aloha hill country experts

we are exploring our retirement options. the hill counrty looks beautiful and the homes seem to be within our reach. I was wondering if you could give me an idea about the different communities there. HSB, WHSB, spicewood and marble falls. how populated are these areas. is lake LBJ remote? other area we should look at. a golf community for sure, an area where you have the conviences of a few resturants, a movie or two. maybe a little window shop. can you give me an idea about your weather. do you get a lot of rain? very cold in the winter and I was hoping the summer didnt get as hot as palm springs!! would love to come for a look see and hoped you would give me an idea of where to start from %26amp; where we might stay. much mahalo and warmest aloha for your help

aloha hill country experts

Aloha hothulamaui!

No one has responded yet, so now that I%26#39;m over my shock that ANYONE would voluntarily leave Maui (LOL)... I%26#39;ll gve it a shot! I%26#39;m not your best expert though.

I love Marble Falls. I think you%26#39;ve really picked a good area to look at. The population of Marble Falls is about 5,000. Horseshoe Bay and Spicewood are smaller. Lake LBJ isn%26#39;t all that remote. It is fairly close to Austin, and is a popular place to have lake houses for Austinites, Dallasites, and Houstonians.

Check out www.marblefalls.org for more information. All of the areas you mentioned are spitting distance from Marble Falls. We have stayed in the Marriott resort in Marble Falls and really enjoyed it (it wasn%26#39;t too expensive).

Other areas to look at include Bastrop and Dripping Springs, even Canyon Lake if you want to be near water. There are beautiful golf course communities north of San Antonio (out Hwy 281) which give you the advantage of being close to a large metropolitan area (with International Airport and excellent medical facilities).

Um... weather. Texas weather varies like you wouldn%26#39;t believe. Some winters are mild, some are cold. I see on the Marble Falls website that the averages for January are 18 (low) and 77 (high). That surprises me somewhat. We live about 2 hours north of that and there%26#39;s no way our average low temperature in January is 18. Maybe the altitude makes it that cold? In the summer, the average temperatures (same website) in July is 68 (low) and 99 (high). Again, the ';low'; seems low to me.

I don%26#39;t know exactly where there%26#39;s a golf course community in the area, but there must be some because they are very popular in Texas. I know for sure that there%26#39;s one in Horseshoe Bay, but not being a golfer I couldn%26#39;t tell you if it was any good. At any rate, there are top notch courses in Austin which is an easy drive.

Okay... still recovering from shock - I%26#39;m not being very coherent! LOL.

The way I would do this, if I were you and had time for an exploratory trip, would be to come visit. Marble Falls is centrally located to all of the areas you mentioned. You could stay in Marble Falls and drive around during the day. The summertime is a lot busier there, because of the lake activities.

Anyway, not very helpful, but wanted to respond anyway. Our Hill Country Experts must be having a busy Thanksgiving! Aloha! And Welcome to Texas!

aloha hill country experts

Aloha! I, too, am shocked that anyone would leave Maui! I am not an expert in the Hill Country but my mom is 68 and has been a Winter Texan for about 10 years. She absolutely loves New Braunfels AND she is a golfing nut! I don%26#39;t know where she golfs but do know that there are many interesting things in and around New Braunfels and also many retired (mostly Northerners) to keep one company.

As far as the weather goes, being from Minnesota we have a different perspective and consider Texas winters absolutely mild.

I%26#39;m not sure if you planned on living there year round...but if so New Braunfels looks like it is very nice in the summer time. It has a few rivers flowing through it where people have a great time tubing, and a gigantic waterpark called the Schlitterbahn where natives go to beat the Texas heat. There are many ';live oaks'; where are beautiful oaks which bend every which way instead of growing straight up. They provide plenty of shade and greenery and are simply lovely to look at. The landscape is not stark and full of cactus and tumbleweeds!!! It is quite pretty and the people are genuinely friendly.

