Rocket City Bloggers: Year Long Blogging Challenge: Week 2: Why Huntsville?

This week's topic: When did you come to Huntsville and why?

We moved to Huntsville in April of 2007. (Six years this month!) I had recently graduated with my masters and was looking for work. The hubby and I knew we wanted to look outside of California, so I was crawling job sites with very little regard to location, focusing instead on the kind of work I wanted to do. (Very few companies were advertising for product design engineers) Tucked away in a corner of the internet, on a small head hunting website, I found a listing for a job that looked just about perfect. Located in Huntsville, Al, a town I had never heard of.

Convinced by City Data that this was a real town and buoyed by an excellent phone interview, I flew out for an in-person interview and looked at rental houses. I received an offer and 3 weeks later, the hubby and I pulled up in front of our rental house to wait for the moving truck. (For the record, moving across the country, sight unseen, so your spouse can start a new job? That's love folks.)

So, in a nutshell, for my career. But also for the low cost of living and the excellent future job opportunities (two engineers do just fine in this town). We fell in love with the lush greenery, the lively arts community, and the cows who live just down the street. We're here for the long haul and we love exploring our new hometown.

And to answer the question that always comes up: We miss the people we left behind in California, but not the lifestyle we would have had there (high cost of living, no real hope of home ownership, long commutes).