Any unique facts about Colville, WA??? (Seattle, Spokane: health insurance, buy, living in)
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Yep...a retired paradise if you ask me. We had been looking for a 'small" town to settle in after retiring from Las Vegas after 34 years in the people business...give me slow and quiet now. Sure, we have income so no need to worry about work. We pulled the motorhome into Colville, saw the house of our dreams and thru out the anchor.
Admittedly our property is 3 miles outside the town but who cares, got a Wally Mart, Saver1 and Safeway. No malls, gangs or crooks that we have seen. I can't believe how friendly and nice "every" single shop worker has been, even the cashiers at Wally are friendly.
It's not a big city but I love it and the area.
I have been in colville wa for 3 1/2 years and I did come from California...I was transplanted here by marriage. There are plenty of pros and cons to living here...
PROS:the country side is beautiful you couldn't ask for more.. the community I feel is trying to be involved with the kids..the hunting fishing camping great here...getting out to explore nature definitely the spot...floating the river... there are a couple decent spots in town to eat if you don't feel like cooking..the people are hospitable....great place to retire ..the town is very cute.....a drive in movie theater at summer time super cool.....
CONS: jobs are hard to come by.... entertainment outside of going to the river or lake or going to the woods is obsolete..they have a move theater that plays some new movies and you can go to Walmart and a couple stores in town...the big city is 1 hour 1/2 or more away...the people here are not very fond of outsiders not native to the area....the people here do not care about there appearance at all...not saying everyone is this way but more then less....the drug and crime rate have skyrocketed since i have been here i get its the economy to but the area has this way of sucking people in definitely some thing you must think about before you move here
I have been in colville wa for 3 1/2 years and I did come from California...I was transplanted here by marriage. There are plenty of pros and cons to living here...
PROS:the country side is beautiful you couldn't ask for more.. the community I feel is trying to be involved with the kids..the hunting fishing camping great here...getting out to explore nature definitely the spot...floating the river... there are a couple decent spots in town to eat if you don't feel like cooking..the people are hospitable....great place to retire ..the town is very cute.....a drive in movie theater at summer time super cool.....
CONS: jobs are hard to come by.... entertainment outside of going to the river or lake or going to the woods is obsolete..they have a move theater that plays some new movies and you can go to Walmart and a couple stores in town...the big city is 1 hour 1/2 or more away...the people here are not very fond of outsiders not native to the area....the people here do not care about there appearance at all...not saying everyone is this way but more then less....the drug and crime rate have skyrocketed since i have been here i get its the economy to but the area has this way of sucking people in definitely some thing you must think about before you move here
Thanks, meyoo1!
This old thread keeps getting dredged up.
I agree with you on most of the comments you've made. We now lived here almost 4 years, and have no plans to move away. My parents even followed us and moved here and built their retirement home in the area.
I agree that the crime rate has elevated recently, and, like you said, probably has to do with the recent economy/lack of jobs. I will say, though, that the meth rate seems to be getting less severe, compared to other places that I have lived - this may be the area, but it may also be that other drugs are now becoming more "trendy". I don't know - it's not something I deal with on a regular basis, thankfully.
As far as things to do in Colville, (I apologize, because I don't remember who said this) a poster commented on this forum once that small town entertainment is best for people that make their own entertainment, not for people who need to be entertained. Works for me.
As far as things to do in Colville, (I apologize, because I don't remember who said this) a poster commented on this forum once that small town entertainment is best for people that make their own entertainment, not for people who need to be entertained. Works for me.
Time ta bump your thread once again, PS90. Hey, are you still living in Colville, PS90? A job in my field has opened up there and although I'm employed right now in SW Kansas, I think of returning to Washington state again from time to time. I do have a couple of questions for anyone who lives in Colville or nearby.
Is the drive-in movie theater the Auto-Vue Theater, still open for business? What a nice extra that would be. How's the Colville Wal*Mart? I know, ha-ha, it's like any Wal*Mart would be. That was pretty much a tongue-in-cheek question, yes it was.
So, is living in Colville a fair-ta-midland life? If you're a hunter or a fisherman, or, you just like to entertain yourself. I fall into the latter category, as long as I have a Revell model to build of a 1960's car, the Internet with a strong connection, a capable small 4-cyl. motorcar with a manual transmission, a Gameboy Advance with Roger Clemens MVP baseball ta play on it, a couple of good TV's with DirecTV ta watch...hey, wait a minute. We wouldn't need DirecTV in Colville because we wouldn't need NFL Sunday Ticket...the Seahawk's games would just be televised on the local Spokane feed TV stations. Excellent!
PS90 - if you're still in Colville please chime in with your up-ta-date opinion of living in small Colville, WA. I noticed you guys also have a movie theater downtown, too. The Alpine Theater, that shows new movies, and that's cool. I suppose Spokane is about an hour and a half away by motorcar, right? Oh, one last question - does Colville, WA, get a hearty helping of snow every winter season? How is the driving when the snow dumps on the town's streets?
