"From Coast to Coast: The Exciting Journey to Find Our New Home"

Up and leaving the only state you have every called home is not for the faint of heart! California is such a beautiful state. Where we lived we could drive about 3 hours and be in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or at some of the most stunning beaches in California. The Sierra Nevada mountains were just 45 minutes up the hill, and we were less than two hours from Yosemite. On top of that, I lived in a Valley where I could get all the fresh produce my heart desired.

Every Year I was so excited to get my first taste of fresh fruit, usually Strawberries then all the wonderful tree fruit would follow.

However, the California I grew up in is not the California that exists today. Laws had been passed (Proposition 47) that reclassified certain nonviolent drug and property offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. This unfortunately emboldened criminals who knew they could now commit many crimes and go unpunished. Theft, drug offenses, forgery, and even fighting with police officers became offenses that would go unpunished. Around the same time Assembly bill 109 was passed allowing many violent offenders to be released from jail. It basically made California a safe haven for criminals. It would take forever to fully explain how bad things have become because of criminals having no accountability for their actions but lets just say that crime is rampant.

Because of the recurrent fires in California people in all areas are now suffering the consequences as many insurance companies have pulled out of California leaving Californian's to search for new insurance often at much higher premiums than before. The cost of electricity and natural gas has gone through the roof with no help from the state government to fight to keep costs down. On top of that the cost of goods that the nation as a whole has experienced caused many people to fight to make it on the wages they could bring home. The homeless population in the years before we left absolutely exploded. Sadly the cities and counties that were being flooded with homeless people had no funding to be able to manage the growing problem. In 2018, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Martin v. Boise that cities could not enforce anti-camping ordinances against homeless individuals if there were insufficient shelter beds available, effectively allowing homeless people to sleep in public spaces without fear of punishment under such circumstances. While I was all for people being safe to have at least some place to sleep, the city and county parks started to become homeless encampments where conditions became unsanitary and downright unsafe.

The beautiful state that I knew and loved started to become a completely different place. My husband and I had no children (well other than our fur-babies) so the decision to find a new place to live was much easier for us than it would be for some. Leaving behind Family and Friends has not been easy, I wish I could just pick them all up and bring them to our beautiful new home state. Instead I do my best to fly back occasionally to see everyone and I do my best to keep in touch with those that I love.

Now...for how we ended up here in the tiny town of Blairsville, Georgia. Luckily for me a family from the same small town in Springville had uprooted their lives and set out on an adventure in their camper to find where they wanted to spend the rest of their days. On Facebook I was able to watch as they explored different areas of Tennessee. One day she posted some photos in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I saw how beautiful the mountains surrounding that area were and I was instantly intrigued. Onto Zillow I went to start searching what homes sold for in that area, I quickly noticed that it was a major tourist hub filled with tons of AirBNB's. I did not necessarily want to live in a busy tourist filled area, I had done that when I lived in Monterey, California and discovered that to really enjoy things you pretty much had to avoid going out on the weekends. What I was really in search of was somewhere beautiful but peaceful in a beautiful mountainous area. So doing something that I love to do...I started to drag the Zillow map all over North Carolina, Tennessee, and then Finally Georgia. All states that fall along the edge of or smack dab in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. When I found a city that I liked I did research on the average year round temperatures, how much rain they got, how the taxes worked, what the population was like, all things that would have a huge effect on our overall happiness with the area we chose.

By this point my Husband and I were becoming very excited about the idea of moving somewhere new. His birthday was coming up in and we had booked a week long trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. We started talking and we realized that we would not really be able to enjoy our trip to Mexico now that the seed was planted in our minds that we wanted to move somewhere new. Thankfully I had bought trip insurance so we cancelled our trip to Mexico and Booked a trip to Nashville, Tennessee. I had heard so much about the horrible humidity in the South so I figured what better month to see how bad it really was than the month of August.

We had found a house we loved in the city of Ellijay, Georgia during one of my many Zillow hunts and we called the realtor we had been speaking to in Georgia and let them know we were hopping on a plane to come see it and would be there the following evening. The listing agent said they would not accept an offer until we had a chance to see it and get our offer in as well. Unfortunately, that agent was able to bring a buyer of her own giving her both sides of the deal... and she sold the house out from underneath us while we were literally in the air on our way to come see that property! The morning after landing in Tennessee we got into our rental car and set out on an adventure to see areas of the country we had never seen before. We decided to at least drive through Tennessee so that if we ended up in Georgia and didn't like it we would have an idea of what Tennessee was like. It was indeed beautiful but as we got closer and closer to Georgia the scenery began to get more and more beautiful. When we were driving through the Ocoee River valley my heart began to fall in love! It was such a beautiful drive surrounded by steep hills and large bodies of water and everything was sooooooo green! The trees were super tall and the canopies provided the most beautiful shade.

After driving many hours from Tennessee we finally arrived in Ellijay, Georgia. We reached out to our agent to let her know we had arrived and that is when we got the bad news, the home we had flown out so quickly to see was no longer an option. We thought we were going to look at a house, put in our offer and then spend the rest of our time enjoying the area on a nice little vacation. That was definitely not the case. That evening as exhausted as I was I began the crazy house hunt to try to find some other options that we loved enough to consider them being our next home. We saw so many houses that week that it was absolutely exhausting. We had booked our second AirBNB up in Blairsville way out in the woods south of town. I had looked at the areas of Blue Ridge and Blairsville as well as Hiawassee before we flew out and I knew that I loved that each of these towns had a lake and many rivers to enjoy. My husband had grown up on a lake, and I had grown up on a river so having those options nearby were very appealing.

On our fifth day of house hunting and after upping our budget quite a bit we finally found a home that we loved. As we drove down the dead end street I will never forget the families of deer we saw with adorable little fawns in tow. From our driveway we could see beautiful Lake Nottely through the peak-a-boo views of the trees and lakeside homes. It seemed like such a peaceful place.

We had never seen so many deer in one place before in our entire lives!

We called up our loan agent and went back and forth with her reworking numbers to see if we could actually afford the house we had found. Luckily the numbers all lined up and we were able to make an offer on the house. We were buying at the time that interest rates had started to skyrocket and we didn't want them to get worse which is part of what made finding a home quickly so important. After some negotiations our offer was excepted! In one short week we had gone on a crazy rampage to find a new HOME, not just a new house, but a new HOME, and we had done it!

I'll never forget the evening we found out our offer had been accepted. We headed over to take a little drive by the house and we ended up at the public boat ramp just a few minutes drive from the house. It was almost sunset so we went out to sit on the boat dock. I took my shoes off and put my feet in the water...I was absolutely amazed...the water was warm! I had never experienced a warm water lake before! In California the lakes are fed by melting snow coming from the high sierras and they are very brisk when you get in. It was such a pleasant surprise. As little blue gill fish circled my feet we sat and talked about our future and watched the sunset from the dock. The first day of our new future had begun.