Best Places to Live for Wheeling

[chachimcnacho]

I’m beginning to explore potential retirement landing areas. The plan is to use the next couple years visiting and exploring. I was lucky to grow up in a family that travelled extensively around the country camping for vacations and have travelled for work and vacations but have lived in the Midwest my whole life. I’m drawn to all the amazing terrain outside the “flatlands”

Once a future landing spot is identified, I plan to begin to build a rig targeted at the type of wheeling available. Designing and building will be a pre-retirement hobby.

Some of this is just daydreaming for now and there are obviously a lot of factors that go into selecting an area to live in, but for this discussion I think it would be fun to consider areas based on wheeling only.

So what is your favorite region for wheeling? Why do you love it? What is the main purpose of your build to conquer the terrain?

(Bonus for showing off pics!)

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[DOOKEY]

Move to KS. You'll have bland boring flat land to really dumb down your life experience. That way every single wheelin trip is absolutely exceptional.

 

[DOOKEY]

PS... moved to Colorado from KS for the wheelin and views. But CO is getting pretty pricey in the housing market.

 

[MARSHMELLA]

Northern AZ. Almost every type of offroad terrain is pretty close. There's also tons of outdoor historical and national type places to see that aren't too far away.

 

[limeade]

Go West! Thousands of miles of Forest Service roads/trails and hundreds of thousands of square miles of public land to explore.

I currently live in Nevada and love having miles and miles of trails within just a few minutes of my house. Plus, the Rubicon is only 1 hour away and Moab isn't too far either. Nevada is great for retirees as there's no income tax. But, the housing market is very expensive due to all of the Californian's moving here. There's no annual vehicle inspections and the gun laws are still really good (for now).

We are actively looking to move to a cheaper area and my short list is Utah, Idaho, and Arizona. Those three states have great wheeling opportunities too. Colorado is another location with great wheeling.

I'd love for Nevada and Arizona to move their boundaries West and take over the Sierra Nevada mountains from California. If that happened, then that's where I'd move!

 

[Sgt Beavis]

PS... moved to Colorado from KS for the wheelin and views. But CO is getting pretty pricey in the housing market.

No kiddin my man. I'm over in Erie. I thought prices were high when we bought our house 4 years ago but WOW things have exploded.

But back on subject, the number and variety of trails is just crazy. There are desert trails in the Great Sand Dunes national park and of course mountain trails ranging from the easy to super crazy rock crawling. Moving here from Texas was one of my better decisions.

 

[mark090852]

Western Colorado! I'm just a little over an hour from Moab, UT and the same for Ouray, CO. It doesn't get any better than that.

 

[chachimcnacho]

PS... moved to Colorado from KS for the wheelin and views. But CO is getting pretty pricey in the housing market.

Love CO. Have family around Ft. Collins and Loveland. Lots of great memories of the foothills and all the way up to Estes Park! Lots of sunny days too.

 

[chachimcnacho]

Go West! Thousands of miles of Forest Service roads/trails and hundreds of thousands of square miles of public land to explore.
...
We are actively looking to move to a cheaper area and my short list is Utah, Idaho, and Arizona. Those three states have great wheeling opportunities too. Colorado is another location with great wheeling.
...

The crazy thing is public land for exploring is foreign to me. Sounds amazing and so jealous. I started looking at Idaho also which I hadn’t previously considered but there’s some really great areas.

 

[chachimcnacho]

Western Colorado! I'm just a little over an hour from Moab, UT and the same for Ouray, CO. It doesn't get any better than that.

Absolutely jaw dropping! Sounds like an amazing place for getting out.

 

[Overland Productions]

I talk about this often. A spot in southern Utah will put you within a 3-4 hour radius of everything offroad.

 

[Some Random Guy]

I used to live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It is like the Western US in that there is a lot of government land with fire roads, logging trails and service two-tracks to explore. However, population is low and I was never part of any groups.
Now I’m in Northern Washington. There is a huge community out here and lots of trail systems. The cascades cast a rain shadow so there is dry terrain to the East and very wet/muddy to the West. I think most things would be an easy 3-4 day weekend if you wanted to spend a day anywhere from Arizona to Idaho.

 

[DOOKEY]

Western Colorado! I'm just a little over an hour from Moab, UT and the same for Ouray, CO. It doesn't get any better than that.

Curious about your opinion on how often you get to go play due to the snow. We moved from KS to the Denver area to be closer to the trails only to find out they are shut down 9 months out of the year. LOL

Do you get to wheel that much?

 

[limeade]

The crazy thing is public land for exploring is foreign to me. Sounds amazing and so jealous. I started looking at Idaho also which I hadn’t previously considered but there’s some really great areas.

I'm originally from the Midwest and no way would I ever move back.

 

[Ronin]

Two years ago, I was in a similar situation as you are. I was looking to move to somewhere on the mainland that had great trails and places to explore that would be within a 6-8 hour driving distance. Being from Hawaii and stuck on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean all my life, that criteria was especially important.

The areas of interest quickly came down to northern Arizona, southern Utah, southern Nevada, or western Colorado. Though my main target was always Sedona AZ, after arriving, I spent the next three months or so on the road "homeless" checking these areas out for a place to live.
Was seriously considering the Grand Junction Co area, as it's really close to a lot of good stuff. But being from Hawaii, I'm not sure that I could handle the Colorado winters...

There are so much public land here that as long as you are willing to drive some, you'll always have cool places to wheel and explore.

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