That is West By God Virginia … Mountain Momma
My family is mostly from WV… Great state… may consider moving back… if Virginia keeps acting silly.
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I’m in Colorado but thinking about moving back home in Ohio and thought about West Virginia where my mom and dad raised two older daughters and a son “me”. Love all the trees there and the rolling hills where hillbillies hunker in the the woods! Might live in the southeast border Ohio where I can sneak into West Virginia to hunt!
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What city would you live in WV?
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Just got back to Virginia from Oklahoma. Not impressed with what has happened to Tulsa. There are still some very beautiful areas of Oklahoma but did not get to explore while I was back.
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Most of my family was from Kanawha County, Nitro, St Albans, Cross Lanes, Hurricane. I liked the area though honestly I have not been in almost 10 - 12 years, but it was not so grown up when last I went. Beckley is another good spot, but the Kanawha area is close to Ohio and Kentucky, and has good road access. Lots of hollers also. I think I would choose something in that area.
You might consider it as an area to look at, plus a quick run across to Pt. Pleasant and cross the river… into Ohio…
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Oklahoma here… 2a laws are great… Wyoming has the best 2a laws if that is your criteria… Otherwise, not much of a reason to move here… we are heavily leveraged in oil and that impacts our ability to whether storms in that market… we just aren’t that diversified… Additionally, our teachers all leave to the border states because they can instantly make about 10 k more a year…so if you have children, I wouldn’t recommend it if they are going to be in public schools…because we are left with the bottom of the barrel teachers that couldn’t get hired in Kansas. Lastly, the roads are really really bad in some areas and the bridges are on their last legs.
The good: we have a cool music scene, pretty kind people, and the deer are pretty abundant and large. Also, the fishing is great.
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We have a ranch in Watonga that we visit a few times a year. @Michael726 maybe the area you’re in is different, however we have traveled quite a bit in most parts of OK. Yes there is oil and horizontal drilling there, but there is also a pretty big profile of wind farming, and a huge amount of Ag, lots of cattle, grazing land and the crop land is huge. Oklahoma is 1st in rye production, 2nd in canola production, 5th in beef production and is home to a vast array of companies ranging from paper and packaging manufacturing to beverage production and fertilizer manufacturing.
There is a lot of Res Land and this helps folks of all income levels. As compared to other parts of the US that we have traveled, OK has very little homeless on the streets and I have yet to see a tent city, (Austin, SFO, Cincinnati, LA, etc).
As mentioned in another thread, OK is only 1 of 2 states that doesn’t have any blue counties.
Teachers and other professionals may get paid less but the cost of living is much lower there (40% lower than the national average!). Gasoline alone runs about .10-.20 cents a gallon less than even here in TX.
There is virtually no traffic there, as compared to many many other places we have been, even at rush-hour it is not even close to aggravating. The roads that we travel, dallas/ftw to OKC to Watonga to Tulsa, and much of the rural areas are more than adequate.
Roman Nose state park is beautiful, with great fishing and a nice golf course. Yes, there are tons of great dear and other hunting opportunities, One of the most exciting hunts is book a tornado viewing! The storm hunting is by far one of the most awesome things to witness.
All in all, yes we love OK. It is the first state we’d move to in the event TX implodes, followed by TN, ID, and lastly WY.
You know, I’m going to repost this in the Brag About your State thread. 
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Fz, this made me laugh because you Texans are supposed to hate us! lol… Just kidding. You guys do drive aggressively though and send your kids to our colleges! Y’all make up for it with your grill skills though.
Be careful with that storm hunting. My friend’s wife almost left him because he chased a storm and hail busted the window and beat up her new truck.
we do have a lot of wind farms. I can tell you that Oklahoma suffers severely when oil suffers though. It’s a constant topic of discussion here. We are always watching that market with dread.
Our cost of living is not much lower than Kansas, Arkansas, or Texas. It’s about the same. A rental house here (in a city) will run 800+ a month. That said, we don’t have a super desirable city that has high demand. So, you could stay in our biggest cities for less than Texas’s biggest cities…
What I always tell people when they ask why I chose to stay here… “it’s just a comfortable place to live for me…nothing special…but comfort is important to me”…the low traffic you cited is part of that.
Thanks for pointing out some markets I hadn’t considered. Had no clue we were 1 in rye production…
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A nice post @Michael726,
They are super mean when it comes to driving here! I think I am the only person that lets many folks merge in and change lanes, I always wave and virtually never get a reply wave. This the reason we take STRT 281 to OK and not I35.
Have you been to Roman Nose or the Arbukle Mtns?
For the folks who maybe thinking of traveling there…
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I haven’t been to roman nose, but I have been to Arbuckle…Also, Turner Falls is beautiful…though crowded. I’ll check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.
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I’ll visit most any state in the union. There are a handful I will NEVER go to but “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all”.
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It seems like we shouldn’t be celebrating this — if a state feels the need to make itself a 2A sanctuary, that’s not good news…it seems to me that it means that the 2A-quashers are getting nearer to their goal.
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Our county in Northern AZ declared as a 2A sanctuary county.
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Welcome to the family @MWW and you are blessed to be here.
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Agree!
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Back from Oklahoma and have mixed feelings about being back in Virginia. Driving on I-95 at 0430 and it is a hot mess. The gas in OK was $1.79. VA is $2.15. The food was markedly less expensive in OK. I did visit a gun store in Tulsa and they were completely out of ammo. Owner told me he couldn’t consciously charge $65.00 for a 50 rd box of FMJ 9mm. Plenty of good paying jobs in NoVA.
Powerball is getting back to a respectable level. If I won, I would consider TN, TX, WY, ID, MT and FL. All about taxation in a little slice of paradise.
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I left the Fredericksburg area… and had been there for decades, before they added it to Northern Virginia.
Drove to DC daily… except when TDY overseas… and dealt with the traffic. After I left the government and started driving a truck… I LEFT.
95 is a mess, 3 hours or more some days to go 30 miles…
Now, I am in an area with gas at $1.59 up to $1.95, depending on which town and county I am in … in a 30 mile radius around me.
Taxes are low, and the overall cost of living is low… and yes, we do have malls, and ammo
Oh, and if you are dealing with that traffic… you deserve a cold beer.
Note: South Dakota does not tax retirement.
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If only it wasn’t in Tornado Ally.
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Enjoyed my eighteen weeks in Lawton OK back in the day, would love to go back.
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My ex wife’s families were from Parsons and Elkins WV and both are absolutely beautiful places with extremely nice people. When we went for her grandfathers funeral we all stayed at the same motel. I will never forget the breakfasts that they served! I had never had biscuits and gravy that would hold a candle to theirs and have not had any sense. We also had some of his cold packed venison and again, I have not had any before or sense that could hold a candle!
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