Badger Blog

Several people (including Elayne) asked why I did not include Ashland, OR on my list of potential retirement locations. For years this was at the top of our list of places to live, and so what gives? For those who do not know Ashland is a small city of about 21,000 people just off of Interstate 5 near the California boarder, nestled between the Siskyous and the Cascades. It is the home of Southern Oregon University and, more famously, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Because of the latter it is definitely a tourist town, but in a good way. It is a somewhat socially progressive town with art galleries, theaters (other than OSF) and a larger than expected (for a city of this size) collection of restaurants featuring a widely diverse selection of cuisines. It has art festivals and parks and a reasonably decent bus system. It has hiking trails and and all sorts of summer activities and Mt Ashland offers skiing in the winter. Its climate is more temperate than central Oregon. Back when we l...

There is no Plan B . At least nothing specific. Not yet and maybe not ever. If not Portugal then we need to decide upon a place to live that will not meet all of our requirements. That's hard to entertain when Portugal meets all of our requirements and all of our preferences (the nice to have items). But I would feel better about making our final decision on Portugal if we had specific alternatives in mind that we could directly compare it to, and so I have created a short list of other options: two international and two domestic. Costa Rica . In my opinion Costa Rica is the best Latin American country for us. The crime rate is the requirement we would have to compromise on here, and for preferences we'd lose out on the climate. Costa Rica looks lovely and has a real focus on preserving its natural areas. It has sea side towns on the Pacific where sailing and scuba are easy and a number of stables for boarding horses -- there is even an international airport relatively close b...