Oh it's so wonderful to be living here, we just pinch ourselves! We have been here 3 months and just love it! DH and I both grew up in the Bay Area (San Jose) and we bought my parents house (after finding a new one for them 10 min. away) in 1984. DH retired last year at age 52 and we had been looking around for a while for a place to move, we really wanted out of the city. The Sierra foothills had too extreme temps for us, hot summers, colder winters. Going further south wasn't something we wanted either, my in-laws live in British Columbia, that's a long enough drive without adding more space between us. We also wanted to stay relatively close to the Bay Area as my Mom still lives in San Jose. I had been coming up for an occasional nursery shopping to Sebastopol for a few years and really liked the area so we came up here many times, checking out other nearby areas but this appealed to us the most. It has that small town feel (population 7800) and the rolling hills with horses, cows and vineyards and apple orchards we liked and only 10 minutes from Santa Rosa and all the conveniences we wanted; HD, Target, Lowes, Trader Joes etc. It took 8 months to buy the house (a short sale) and we had to live with my Mom for 6 months but in the end it was worth it, I now have 1/2 an acre to play with, a wonderful gift for a gardener after having a tiny city lot for so long!
The climate is almost the same daytime temps as San Jose but 4-6 degrees cooler at night so even when it does get the occasional mid to high 90's hot day, it always cools down at night. Our bedroom is upstairs and I was really worried about it but it has been fine, so far anyways. We had A/C down there, so far we don't even feel like we need it here. More rain here too, average 40" compared to San Jose's 15", perfect for gardening!