As far as things to do in Colville, (I apologize, because I don't remember who said this) a poster commented on this forum once that small town entertainment is best for people that make their own entertainment, not for people who need to be entertained. Works for me.
Time ta bump your thread once again, PS90. Hey, are you still living in Colville, PS90? A job in my field has opened up there and although I'm employed right now in SW Kansas, I think of returning to Washington state again from time to time. I do have a couple of questions for anyone who lives in Colville or nearby.
Is the drive-in movie theater the Auto-Vue Theater, still open for business? What a nice extra that would be. How's the Colville Wal*Mart? I know, ha-ha, it's like any Wal*Mart would be. That was pretty much a tongue-in-cheek question, yes it was.
So, is living in Colville a fair-ta-midland life? If you're a hunter or a fisherman, or, you just like to entertain yourself. I fall into the latter category, as long as I have a Revell model to build of a 1960's car, the Internet with a strong connection, a capable small 4-cyl. motorcar with a manual transmission, a Gameboy Advance with Roger Clemens MVP baseball ta play on it, a couple of good TV's with DirecTV ta watch...hey, wait a minute. We wouldn't need DirecTV in Colville because we wouldn't need NFL Sunday Ticket...the Seahawk's games would just be televised on the local Spokane feed TV stations. Excellent!
PS90 - if you're still in Colville please chime in with your up-ta-date opinion of living in small Colville, WA. I noticed you guys also have a movie theater downtown, too. The Alpine Theater, that shows new movies, and that's cool. I suppose Spokane is about an hour and a half away by motorcar, right? Oh, one last question - does Colville, WA, get a hearty helping of snow every winter season? How is the driving when the snow dumps on the town's streets?
Hey Elkotronics!
You were living in Moses Lake before, if I remember correctly, right?
We've lived here in Colville for about 4 years now. Just as background info, I've lived in many little towns in Eastern Washington, and in Centralia in Western Washington - so I have never lived in a "big city", and I have never lived in one of Washington's more liberal areas. Because of my background, I'm sure my viewpoints and ideals are skewed compared to your average Seattlite transplant, for example.
Anyway, my wife and I really like Colville. I have lots of good friends from high school and med school, but other than those, I've never really made any close friends in all the moving around that we've done for my career since then. But that's not the case here. We have made lots of friends to hang out with, go to community events with, etc. And many of those friends are members of the "good ol' boys club" in Colville - i.e. members of families that have been here fore many generations. Again, my acceptance may be skewed because I probably fit the "small-town-Washington mold" better than a liberal Seattle retiree would, but I haven't experienced any small-town "outsider hate" that everyone talks about.
Honestly, I don't like the crime that supposedly happens here. It's almost all petty property crime (probably all drug-related), and it's never impacted us, but it's still alarming to hear about these crimes happening in such a small town. On the other hand, I guess it's a good thing that people talk about this stuff - in some places like Chicago (or Yakima), the crime is so bad that, from what I hear, people don't even bother to acknowledge it any more.
Yes, the Auto-Vue drive-in is still in business. They even got a brand-new screen last year! We go probably once every summer. It's a cool experience, even though the sound and picture aren't great compared to a new sit-down theater in Spokane, for example. The Alpine theater is decent, but older - they usually play movies that came out about 1-2 months ago.
If you are into hunting or fishing, then there isn't a whole lot of places better in this state to do those things. If you're into restoring cars, then there are quite a few guys into that too, although your parts sources will be semi-limited.
Snow can be bad here - probably worse than Moses Lake by a little bit, but not as bad as the surrounding areas like Republic or Metaline. The last three years, we've had less than 6" of snow on the ground, and it's only been there 2 months or so. I expect that to get worse eventually, though. If you've driven in Eastern Washington before, then I wouldn't expect the snow-driving to be much different than other places.
Of everything you list, the internet connection might be your biggest lacking factor here. Pend Orielle county, which is the next county over to the east, has a decent fiber build-out, but here in Stevens County we have none of that. I have a fairly slow DSL connection, and there is a local company that had a wireless antenna-type internet set-up (still not very fast, but works pretty well). There are pretty much no other choices except crap like satellite internet.
Bottom line - I've moved a lot in my early career. I hope that this is my last stop.
PS90 - we have high-speed wireless internet here in Dodge from Cox Communications. It's pretty good and, to me, not very expensive per month. And we're not in a contract - it's month-to-month. Yeah, the Allied Healthcare job open at the hospital there in Colville has been open for several months now. I am kind of curious about it. Here in Dodge it gets slow at my main skillset so they have me help out in another Allied Health job - in fact, that's what I'm doing now.
