Hey City Slicker! Should you Relocate to the Mountains?

But before you pack your Patagonia gear and head for the hills, here’s what you need to know about relocating to a rural mountain town—the good, the bad, and the holy crap, why is my grocery bill $400 for three things? Yup, that is life in a small town. We may only have one tiny grocery store but you can’t put a price on small-town living.

Yes, mountain towns offer stunning landscapes, friendly folks, and a life free of honking horns and hooligan teenage biker gangs on E-Bikes. But just because you’re escaping the city doesn’t mean you’re escaping high prices.

Take Lake Tahoe—still ridiculously expensive, which is why people like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and other billionaires have made it their personal playground. Want to live next to them? Be prepared to shell out a cool $2-5 million for a cabin. Or maybe you’re eyeing Truckee, where your neighbors could include Gordon Ramsay, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, or Jeremy Renner—yes, Hawkeye himself. But let’s be real unless you have Marvel money, you might be settling for a fixer-upper… with a spectacular view of their gated estates.

Not feeling that hefty Lake Tahoe price tag? You can still find a cozy rustic mountain cabin in Big Bear Lake (Southern California’s alpine gem) for around $300,000—if you don’t mind possibly using a wood stove as your primary heat source. True story. A lot of the budget cabins you will find were built in the early twenties. Central heat? Nope. Decades-old carpeting. Yes. A finished driveway? Maybe? Hey, the good news is we do have indoor plumbing! You can find the cabin of your dreams from Running Springs to Big

Bear Lake and beyond. But finding the perfect place with awesome neighbors, a view of the forest and nearby hiking trails will take patience and a expert local realtor.

After you buy that cabin built in 1923, and find there is no insulation in the walls or you learn it is practically a tear-down, contact local contractor Sean Woods, known as the Cabin Crafter himself to make all your updated cabin dreams come true.

When it comes to relocating to a rural mountain town understand the area you are moving to. Cities like Big Bear Lake are incorporated, they have government and a lot of rules and regulations about what you can

and can’t do. Want to put up a shed? You need a permit for that. Want to take down a tree? You need a permit for that! Want to park on city streets during the snow season? Just no. Most areas of the mountain, such as  Big Bear City and Fawnskin are not incorporated and don’t have these fancy rules about every single thing you want to do to your property. When you start driving around and looking at properties you will find that most communities are unincorporated therefore you can feel free to grow a garden, plant a Winesap apple tree or fly a Trump flag in your front yard without repercussions. Okay, there might be some repercussions.

As a lifetime mountain resident, I’ve learned a bit about what you want and oh shit, don’t want in a mountain home. Like a flat driveway! Yes! If you are in the market for your perfect mountain cabin, try to find a property with a flat driveway so your car does not slide out of the driveway on icy winter days. If you buy a south-facing home, some winter days you don’t even have to shovel. That fresh snow will simply melt off by noon!

Relocating to the mountain communities is truly living in the woods, yet being close enough to the Los Angeles suburbs you can still easily make it to a major airport. It’s truly a local community setting that is the best of both worlds! If one of those worlds was set at over six thousand feet among Jeffry Pines

Look, those Instagram pictures of cozy cabins covered in snow? Adorable. But after the fifth time shoveling your driveway before you’ve even had coffee, you might start rethinking your life choices. Yes, you need to get a fire going in your wood stove as soon as you get up in the a.m. even if it is the dead of winter, 6 a.m. and not even light out yet. Well maybe let the dog out to pee first. Did you stock up on wood in June before the price gorging starts? Did you purchase both pine, softwood and eucalyptus, hardwood? If you are even thinking of relocating to a rural mountain town you better get a wood guy. And tip him kindly. Are you taking notes?

So now that you have the three cords of wood stacked, let’s talk power outages. Oh yeah, that happens. A lot. Your Wi-Fi might be great when it works, but when the power goes out for three days straight, your kids will suddenly rediscover the great outdoors. Or they’ll just stare at you blankly and ask, “But what do we do?” But that is one of the great things about kids growing up in the mountains! No power? No XBox?

Take your ass outside to play in the snow until the sun goes down! And as for the adulting, kind of need internet for work kind of thing Spectrum Business is the way to go. They rarely have outages. With a side of Starlink for emergencies.

Pro tip: Buy a whole-house generator. No, seriously. If you don’t, you’ll be melting snow for drinking water and cooking your frozen burritos over a wood-burning stove like it’s 1885.

