We went through a long process and did a lot of work in order to move to Seattle and thought that others might be able to benefit from our experiences. Moving can be complicated and there are lots of different ways to do it, but I'm hoping that some guidelines of how to move to Seattle based on our experiences will be helpful to people looking to move to Seattle who find our blog:

1. Decide that Seattle's the best fit for you - Were pretty open-minded when we decided to find somewhere else to live. In order to make a decision, one place to get a lot of insight on a place is Sperling's Best Places, which has lots of informative statistics on US cities, including Seattle. You can compare statistics on Seattle to your hometown or other cities. There's also a forum where people offer their impressions of the city. Every city has its critics, so when reading criticism of Seattle, I had to weigh the negatives of Seattle with the negatives of other areas and consider that many people tend to exaggerate the negatives. We looked at the information and determined that Seattle seemed to fit us best.


2. Be sure you can afford it - How much it will cost you to move depends on how far you're moving from, who does the actual moving work, and how much stuff you have to move. It cost us $3,264 (tax-deductible) for movers to move boxes of our stuff and all our furniture, gas to drive 2,673 miles, and 5 nights of hotel stay. There were also other moving expenses like buying curtains, one-time set up fees for utilities, and things like that. However, the biggest cost for us has been the higher cost of living here. We've written about the cost of living here before, but you may have a different experience depending on where you are moving from. You might save some money if you sell some things to move to a smaller apartment or sell a car to live in the city.


3. Visit the city - Once we thought we might like to live in Seattle, we visited the city, not just as tourists, but as potential residents, shopping for a hometown. We were pretty sure we wanted to move here but visiting a place tells you a lot more than the internet does.


4. Be sure you really want to move here - Get a better understanding of the city to make sure you want to live here. We've shared a lot of our observations of Seattle, comments about the weather, and differences we've noticed between Seattle and Texas, so some of those posts might help you. Some people have contacted me with questions and I usually help as much as I can.


5. Determine to move - Prepare for giving up whatever you're leaving behind. I miss my family and friends, as well some other amenities of Texas. Be honest with yourself about whether you can handle it. It will be a difficult process to move and might not happen unless you're determined to do it. Also, once you've determined to move, you'll want to let people around you know. We could've done a better job of letting people know we were serious about moving. They may try to talk you out of it, but they'll appreciate being given advance notice and plenty of time to adjust to the idea. They may even become excited for you and try to help out.


6. Decide if you need to get a job (or jobs) here before moving - We decided that one of us would have to find a job up here before moving. We didn't want to pay moving expenses without any income and with a higher cost of living, not knowing how long it would take for one of us to find a job. We decided that if one of us found a job up here, we could get by long enough on one income until the other one of us found a job. However, it worked out better than that, as my employer let me work from home up here until I found a job. If you can and want to afford several months without an income, or have income flexibility, then it might be easier to find a job while living here, but we didn't find distance to be an issue in our job searches.


7. Start looking for a job (if you choose to wait, you can do this after step 13 below) - There are a lot of good resources on how to find a job, such as Quintessential Careers. Also, I shared some lessons I learned in my job search, which may be helpful for you. The point I would emphasize is to be patient and know that it may take a while to find a job.
   
   Some people may want to lower their standards for a job to accept pretty much any offer with the goal of moving up here sooner and then plan to find the job they really want as shortly afterward as possible. That's a decision you'll have to make for yourself, but accepting a job that takes you in a different direction than you want to go may make it more difficult for you to get back on track with the job you want and may not look good to others (such as recruiters).


8. Start to think about where you'd like to live - So you know you want to move, but where do you really want to live? In the suburbs or the city? What are your major criteria for choosing an area to live? Safety? Walkability? Schools? We knew for a while that we wanted to live in an urban environment, but we didn't have a specific neighborhood in mind.
   
   Two websites would've been very helpful if they had been available at the time. Firstly, we knew we wanted to live where we could walk places, so one website that would've helped us when looking for a neighborhood is the list of Seattle neighborhoods ranked by WalkScore walkability.
   
   Secondly, Google Maps has a feature called StreetView that lets you see what pretty much any street in the city looks like. We could have used this to look around areas we'd heard of to see what it looked like. Were there old buildings? Residences? Industry?
   
   You also may find our posts on different neighborhoods (e.g. Fremont, Capitol Hill, etc.) to be helpful as well.
   
   Also, my parents got me the Newcomer's Handbook for Moving to and Living in Seattle, which offers a pretty good perspective on all the different neighborhoods.
   
