Scouting Sacramento

Experience has shown that the research done on how livable a place may be, no matter how thorough and carefully thought out, needs to be backed up by "feet on the ground" reconnaissance. Our trip to Portugal in October showed that some of the places for which I had the highest hopes for living did not appeal to us at all while areas that I had ruled out (<cough>Foz do Douro<cough>) were our favorites. And of course the horse boarding and riding details that looked doable on paper turned out to be inadequate when seen on location. We expected the same sort of realignment with reality from Sacramento once we visited, but with better options for horse boarding and riding but fewer acceptable options for living -- in other words, the exact opposite of Portugal.

Horse Boarding

Because the horse boarding and riding combination is what doomed our Portugal retirement plans I'll start there for Sacramento. Our requirements were that the horses would get out into a pasture each day and have cover overnight (if not all day), that they would be properly cared for when we were not there, and that there was trail access nearby, if not directly off property. We preferred being able to keep both Topaz and Taylor together and to have adequate storage on site for tack, gear and even our trailer. Ease of bringing the trailer in to load the horses and turn the rig around to haul out was important. We also wanted the stables to be no more than around half an hour drive from where we lived.

We visited five stables that met these requirements on paper (plus drove by another) and of these five two easily met our needs: one near Antelope, Gibson Ranch, and one near Loomis, a private owner who also boards a few horses. Both have advantages and disadvantages and we are fine with either option. We could have visited more, but there seemed little advantage to doing so when we already had two good choices.

One has a little better on-site conditions and amenities and the other has access to more extensive trails. Both allow on-site trailer storage for no extra fee and we felt comfortable with the barn managers for both. The price for one is a little higher than the other, but not enough for it to be a major factor in our decision process.

We cannot go wrong with either choice, which is a luxury I wish we had with all of our decisions.

Human Boarding

We were expecting suburbia before we visited, but the extent of the car dependent lifestyle and the surrounding cultural and amenity desert surprised even me. It did not take long for us to eliminate nearly all of the neighborhoods and communities in or around Sacramento from our list of acceptable places to live. The city is surrounded by suburban development, and while some neighborhoods were quite nice with a pleasant variety of well kept houses with carefully tended landscaping, every one of them was served only by stroads leading to car-centric strip malls, shopping centers, and big box stores. There were no urban centers, no places for inhabitants to get out and socialize together (where a sense of community can be cultivated), and only a handful of local businesses that were overwhelmed by the ubiquitous chain stores, most of which take far more from their communities than they give.

In short we found almost everyplace we saw to be ugly and unlivable.

Antelope, Citrus Heights, Orangevale, Carmichael, and Arden-Arcade were all knocked off our list on the first day. Going further afield north or east placed us in conservative areas where I will not live and where the stroad/strip mall as an urban center is still an issue. South is far away from our boarding options (and there is the real threat of flooding). West takes you to communities with better integration of housing and amenities, but again the distance to the boarding stables is too great and the cost for housing is high.

Parts of downtown and midtown were okay and preferable to the burbs, but our favorite place by far was East Sacramento ("East Sac"). Unfortunately these places have the most expensive housing options and all of the listings here were at the extreme upper end of our budget and provided the bare minimum (or even less than) of our simple needs. Go figure: it's like people prefer to live in these types of places and are willing to pay more to do so, but all city planners continue to give them are suburban hellscapes.

So what are we going to do? At the moment I see two options for us: East Sac and Rancho Cordova.

As mentioned above East Sac is expensive and available housing is limited, but it really is our favorite option. See the lovely arts and crafts home to the right.

Like the communities I dismissed above, Rancho Cordova is suburban and is infested with parking lot centric shopping and dining options with a dearth of locally owned businesses. However it also has a major green space along the American River complete with trails that extend east and west for many miles. It is on the Sacramento gold light rail line, which in theory should provide a car free way to get to the nicer amenities of East Sac. We actually drove to the park and ride lot and rode light rail from Rancho Cordova all of the way to downtown. The trains are shabby but clean and they do allow bicycles on board, and Sacramento Rapid Transit is in the process of upgrading the ride vehicles. Houses in Rancho Cordova are well within our price range and it is "reasonably close" to our two horse boarding options.

Decisions

So are we going to do it and move to Sacramento? Despite the serious problems we found with available (and affordable) places to live the city still holds the advantages that brought us down for a scouting trip. The climate is warm. The urban amenities are nice and near. The airport is large and a major world hub is nearby. Several passenger trains stop there. Horse keeping and riding opportunities are great. There are sailing clubs and direct flights to places to scuba dive. We haven't pulled the trigger yet, but it's looking mostly positive.