Texas Tidbits; Welcome to Our New Home Town

As many of you have learned by now, Heather and I are moving to Texas soon. Oh, yeah...we're gonna take the kids with us, too. :) Anyway, the question I get from you the reader most often is, "Where are you moving to?" We considered many locations, but the one that kept coming back to us was San Angelo. It's a little "big" for my liking with 92,000 people and I am a small town kind of guy, but other outstanding qualities of the Concho City convinced us that is the place for us at this time. It has great schools (my little girls are 4 & 8), 25 City Parks, One badass State Park, two bigass lakes (the fish will fear me soon enough), great health care, warm and DRY weather which will be perfect for my arthritis and fibromyalgia and enough "big city" amenities, like What-A-Burger (!), H-E-B, Albertsons, Sam's Club, WalMart, etc. the most precious commodity that San Angelo has waiting for us is the friendship of the Funky Old Dude Bob Zeller and his wife of over 50 years, the lovely Ann. Bob and I have been blogging buddies for about a year and developed a very close friendship over that time, so it'll be a pleasure to hug Ann's neck. Oh! And shake Bob's hand. :) I could go on, but I thought instead, that I'd repost something I wrote a while back that has lots of good info on our new home-to-be.

Ladies and gentlemen...I present to you:

The Concho City

San Angelo

If you read more than one post on this blog, then you know that I am a trees and water kind of guy, like in East Texas. For some unknown reason, however, the rugged beauty of the desert has a bit of a mysterious hold on me. I can't explain it, other than to say it's a sort of sagebrush voodoo or something. Segue to San Angelo. San Angelo is one of those places where it's not quite desert and  it's not in the Piney Woods or Big Thicket, I could live there and be happy. It doesn't exactly hurt my feelings that there is a state park and O C Fischer Lake lies within the park and snuggles up right next to the San Angelo city limits. The city got its humble beginnings when after the Civil War, Fort Concho was established as an outpost to protect the flood of settlers heading west to find their fortunes. At one time Fort Concho was home to the Black Cavalry, which the local Native Americans called the "Buffalo Soldiers", earning great respect from the white soldiers they served with and, of course, the Indians. In those days, San Angelo was a trading center for settlers in the area, but as sanangelo.org states "The discovery of oil and gas, the influx of light manufacturing, the initial development of a communications center, the establishment and growth of Angelo State University, and the growth of the medical community provided diversification to a growing community. Today, this city of 90,000 is the trade and services hub of a 13 county area, supported by agriculture, manufacturing, education, business and health services, military, tourism, and retirement." Geographically, San Angelo is almost the bull's eye on the dartboard that is Texas and it ain't far from being a bull's eye on the dart board of places to live.