   You may want to start looking for a place to live in any neighborhoods that interest you to see if you can afford to live there.


9. Decide when you want to find a place to live - Do you want to start looking for a house or an apartment once you have a job offer? Are you going to live in a hotel in Seattle until you can find something? Your approach will determine when you should plan to visit Seattle next and how to plan that visit. We figured we'd have to visit Seattle for job interviews at some point and we decided that we would look for apartments during that visit. That worked out pretty well for us, though since we didn't know when we'd get a job offer and be ready to move in, the apartment managers often didn't know if they'd have anything available then.


10. Plan to visit for job interviews - We wanted to do just one more trip to Seattle to do all of our job interviews (hoping at least one of them would result in an offer). When applying to jobs and companies, we mentioned in our cover letter that we would be in town on a certain date range. We didn't have plane tickets yet, but we just chose a date range so that employers could start to plan on it. This way, we were able (well, actually just Lesley) to line up several interviews and have them all on one visit. Lesley was also invited to interview with a few people that may not have interviewed her otherwise just because she was in town and they figured they should interview her while she was there. Alternatively, you could just wait and see what date the employers suggest, but then it may be more difficult to schedule multiple interviews during the same time. Once some employers responded to set up a time, we bought our plane tickets and planned to make a trip out of it.


11. Look for some places to live (if you'll be doing this during your job interview trip, otherwise you can do it at another time) - We wanted to make our trip more productive by looking for places to live. We found it more difficult than expected to look for apartments, especially from a distance and not being able to move in until after we had a job lined up. You may have better luck finding a place to live depending on where and whether you're looking to buy or rent. Also, since then, I've found some better websites for apartment hunting, such as PadMapper and hotpads.com. For buying, Estately.com looks pretty good.
    
    Lesley and I went together on the trip, which was helpful because I could look for apartments while she interviewed. I called apartment leasing offices to schedule visits with any places that appealed to us and took application forms so that we could fill them out and fax them back once we were back in Texas. I just asked my current employer for some vacation time and didn't really go into the details why we were traveling to Seattle. You may want to be honest about it or evasive, but that's your call.


12. Accept a job and plan to move - If your first trip doesn't result in a job offer, just keep working at it. I've found that once I start a job search, it's easier to maintain the momentum than to stop and start over. If you do get a job that you choose to accept, start planning to move.
    
    One major step in this process is finding a mover (unless you're doing it all yourself). Choosing a mover is an unnecessarily complicated process, but we made our way through it. You'll want to choose one of the nationwide moving companies (e.g. Mayflower, Atlas, Bekins, United Van Lines, etc.) but you can't just choose one of them directly, you have to go through their local moving agent, which you can find on the national mover's website. Also beware; don't bother reading any reviews about the national moving company because they're all so negative that you may decide not to move after all. Seriously, though, but you will likely want to look up the moving agent with the Better Business Bureau, and there shouldn't be many negative marks. Then you'll request an estimate from that agent and they'll contact you to set up a time and go through your home to estimate how much all of your stuff will weigh. It's not the most convenient process because you'll also need to be home to go around with the movers and be sure to let them know what you're not planning to bring with you. We posted about our experience choosing a moving company. Moving during the winter is much cheaper than moving during the summer.
    
    The fun part for us was planning our trip up here. Since our movers would take longer to get to Seattle than it would take us to drive, we planned check out as much as we could along the drive up. One thing that we had to consider was that even though we were leaving in late February (which almost feels like spring in Texas), there are a lot of mountains around here and even interstates can get snow enough to require tire chains or be closed.
    
    You could also do this other ways, such as by flying here and having everything, including your car, shipped (though shipping a car is expensive), or selling your car and buying a new one when you get here.


13. Move! - We brought our most important stuff that we didn't want to lose with us and maybe ended bringing a little too much. There are a lot of logistical things to figure out, like what you should take with you, and how you're going to get by in your new home before your stuff arrives. If you're packing your own stuff, pack it all before the movers arrive so they can just load it. Also, pack carefully - we had all the original boxes for our dishes, so nothing was broken. And, we may be more obsessive than some people, but we labeled all boxes with a custom label with our name and address, the room it would go into in our new place, a priority indicating whether it should be loaded first (and unloaded last) based on how soon we'd need to access it after unloading, and a unique number that matched a spreadsheet summarizing what was in each box. Let the movers take as much as possible so that you don't have to take it with you.
    
