The very first step in the process was looking for someplace suitable to settle down. Someone from work told us about Ely, Nevada being a great place to look. Ely is about 400 miles North of here on US Hwy 93. We thought that we would check it out when driving through. I wanted to visit my cousin in Portland OR and swing back down on the Oregon coast - checking out any and all possibilities. Well, as luck would have it, we looked at Ely and Mc Gill and decided that it wasn't our 'cup of tea'. We also looked at Southern Idaho (via I84) as well. We hit the Oregon border at Ontario and thought 'which road to take?' Stay on the Interstate? I was interested in considering the Bend area as a possible place to retire. I knew that Western Oregon was probably too expensive to consider (little did I know how expensive Bend was).
We figured that either Hwy 20 (via Burns) or Hwy 26 (via John Day) were the best ways to get to Bend.
I selected Hwy 26 as the route solely on the basis that it was the prettiest drive according to the map. The first 60 miles out of Ontario (the drive to Unity OR) was rather unremarkable. Nothing... Just lonely high desert. Shortly after Unity the road climbs into the pines and the drive becomes beautiful. From Austin Junction we dropped into the John Day Valley in the town of Prairie City. I took one look at the Strawberry Mtn range and told the wife, "Let's look here". We poked around the town for about 30 minutes to get an idea for the layout of the place. We stopped of at a gas station and asked the attendant where was the Real Estate office was. "John Day" was the reply. The drive to John Day ran parallel to the John Day river. The place was absolutely beautiful compared to the areas that we've been driving through the last three days.
We got to John Day, located a Realtor, and began to look at properties. Something that we learned is that Location is Everything. We looked at properties in several towns in Grant County and decided that only John Day or Canyon City were the best bets for retirement properties. It boils down to this - Close to shopping and the Hospital. Both items may seem small to some folks but makes a big difference when you have to consider driving an hour to go shopping or see the Doctor. Living in Lake Havasu City, we learned that any good shopping usually meant a trip to either Phoenix or Las Vegas. Here in Eastern Oregon, good shopping means a trip to Ontario, Bend, or Baker City. Shopping to please the wife means Portland or Boise. After looking for about a week we decided that this was the place for us. We ended up buying a house in Canyon City. From our home we can be at the best shopping in the county or the hospital in five minutes.
This picture shows our neighborhood on Humbolt Street. Our house is on a quiet street. The type of street where little kids still have Kool Aid stands. There is no grafitti. No gangs. The biggest complaint anyone had was that the Deer was eating their plants.
Our home borders a small creek in the back yard (and yes, we have water rights to the creek). Best of all - the home prices were still considered reasonable compared to what we have seen else where.
We bought the house two years ago for under $100K. Today, the price has nearly doubled in the area. The Real Estate market in the John Day area is still reasonable as compared to the Bend area. As you can see in the photo, there is a new housing tract going in 'up the hill' from us. I don't know the price of these lots but you could probably find out here. We used Franklin Century 21 in John Day. I'd recommend them to anyone who was considering moving into the area.
Looking at the current real estate conditions in Bend, it wasn't the place to buy into.
Who reads this stuff anyways? I mentioned earlier that I had developed several web pages. Only one web site exists today. That is the one about our Poodles. The others were removed due to some complaints that I had from my employer about the content of the sites. Security was the reason given. I had photos on my site that some people thought were inappropriate. Photos that showed a disassembled generator, the insides of a Penstock, a panoramic view of a communications site, some high voltage transmission towers in the middle of nowhere, some river gaging sites (also in the middle of nowhere), a picture of my work bench, etc. Nothing of a real security threat, actually. No references on where the photo was taken, where the keys to the gate were hidden, which switch to turn OFF, etc. Just someone didn't like it. I wondered about the thousands of pictures floating on the internet that some tourist took of places (the same locations of where I took the majority of my shots) and the hundreds of photos that my employer has on their website for anyone to down load... 
