apply to everything else there. Rich folks want a good police force, a good grocery store, a good jewelry store.... They're all there.

It's a very expensive county to live in. There are a lot more part-time residents than year-rounders, and the main economic drivers of the region are the ski hills and making the rich folks happy.

Shoshone is the farthest town in the string and it used to be the cheapest and easiest place to find a working man's house in the Wood River Valley, but no longer. Like all the others like it in other states, all the towns filled up long ago and have just enough money moving around in them to keep them filled.

I'm sure there's some homeschooling, and I'm sure it has every thing Idaho's homeschool program has for use in it. I'm sure the school district is one of the best equipped and has some excellent teachers.

That's Hailey. It is really nice there if you can afford it. It's full of working folks who found a way to afford it, and full of rich folks who pay their salaries. Tourists pay a lot of salaries too, as it's a 4-season resort area.

Same goes for them all, but the the closer to Sun Valley which is a separate resort, the more expensive it gets.
So Ketchum is speedier than Hailey, and Hailey speedier then Bellvue. Not as much now, as they all escalated a few notches upward on the scale.

I'm sure the city and county taxes are pretty high. It isn't exactly remote, but transportation depends on the narrow 2-lane that runs through all the towns, and the highway can get pretty crowded. It's remote enough to make the groceries and gas prices higher there.

I like the Wood River Valley. Always have. It costs a lot, but I think it delivers a lot back. I can't say for sure because I've never lived there full-time. I've visited it a lot, and have had friends who lived there who I stayed with, and played a lot of music there, but all this is basically an outsider's observation.

[nm9stheham]

Anti-CA sentiment would be the least of my worries there.

Look at a map and you will see that the area is very spread out, in small areas along the Wood River valley. So the neighborhoods tend to be small but there are enough city blocks all together in Hailey itself that there should be other children around. It IS a small town.. but if you sons grow up to like outdoor activities and are taught and allowed to roam a bit, then they will find much to do. (The need for others for entertainment is always more a matter of the individual.)

As said, Hailey is more of the working-families-town. So less of the transient, part-year living there.

Shopping is limited; the nearest big box store is 1 hour away in Jerome/Twin Falls. You do have a good grocery store there in Albertson's and the smaller Atkinson's.

The average Hailey property tax rate is $0.51 per $100, which IIRC is the 3rd or 4th lowest rate in the state. However, property values are higher than in most of ID so the average home taxes end up above average. It averages right at $2000 per year per house, which is probably very low compared to CA.

[Syringaloid]

The Wood River Valley is a popular place where many Hollywood types have vacation homes/condos. I've heard it referred to as Hollywood North.

Hailey = Demi Moore.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by Syringaloid

The Wood River Valley is a popular place where many Hollywood types have vacation homes/condos. I've heard it referred to as Hollywood North.

Hailey = Demi Moore.

Yup. They began moving there at least 70 years ago, just after Sun Valley opened. Sun Vally was the first developed ski resort in the west, and the only one for a long time. The Union Pacific was responsible for most of it.

When I was a teen, a bunch of my friends would go there to ski during holidays, finding ways to do it on the cheap.
I got to know Ann Southern, one of the first actors who moved there as her permanent home.
She retired pretty young, but she was a lot older than any of us, and she was a warm, kind woman; she would let us flop at her place sometimes and it was great.
She made us mind our manners too, which was a blessing in disguise. There were lots of wild parties there back then, but Ann kept us from falling into wretched excess. If you showed up wasted at her house, you were blackballed w/ no second chances, but she allowed a little tipsiness. She was a wonderful den mother for a bunch of wild kids.

Back then, ski bums were a real thing. They were like surfers, living on the road, going to where the best powder snow was, and living hand to mouth. Ann kept us out of their clutches for sure. Of course, they were the guys we wanted to party with the most.

Ketchum sure loved her. I think she was an influence in bringing other Hollywood people there too, but I don't know that for a fact, though she did have a few of her friends from the old days who were often there when we arrived. A lot of them weren't actors; they were the working folks behind the cameras.

Things were a lot more undeveloped back then, and Ketchum was still pretty rustic and rural. It's a lot more glamorous nowadays. Jackson Hole was even more rural and rustic, despite all the summer tourists who passed through. There weren't any movie people at all in Jackson back then, and most of the streets were still unpaved and there weren't any of the big resorts yet.
That was where all the real hardcore ski bums were. Those guys all loved some real dangerous skiing.

[nm9stheham]

Mike, your 'true ski bum' story reminds me of a realtress we met last fall in Dubois WY. She moved from NY state to the Jackson area 35-40 years ago.... to ski and just to ski. She laments that changes to 'upscale and trendy' in Jackson, the loss of the old atmosphere, and scoffs at a lot of the current residents there.....



Things just ain't what they used to be! But I enjoyed reading your story.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by nm9stheham

Mike, your 'true ski bum' story reminds me of a realtress we met last fall in Dubois WY. She moved from NY state to the Jackson area 35-40 years ago.... to ski and just to ski. She laments that changes to 'upscale and trendy' in Jackson, the loss of the old atmosphere, and scoffs at a lot of the current residents there.....

Things just ain't what they used to be! But I enjoyed reading your story.

Yup. But nothing is what it used to be. Something is lost when something's gained every time.

When I was 11 and my little bro was 8, and Jackson Hole was still just a little Wyoming town when the tourists weren't around, we took a pet bobcat that belonged to one of my Dad's friends out for a walk on his leash.

We strolled around the city park and part of downtown for several hours and never got much attention, except for the half-eaten hamburgers the bobcat mooched off a couple of tourists. The locals all knew the cat.

Dad's buddy was a photographer. He filmed a lot of the old Walt Disney wildlife shorts, and the cat starred in one of them.
He was very tame for a bobcat, and we kids often got a preview of the next Disney short before it hit the theaters, with a big tub of home-popped popcorn, seasoned with brewer's yeast and hot Mexican peppers. We would feed some to the cat sometimes, if he wasn't being a nuisance.
While the adults went over to the Wort Hotel to have dinner and dance to the cowboy band for a few hours.

The nights were so quiet that a few times, all the kids would drag blankets out to the lawn and fall asleep, waiting for the adults to come back, listening to the faint thump of the drums and the whine of the steel guitar that came from the Wort, a couple of blocks away. Oh, Lonesome Me! never sounded better.

That's the Jackson Hole I miss.

We used to go over all the time to go to the jackpot rodeo they used to hold on the weekends all summer. Old time country fun in a little 2-bit town that was just getting by.

[nm9stheham]

And ya know? There are a few spots like that out there right now.... just most folks pass it by and don't see. Or say.... 'old fashioned, not attractive, too rinky-dink, no shopping'. Folks demand a lot more but miss a lot.

Funny you should mention Disney..... Walt Disney had a house/lodge built way back when over in Dubois. (It was recently on the market and sold, back in 2018 or 2019 IIRC.) So the old Disney connection to Jackson area was maybe more that I realized.