    Say "goodbye" to everyone you know and have fun on the journey to Seattle. Our trip up here was great. As we approached Seattle, we knew we'd have to buy some stuff (like paper towels and paper plates), so we bought them all on the way in Oregon because there's no sales tax there. It was nice to arrive to our new home and have somewhere to unload all of our stuff from the car, but we had to wait a few days for our furniture to arrive on the mover's truck (this could be a good time to go on a vacation, because dealing without a bed was difficult). We used the time to plan where everything would go so that it wouldn't be too difficult to unpack (though we ended up rearranging everything anyway). If you need to buy anything else, Craigslist is popular here.


14. Immerse yourself - When you get here, go for walks, take the bus, and drive around. Stop in local stores and eat at local restaurants (Seattleites tend to prefer local places over corporate chains). Learning our way around the neighborhood and the city over our first few weeks and experiencing local attractions was my favorite part of moving here.
    
    Also, read and watch the local news. A lot of neighborhoods have their own neighborhood blogs, too. Here are some of my favorite Seattle websites.


15. Stay in contact with home - We shared our blog with people we know and also invested in a webcam so that we could still see other people when talking to them. The telephone and email are fine ways to keep in touch as well, and you may be able to fly back "home" and visit occasionally or have people visit you. Over time, Seattle will stop feeling like a new city and start feeling like your city. And if you end up not liking Seattle, just substitute another city's name for Seattle and repeat this whole process.

Of course there are lots of ways to move, but these are just some guidelines based on our experiences - you may have some different ideas about how to go through this process, and if so, feel free to share them in the comments.

Here's a video we took of the Spokane River falls at Riverfront Park:

Spokane River from Troy on Vimeo.

As I mentioned before, we had tickets to go see SMU play Washington State University this weekend. We left early Saturday morning to drive to Pullman. Previously, the farthest east we'd been on I-90 was to hike 30 miles or so east of Seattle, so this was the first time we went over Snoqualmie Pass, which is 3,022 feet above sea level, and can become impassible in the winter. When we left Saturday morning it was raining lightly, but the rain got heavier as we got closer to the pass (probably the heaviest rain I've experienced in Washington) and then stopped once we got over the pass.

The landscape east of the pass was a little drier and flatter, and the farther east we went the fewer trees there were. There were rocky hills with brown grass and some bushes. It was a very different landscape than in the Puget Sound area.

The drive to Pullman was about 5 hours, much of which was along a two-lane highway. We stopped for lunch once we got to Pullman and then went to the Washington State campus to park for the game. We walked around the campus and then went to the stadium. We didn't see the SMU Mustang Club tailgate that was supposed to be there so we went inside the stadium and found our seats, which were three rows above the field. The stadium wasn't sold out but it was pretty full. There seemed to be 100 or so SMU supporters in our section. Before the game started, WSU's president came and welcomed us to the game.

I won't give a full game recap, you can get that here. The game started well, though, and SMU was up 17-0 in the first half. Though the median age of our section was around 65, there were a few younger people who led us in some cheers and stuff. It was a lot of fun cheering the Mustangs on as they gained a 24-7 lead in the 3rd quarter. This was the best I'd ever seen SMU play, but unfortunately, like at so many SMU games I've been to, we ended up losing. Still, it was a lot of fun, and it was cool to support the Mustangs in the June Jones era so far from their home.

We drove to Spokane after the game and checked into our hotel near downtown. We had some dinner and drove around a little bit before settling into our room. The next day we had the hotel breakfast and went to a few parks in town. We went to Riverfront park along the Spokane River near downtown. This was a pretty neat park and the waterfalls of the river were pretty cool. After that, we went to a natural area east of town to go for a short walk.

We were going to try a local hamburger place called The Milk Bottle for lunch, but it was closed, so we went to Sonic instead because we haven't been there in a couple years. Then we hit the road and made it back home.

It was a fun weekend. I'm glad we were able to make it over to that side of the state and spend some time in Spokane, the second most populous city in the state. It's very different from the Puget Sound area and reminded me of Texas in a lot of ways. It was a lot of fun and a good way to spend a weekend with my wife.

As I'm sure everyone has noticed, we haven't been posting as much on our blog for a while now. We're on track to have about 265 posts this year, compared to 469 from last year, which is a pretty significant drop.

There are a few reasons for this. One reason is that we've been here now for over a year and a half and have simply run out of as many things to say, whether it be differences between Seattle and Texas, how the weather is, or talking about new things we do. Nowadays we usually post about hikes we go on or neighborhoods we visit. We've also been busy lately trying to plan our upcoming trips to Eastern Washington and then Australia.

