What I wish someone had told me before I moved here from California

I moved up from Southern California in 2014. I have now had this conversation with enough relocating buyers that I may as well write it down.

The rain is real, and it is not what you are picturing. You are picturing storms. It is drizzle, gray, and long. November through about March. The first winter is genuinely an adjustment and I will not tell you otherwise. Then summer shows up and it is the best weather in the country, and everyone who spent February complaining goes completely silent about it.

Everything is closer than you think. Trails start inside the city. The McKenzie is half an hour from Springfield. The coast is an hour and change. In Southern California an hour of driving gets you across town. Here it gets you to the ocean.

Things cost less, but not uniformly. Housing was the obvious change for me. Some other things run higher than people expect. Run the whole budget rather than just comparing house prices, and include what your commute actually costs in both money and time.

The community thing is not marketing. It was the part that surprised me most and the reason I stayed. People show up here. Neighbors help. That is a hard thing to evaluate on a house-hunting trip and it is the thing that ends up mattering.

And tour at different hours. A street at eight in the morning and the same street at eight at night can be two entirely different answers, and you only get one chance to learn that before you own it.