Pro tip; Insurance. Yes, it’s so crazy expensive for fire insurance but it is everywhere in California! Even after you factor in hefty insurance bills, you will probably still have a lower mortgage than anyone else in southern California.

If you are going to move to the mountain communities full time you need a vehicle that can handle mountain terrain. If you work from home and you can be a shut-in during a winter storm that definitely makes your winter driving easier. If you have other needs, commuting, taking the kids to school, going to Trump rallies, etc, you may want to look into a snow-worthy vehicle. Jeep’s or Subaru’s are the way to go.

As a longtime mountain resident who has battled many a blizzard in my day, I prefer a vehicle you can actually put into a four-wheel drive. Jeep it is! And make sure you get snow tires. Good ones.

Say goodbye to shopping malls, Uber Eats, and public transportation. Need a Target run? That’s now a day trip. Costco? Hope you have room in your truck for a year’s worth of toilet paper because you’re not making that drive every week. And groceries? More expensive than San Francisco (yeah, somehow). If you think avocado toast was pricey in the city, wait until you see the markup on organic eggs up here. But hey, at least your neighbor Dave will always offer to pick you up a rotisserie chicken from Costco when he heads to the city. You’ll just have to hear about his entire weekend first.

The Pros: Why You’ll Never Want to Leave

Alright, enough with the tough love—let’s talk about why relocating to a rural mountain town is actually the best decision you’ll ever make. There might not be a Starbucks on every corner but there are endless hiking trails. Who needs overpriced coffee when you can step out your door and into an alpine wonderland? Did I mention the hiking? Seriously Big Bear Lake itself has the best hiking in southern California. And wait until winter hits! The snowshoeing is just epic. Don’t know where the hell to snowshoe? Book a snowshoe hike with a local nature guide until you know your way through the forest trails.

Mountain living; Your dog will love it. Forest trails = off-leash heaven. Bonus: Dogs don’t need sidewalks. Seriously when you look into relocating to a rural mountain town, you are doing it for your favorite four-legged friend, right? Mountain life is a dog’s life, seriously. Hiking off-leash in the snow in the winter. Swimming in an alpine lake in the summer months. And not just for your friendly fido; The summertime weather in the mountain communities is truly heaven. It rarely gets above 87 in the summer months. If it gets that warm, we usually have blissful summer thunderstorms.

Our lovely summertime weather is great for all you garners out there too. Of course, you have to figure out what growing zone we are in (Most of Big Bear is Zone 7B.) Beets, radishes, lettuce, apples, stone fruits, artichokes, and Brussel sprouts all grow amazing here. Do you even need a Whole Foods in your life? If you have enough sun on your property you can even grow tomatoes and pumpkins!

Welcome to a real community. Your neighbors will actually know you (and will 100% judge you for not owning snow chains). We’re not all hicks, but yes, a majority of us voted for the orange-haired guy. Does that make you want to rage-drive your Prius with the Kamala bumper sticker on it? be prepared, your neighbors probably own guns. And some of them probably try to get a buck every autumn. When you move to the mountain communities there is no Whole Foods or Sprout’s on every corner. Befriend that yokle in the flannel shirt because he might be bringing you a side of venison in the fall. But seriously though, we have friendly outgoing churches in each tiny mountain town. We have hiking meet-up groups where you can actually get to know your neighbors. Kids actually play out in the front yard with neighborhood kids without having helicopter parents stalking.

These communities are a safe place to raise a family. No gang violence, no lockdown drills—just small-town schools where kids learn about Jeffry pine trees and native Serrano history instead of dodging city chaos. Your kids can join the local high school mountain bike team or ski team. Your kids can play outside! And you can sit on the front porch, enjoy the crisp alpine weather and read a book!

Snow days = family bonding. No power? No problem! Your kids will have to gasp play outside instead of staring at screens. You might even have to play a family board game in the evening!

If you’re looking for a simpler life, where everyone waves at you (whether you know them or not), and the biggest traffic jam is a family of deer in the the road, this is your dream. But if you need a mall within five minutes, refuse to buy a shovel, and panic at the thought of a three-day power outage—maybe stick to suburbia. As for the rest of us? We’ll be sitting on our porches, sipping coffee, and watching the sunset over the pines—while city folk sit in gridlock, dreaming of what we already have.