We've also set a high standard for the quality of our posts and so I feel like I have to spend of a lot of time on each post making it sound good grammatically and structurally. I don't really want to sacrifice quality for quantity.

So, if you have any suggestions for what you'd like to hear more about, please feel free to comment and let us know.

We spent this Saturday in Ballard. We started the day at Golden Gardens Park, which is probably the most popular beach in Seattle. It was a warm day so it was nice to hang out there for a little while and watch the numerous sailboats in the sound. We then had lunch at Ray's Cafe, which is part of Ray's Boathouse, a popular local seafood place. After that, we visited the Locks, which are a popular tourist attraction. We'd been to the Locks several times before and never stopped in the visitor's center until this time. There were lots of exhibits inside and some of it was pretty interesting. Then, after we crossed the Locks, we could see a lot of fish in the water and every minute or so one of them would jump in the air. We also saw some sea lions in the water. We had a really good time at the Locks.

We went to Fishermen's Terminal next and looked at some of the numerous boats docked there. We then headed to downtown Ballard, which has lots of shops, restaurants, and bars, many of them in buildings that date to the early days of Ballard's history before it was annexed by Seattle. Ballard has a strong scandianavian heritage, but aside from an apartment building named Leif Erikson Hall and a few flags, with the closure of Olsen's Scandinavian Foods, that heritage was less apparent. We had dinner at La Carta de Oaxaca. We don't eat much Mexican food here but have gotten several recommendations for this place. It's food from Southern Mexico, so it's not my beloved Tex-Mex but it had been too long since I'd had chips and guacamole at a restaurant. I really enjoyed my food and La Carta de Oaxaca has become one of my favorite restaurants here. After dinner we bought a cupcake before heading home.

Ballard is a pretty neat neighborhood. There's a lot to see and do there and it has a nice neighborhood feel. While it's a very dense, walkable neighborhood, it's not as young, urban, and liberal as other neighborhoods we've been to. It's not the easiest to get to from downtown or from the freeway, but otherwise I'd be interested in living there.

Quick Ballard facts:

• Population: 29,850


• 2008 Median Home Price: $419,500


• 2008 Median Condo Sales Price: $318,000


• Cars per capita: 0.7


• 13th most walkable neighborhood in Seattle

Sources:
1. Seattle Metropolitan Real Estate
2. Walk Score: Seattle's Most Walkable Neighborhoods

I like riding the bus, but one of the things I had to get used to was the exposure to reality and interaction with real people. Normally the bus ride is pretty uneventful, but occasionally something interesting happens. Here are a few of the more interesting things that have occurred on the bus:

• Lesley and I were riding to the University District one weekend and there was a guy on the bus listening to a Walkman. He kept turning up the volume and bobbing his head and it seemed like he was really into the music. Every minute or so he'd say out loud "marijuana", as if he were singing along to the music. Kind of strange.


• The bus I take to work is normally pretty quiet, with people minding their own business on the way to work. This morning I wasn't reading my book yet when a man with messy white hair and a large, scruffy beard set down nearby. He then turned to me, and pointed at me, and asked, "Do you like steak?" Um, well, I didn't want one right then, I didn't know if he was going to give me one or something, so I said no. He looked a little confused, then started telling me that his friend was going to take him to the best steak place in town and saying that his friend orders a steak well-done with a salad with ranch dressing but he doesn't like the vegetables and something about Outback and that his friend doesn't even like the vegetables. He said a couple more things to me that I couldn't hear, but I nodded anyway, and then he got off at the next stop.


• On my way home one day I sat down next to someone and was reading my book. I noticed he was rapping quietly to himself and I tried to ignore me, though it seemed that he was rapping about me. So, anyway, we started talking and he explained that he's going to school at the U and decided a few months before that he wanted to be a rapper and that he had been spending his free time rapping so that he'd get better. He showed me one of the raps he had written and asked what I thought. Well, um, I'll just hope that he's still in school.


• Last summer, the bus was very crowded because of the high gas prices and there were some people standing up toward the front of the bus. I was seated in the middle of the bus on the way home when I heard some noise up towards the front. A couple people were arguing up front. Apparently some guy was accusing another of stealing his wallet and started throwing punches. It seemed like he was drunk or something and ther people on the bus were able to drag him off the bus.