One of my favorite bosses from my healthcare career moved to Spokane and I'd love to go visit him there. I just occasionally build plastic Revell models of 60's cars. I don't tinker with real cars! I just want a good mechanic to work on my real car when I need one. What you're saying about Colville sounds interesting - we're unfortunately on a 12-month rental house lease and we're only halfway through. The only way out of it would be to pay it off (ouch...6 months X $750) or find someone else to rent here. The upside is that this landlord will accept pets on his leases. In fact, we have two dogs and two cats and he only added $50 a month total to our rent (we pay $750 a month) and didn't add anything else for the animals. Not bad! But there is a good chance we could find people to rent this house out - a really good chance. Dodge City, KS, has some online resources I could advertise in and I could also post a message at the hospital here and I bet I'd get some thirsty renters looking to rent. Dodge City, KS, has two beef slaughterhouses that are going full guns right now and there's a big shortage of rental houses available to people with dogs and/or cats.
I spose the high temp.'s in the summer are pretty high there, huh? Like 90-95 degrees? And what about grocery stores? Wal*mart and are there any IGA's or smaller grocery stores there and, if there are, how are they? There looks to be plenty of places a person could plop a kayak down into the water and row for a while there around Colville. That pretty accurate? Did those nasty forest fires last year affect Colville?
Last edited by elkotronics; 05-30-2016 at 09:24 AM..
I remember how hot it was when we camped there several years ago, as well as stopping for a swim in 2004. 105 degrees!!!! and barely dropping below 100 even at 10 pm. This was in the forest, even.
Roosevelt Reservoir is the place to paddle. Not many people on the water, clean, sunny.
I remember how hot it was when we camped there several years ago, as well as stopping for a swim in 2004. 105 degrees!!!! and barely dropping below 100 even at 10 pm. This was in the forest, even.
Roosevelt Reservoir is the place to paddle. Not many people on the water, clean, sunny.
Good information, pikabike. Thank you for that. I'll just continue to hunt and gather information on Colville.
PS90 - we have high-speed wireless internet here in Dodge from Cox Communications. It's pretty good and, to me, not very expensive per month. And we're not in a contract - it's month-to-month. Yeah, the Allied Healthcare job open at the hospital there in Colville has been open for several months now. I am kind of curious about it. Here in Dodge it gets slow at my main skillset so they have me help out in another Allied Health job - in fact, that's what I'm doing now.
One of my favorite bosses from my healthcare career moved to Spokane and I'd love to go visit him there. I just occasionally build plastic Revell models of 60's cars. I don't tinker with real cars! I just want a good mechanic to work on my real car when I need one. What you're saying about Colville sounds interesting - we're unfortunately on a 12-month rental house lease and we're only halfway through. The only way out of it would be to pay it off (ouch...6 months X $750) or find someone else to rent here. The upside is that this landlord will accept pets on his leases. In fact, we have two dogs and two cats and he only added $50 a month total to our rent (we pay $750 a month) and didn't add anything else for the animals. Not bad! But there is a good chance we could find people to rent this house out - a really good chance. Dodge City, KS, has some online resources I could advertise in and I could also post a message at the hospital here and I bet I'd get some thirsty renters looking to rent. Dodge City, KS, has two beef slaughterhouses that are going full guns right now and there's a big shortage of rental houses available to people with dogs and/or cats.
I spose the high temp.'s in the summer are pretty high there, huh? Like 90-95 degrees? And what about grocery stores? Wal*mart and are there any IGA's or smaller grocery stores there and, if there are, how are they? There looks to be plenty of places a person could plop a kayak down into the water and row for a while there around Colville. That pretty accurate? Did those nasty forest fires last year affect Colville?
Rentals can be tough to find here - we still live in a rental while we build our house, and I remember it took a lot of looking to find a half-decent rental that allows a bunch of dogs and cats here.
It does get fairly hot here at times in the summer, and the last few summers have been really hot. If you've lived in Moses Lake, however, then Colville won't be as hot. The big difference, temperature-wise, between Colville and Wentachee (where we moved here from, and closer to Moses Lake's climate than Colville) is that it's slightly cooler here, and especially quite a bit cooler here at night. Although these are very rough averages, we seem to run about 2-3 degrees warmer than Spokane, and about 5 degrees cooler than Moses Lake.
We do have a Wal-Mart, if you like that sort of thing. We also have a Safeway and a Super One - which is the most local, although they have chains in many towns in Eastern WA. There is in IGA in Kettle Falls, which is the next town over.
What else...The fires did affect us, but much less-so than North Central WA. We had a fire near Arden (south of Colville by about 4 mile), that led to some evacuations, but it only amounted to about 3000 acres - much less than the 100,000 acre North Star fire. Wild fires are a fact of life here, just like anywhere in the dry forested parts of the Western US, but last year was by far the worst I have ever seen in 40+ of living in WA.
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Did those nasty forest fires last year affect Colville?