Aloha! I just moved here 13 months ago and might have some good things for you to think about. I did not have any idea that San Antonio and Austin are horrific for allergies. I didn%26#39;t have allergies until I got here, and then I was horribly sick for the first five months w/ constant sinus infections. Now that I am settling in, I see that most people have allergy problems here. Ah, if I only knew!

My DH and I did live in HI for a few years, way back in %26#39;92-94%26#39;. I got bored. It was a little ';small'; for me. But I still love to visit. Also it is very weird to not have an ocean anywhere nearby. I am from So. Cal. and liked the idea that the ocean was not very far away, even if I didn%26#39;t go there very often.

I don%26#39;t see that you are looking at SA in particular, but last summer was my first here and it was HOT. From mid-April to late October, it was pretty miserable. I am not a fan of humidity (one thing I didn%26#39;t like about HI) and it is hot and humid. Palm Springs heat is a joy compared to the heat here! There is a fair amount of golf here, even though, like I said, it gets pretty hot here. Right now it is below freezing, which doesn%26#39;t happen a lot, but seems to happen 2-3 times in the winter. I have to say that I can handle a few days of cold better than I can handle hot %26amp; humid. In SA we are in a severe drought, our landscape watering is still restricted. They put the restrictions on in mid-summer. There are plenty of cute little Hill Country towns to sightsee in; Fredericksburg, Boerne, Gruene, to name a few. Also have good access to outlet malls.

If there is any other info you might have questions on, please feel free to ask.

A hui hou!

Aloha Maui, we just moved to New Braunfels in May, originally from Wisconsin, with a stop off in New Mexico, so far we love it here. It was hot this summer, but didn%26#39;t seem as bad as people made it out to be, and the weather here in winter is usually pretty nice even if we are having what they are calling an artic blast tonight (it%26#39;s 32) and tomorrow (28 to 32) that is threatening to close schools etc because of the freezing rain. But this is not the norm. Housing is so affordable here, and the cost of living is relatively inexpensive. There is the allergy thing, and during the peak it did hit me pretty hard the closer I got to Austin. My wife%26#39;s brother and his wife are also considering eventual retirement in this area from Maui, and were looking over the area this fall. There are so many things to do, and places to see and eat, and prices are very reasonable. I would probably not live in San Antonio or Austin proper because of the traffic, and the closer you get to Austin, the higher the cost of living gets, but it is still very reasonable compared to other places. As our sister-in law says in Texas you get so big for so little, and in Maui you get so little for so big. Hill country is beautiful, but is getting very popular, and home and land prices are rising at a time other places are seeing declining home prices. This isn%26#39;t the place for everybody, but so far we really like it, and there seems to be a lot of people from all over the country moving here. In our subdivision, we have people from Mexico, Wisconsin, Illinois, New York, Minnesota, Virginia, Florida, Wyoming, Kentucky, Utah, and other states I can%26#39;t think of right now.

LOL about the allergies!! Check out www.pollen.com sometime; you%26#39;ll often see Waco in the ';Top Ten Worst'; for the whole country. Something about the topography, I guess.

I was fine in Houston. I was eh... ';okay'; in Austin. I was fine in San Antonio and Dallas. Then I moved to the Waco area and learned what allergies were all about. Unfortunately, allergy medicine makes me feel awful, so I won%26#39;t take anything.

So... for all of my tripadvisor friends... FWIW, my allergy-prone dear old dad%26#39;s salt water trick works. (gross... I can%26#39;t believe I%26#39;m admitting it!) Rinse out your nasal passages with salt water. (the pharmacy sells sterile saline sprays that you can use in the shower). Between that and changing the HEPA filters on my central a/h every three months, my allergies are pretty much gone despite spending a fair amount of time outdoors, a lot of it around a farm. And you have the added bonus of not being as likely to catch colds and viruses.

Just my two cents. :-)

P.S. I%26#39;m not sure hothulamaui is still reading the thread.