Our car has been pretty dirty for quite some time. We've gone on several hikes recently that required us to drive on a dirt/gravel road, which kicked up tons of dirt onto the car. Plus it's just been a while since we washed it, probably over a year ago. We decided to go ahead and spend the $10 and get it washed last week.

It was totally worth it because now we can actually see really well out the windows and it looks green again instead of beige. We took it to the Elephant Car Wash, which is pretty decent for the price and they have fast service. The Elephant Car Wash has been around for several decades and they have really neat pink elephant signs that light up at night. They have a couple locations and one is really close to our apartment, so it was pretty convenient and only took 15 minutes. We'll probably get the car washed there again next year.

A cougar was spotted last week in Discovery Park, right in the heart of Seattle. That doesn't happen very often and in fact, one hasn't been seen there since 1981, when a 90-pound, 2-year old cougar was captured there. The park will be closed through Monday while officials set a trap to try to capture it.

One King County official said "We had over 450 confirmed dog attacks on an annual basis in King County and no cougar attacks," Hebner said. "So that should help put it into perspective."

We don't go to Discovery Park that often, so it doesn't really affect us. According to the state wildlife department, cougars are the largest members of the cat family in North America. The state cougar population for the year 2008 was estimated to be 2,000 to 2,500 animals.

As we approach fall, the sun has been setting earlier and farther south along the horizon, leading to some pretty scenes from our window in the evenings. Click on the picture for a larger size, or click here to view our photo gallery of views from our window.

It's been a while since I've seen my alma mater play. In fact, I'm not sure that I've been to a game since I graduated. And, now that I live far away from the campus, I expected it'd be a while longer. But, recently I found out that SMU would soon be in Pullman, on the other side of the state, to play the Washington State Cougars.

I like going to football games but didn't think I'd have another chance to see the Mustangs play for a while, so I'm glad this game is so close. Plus, Lesley and I have kind of wanted to go to eastern Washington but haven't really had a reason to yet, and doubt that we'd get a better one than this.

So, we've ordered our tickets through the SMU ticket office so that we can sit with the sure-to-be-small crowd of SMU supporters. And, while SMU has had some rough luck in football lately, WSU hasn't been doing so well either, so this is a very winnable game. I'm ordering a new SMU shirt for the occasion and am looking forward to the game.

The cheap hiking shoes I got last year are wearing out, and not just the padding behind the heel, but the soles are losing their tread as well.

So, since I'd had a $40 REI gift card, $10 REI dividend, and $10 REI coupon sitting around for several months, I figured I'd go to REI and get some new shoes. Last year I didn't buy my shoes from REI because they were all priced from like $80-$120 at REI and why would I want to spend that much money on shoes when I could get them for $45 from somewhere else?

But, when Lesley got her shoes there, they gave her very personalized attention and helped her find the right shoe. Normally buying a shoe isn't complicated, but when there are a lot of options and different shoes are made for different feet, that's worth paying a few dollars extra for. Plus, her hiking shoes were of better quality than mine. So, with my cheapo shoes from last year falling apart, I realized I might not have saved much by buying something cheap.

So, with my $60 of credit, we walked to REI last week to get some new shoes. From the 18 or so options, I got some recommendations from the salesperson and tried a couple on. I had a hard time deciding because they didn't fit just right, but then he made some custom shims which made them fit very well.

I wore them to hike this weekend and they were more stable and comfortable and provided more grip than my old shoes. It's nice to have new shoes and I hope these shoes last for a while.

We went for a 4.5 mile hike this Sunday at Cougar Mountain. This time we started at a trail head that we hadn't been to before. It wasn't labeled very well, so it took us some time to find it and figure out where to park. There was a lady working in her garden nearby as we were parking and she asked us if we were lost.

We were the only people parked at that trail head, so our hike along the Licorice Fern Trail was pretty quiet even though the trail came pretty close to some houses. We also passed a few people that had come from another trail head in the Cougar Mountain trail system. The trail was narrow and went along a ravine near a creek. Despite the lack of rain lately we were surrounded by moss and other greenery. At the end of the trail there is normally a waterfall, but with the lack of rain and the snow having already been melted, there was no water. We also walked up hill to a supposed viewpoint, but we couldn't see much.

Our pace on the way back was quicker since it was downhill and we wanted to leave and get water. When we got back to the car, the lady was still working in her garden and she offered us some pears since she had a really good crop. So, now we have a bag of pears sitting in the kitchen.

It was an enjoyable hike and I'm looking forward to going back maybe in the springtime so we can see the waterfall, regardless of whether we get more fruit next time.