Looking for warm area by mountains and ocean

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Feb 15, 2006

You may wish to look into Ventura, California.

It offers a beautiful coastline with mild summers and equally mild winters. The city has a trendy midtown area, plenty of good hospitals, and gorgeous mountains. Good luck.

mommy2boys · Feb 15, 2006

If you live right on the coast be prepared for it to be "cooler". YOu will have to deal with a lot more fog and drizzle. If you locate a few miles inland you will have "warmer" conditions but not "blazing". If you move even futher inland (the valley) you will have "hot" summers and "cool to "cold" winters.

I live 2.5 hours from the bay area (San Fransico) and we have hot summers (days in the 90's w/ no humidity) and cool winters (highs in the 50's - 60's and low's in the mid 30's) our springs and falls are wonderful. If you lived in Fairfield/Vacaville (1.25 hours from the bay area) you will have "warm" summers (high 80's to low 90's) and the same winters as the valley (were I'm at). The closer you get to the bay area the cooler it is in the summer.

I know that I'm partial about northern CA, it is BEAUTIFUL. Where else in the world can you snow ski and surf in the same day? If you live in the BA you can be in the Sierra Nevada mountain range (with Lake Tahoe and Squaw Valley) snow skiing in less than 4 hours.

I would take a visit out here before you move. The sights and beauty will speak for itself.

SherBearRN · Feb 17, 2006

geekgolightly,

I had to respond to your post knowing where you are at now. I grew up in the KC area, so I know what you mean by wanting a decent hospital and a nice climate to live in. I currently live and work in the SF Bay. I absolutely LOVE where I live (my apartment overlooks the ocean) and the hospital, too. I used to work for a hospital back there and words can't even explain the differences! It certainly doesn't get as warm here as it would in southern California, but the pay, benefits, and patient ratios are the best in the country here. Feel free to PM me if you want more details.

SherBear

Faeriewand, ASN, RN · Feb 17, 2006

I just had to respond to this thread. I used to live in the Bay Area and will never go back. It gets cold in the winter (LOL that's CA cold not midwest cold!) and the traffic is insane. I moved to San Diego and love it! Ok no hippies tho. But it is not hot. San Diego gets about 20% of the rain that LA gets and it only gets hot in east county. I live just outside SD city limits so live in another city but 20 minutes to beach and 40 minutes to the mountains where it actually snows in the winter! I have the best of both worlds. :) And if I want to ski I can drive to Big Bear which is 2 hours tops or I can go to Lake Arrowhead for just a nice weekend tiime off (1 1/2 hours drive) Life here is good. I grew up in Hayward (Bay Area) and when I go back to visit I can't believe I ever tolerated the traffic jams and the crowded conditions and the pollution!

If you want a hippie community there are places along the coast and the costal mountains. Gosh what are the names? Not Santa Monica cuz that's LA. Someone help me out with the names of those communites. I used to drive to them from the Bay Area. They are beautiful. Before I moved there was a major earthquake there and the whole community was cut off. No access.

My brother lived in Santa Barbara. Beautiful. Very expensive.

Yeah and back to earthquakes. We get them all over CA. Place valuable breakable items down low just in case. Don't relocate along the Russian River because it floods every few years. Remember Mammoth Mountain is a volcano that will blow sometime in the future; we don't know when. Don't get a place that is ready to drop off into the ocean because it will. We have firestorms here too. Get fire insurance. Make sure the land around your place is cleared of brush so fires won't be too much of a danger. When they say evacuate get out right away and forget about your stuff. People die trying to put out their home with their own garden hose. There are tons of rocks in the earth in So. CA so don't get a place at the bottom of a hill where gigantic boulders are at the top of the hill. Every few years it will rain really hard and there will be mudslides. Then in a few years a drought will start and you will have to conserve water. :clown:

Ok I've been having fun with you but still it's all true :) Good luck whatever decision you make. Are you going to be a travel nurse first to decide where you want to live?

joyzrn · Feb 18, 2006

Which hospitals would you recommend in the Ventura area.....NICU...mat/child? What is the salary range? I know Cali is sooooooooooooooo expensive...Can a nurse surviv on her own? :nurse:

gwenith, BSN, RN · Feb 18, 2006

I want to move to a warm area (not blazing hot like houston, my home town) that has mountains and ocean and hopefully hippies, too. And a hospital to work in. By the time we move, I will be an experienced ICU nurse, and I do not care if I work in level one trauma SICU or a small tele or a geri unit, by the time I pick my place to live; I just want to work in a nice place.
Are there any ideas?
How cold is San Fran area at night in the summer? It's beautiful in the surrounding areas there, but I want to be warm.
Thank you kind Californians for your input.

Cairns in Queensland Australia would fit your bill here - PLUS you have the Great barrier reef, Daintree, Atherton Tableland......................... :clown:

LydiaNN · Feb 18, 2006

I want to move to a warm area (not blazing hot like houston, my home town) that has mountains and ocean and hopefully hippies, too. And a hospital to work in. By the time we move, I will be an experienced ICU nurse, and I do not care if I work in level one trauma SICU or a small tele or a geri unit, by the time I pick my place to live; I just want to work in a nice place.
Are there any ideas?
How cold is San Fran area at night in the summer? It's beautiful in the surrounding areas there, but I want to be warm.
Thank you kind Californians for your input.

Oscar Wilde once said "The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco". It gets cold by the water, but I love that city. I live in San Diego and can highly recommend it as well, though. And even though houses are expensive, they are less so than in the Bay Area. (Alas, our salaries tend to be lower, too.) We've got ocean right here, mountains within an hour's drive, skiiing within a two hour's drive and great skiing within a six hour's drive (Mammoth Mountain, my second favorite place to ski, back when I did.) As a bonus, we've also got the desert just an hour away. What we don't have is the same proximity to the national parks that you get in Northern CA.

Mimi2RN, ASN, RN · Feb 18, 2006

Which hospitals would you recommend in the Ventura area.....NICU...mat/child? What is the salary range? I know Cali is sooooooooooooooo expensive...Can a nurse surviv on her own?

St. Johns in Oxnard has a NICU, and so does Ventura County Medical Center, in Ventura, maybe 15 minutes away on the freeway. I have no idea about salaries. Housing is expensive, but lots of people live in that area that DON'T get paid as much as a nurse. There are other hospitals within 20 minutes drive, including a small one that was taken over by St. Johns, in Camarillo. When they decided to close the dedicated Peds unit, I quit. Peds became part of M/S, not Maternal Child Health. All those places have OB depts.

I live in Central Cali, too hot in the summer, but not bad the rest of the year. 2-3 hours to the coast, and a couple of hours to the High Sierras. It's snowing up there, tonight. In the Valley, we are getting some rain, and temps in the 30's.

NurseKevin · Feb 21, 2006

East Los Angeles County...

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Feb 21, 2006

Which hospitals would you recommend in the Ventura area.....NICU...mat/child? What is the salary range? I know Cali is sooooooooooooooo expensive...Can a nurse surviv on her own?

There's Community Memorial Hospital, St. John's Regional Hospital, Los Robles Medical Center, and the Ventura County Medical Center. There are other hospitals in neighboring cities.