Discovering Chico: Early days

The Museum of Northern California Art

The Bidwell Mansion

In Bidwell Park

Llano Seco Wildlife Unit

In Upper Bidwell Park

The view across Upper Bidwell Park

When we first started looking for a new place to live about 5 years ago (yes, we have known we had to move that long ago!), we visited Chico several times. We were always quite impressed with this little college town, and had it at the top of our list of possibilities for quite a while. Here are some more images we took back in 2016 & 2018; all of these places are still there:

An excellent used bookstore

The Saturday Farmer’s Market

The 1930s Bank of America building in downtown Chico

We were actively contemplating Chico as a place where we could live, where the housing prices were very low, when the devastating Paradise fire happened, in November of 2018. We knew that Chico would be profoundly affected by this tragedy, as thousands of now-homeless people were displaced and seeking refuge in the nearest town. We watched as the catastrophe unfolded, affecting the entire region for years and years; townspeople are still dealing with the fire’s fallout. As we were still reluctant at that moment to face the inevitability of having to leave Pasadena, we just scratched Chico off the list of desirable options.

Then came the pandemic, and all of our plans were put on hold, along with everybody else’s. But by the summer of this year, we realized we had to make plans before we ran out of all of our retirement funds and ended up living under a bridge. In my rather desultory Zillow searches, suddenly there was the MOST adorable house for sale in Chico, at a price we could afford! And so began the commitment to moving at last; we didn’t get that house, but the seeds were sown. And as we searched further and further, Chico’s positive aspects became increasingly evident: it has a university, housing is (somewhat) affordable by California standards, and it is sizable enough to have some cultural activities along with that beautiful park and surrounding landscapes.

So here we are! Still in an AirBnB until escrow closes next week on our little house. Here are some things we have learned about this town of 100,000:

**Except when there are fires nearby, the skies are blue! We arrived in 100-degree weather–not unusual for Chico–but within a week, we had rain and much cooler temperatures. Today, the first day of autumn, has been gloriously cool and clear. We like that.

**Everything you need is within a 10-minute drive. The town is big enough to have malls and all those modern “conveniences” of American life, but small enough to have a downtown with an old-fashioned hardware store, lots of boutique shops, and excellent bakeries and cafes. And within 15 minutes, you can be in agricultural countryside–walnut trees as far as you can see.

**People here smile at you, and have no problem talking to strangers. There are still signs of displaced people and homeless, but the town has done a relatively decent job of dealing with the Paradise refugees, and there is not such heavy-handed treatment of the poor as happens in big cities, at least as far as we can tell so far.

**The pace IS slower. Perhaps because it is smaller, no one seems to be in such a hurry, and we have been able to accomplish things easily and quickly that would have taken weeks and hours of bureaucratic wrangling in SoCal.

**Bidwell Park is a national treasure! A city park bigger than Central Park, with a flowing creek running right through the middle of it, with the most voluptuous trees and fecund vegetation, meandering trails, a swimming-hole kind of pool created from the waters of the creek and free to anyone who wants to take a swim! We are enchanted with the place! I haven’t seen otters here yet, but they are known to be there, and even come down to the swimming pool in Lower Bidwell at times. I am on the lookout!

**It is QUIET in the places we have stayed–on the streets, and in the parks. I am only now beginning to sense how stressful it was to live on our Pasadena street, with all the traffic, noise from constant weed whackers and chain saws, the terrifyingly frequent low hovering of police helicopters over our house, as well as the ever-present sounds of the freeway a block away. Being somewhere that has no interstate freeway going through town makes a huge difference to the level of background noise one has to live with. I am ready for some quiet now.

Oh, and yes, there are some lovely cats, too. This big guy is in our AirBnB neighborhood, which is on what counts in Chico as the “wrong side of town.” He’s seen a few battles, if his ears are anything to go by!

Moving: We found a house!

We left Pasadena on August 23, spent a week up in Chico on a frustrating search for a house. It was an odd time to be searching: right before the kids went back to school, right after the market was beginning to adjust to the interest rate hike, and right before the official end of summer on Labor Day. We did get a bit of a feel for the town, though, and were enchanted by its quietness, its abundant trees and streams, its greenness, and the friendliness of the people in town. After a delightful few days at a ranch-cum-guesthouse in Morro Bay, we then had to travel back down to LA for a week, to stay at a friends’ house, giving us time to say some more goodbyes to friends in less chaotic circumstances. Our real sweetie of a realtor named Andrew continued to search for us, as did we via Zillow and MLS online.

We then began a rather arduous journey back to Chico. We always forget how ENORMOUS this state really is; our drive from Los Osos on the coast to Oakhurst in the mountains went through some barren landscapes on the hottest day of the year! It was 116 degrees F. when we passed through Lemoore, a bump in the road for which reason I cannot imagine anyone living. After a night in Oakhurst, we spent the next day driving to Salinas, visiting Monterey (definitely worth the trip!), finishing our drive the next day to a new AirBnB in Chico itself.

Lo and behold! As we were driving through places that had no cell phone reception, Andrew had been sending emails and texts about a house that had just come on the market. We couldn’t believe it: this one was right next door to a house the location of which we loved, right on Big Chico Creek! When we had looked at the first house, I actually had said to Andrew “why isn’t THAT house for sale?”, pointing at the one that was now indeed up for grabs! We looked at it the next morning. It’s just what we want, in the right place, in “turnkey” condition, to use the real estate jargon. It’s a little smaller than we had hoped for, its only failing having only one bathroom and no bathtub. We will also pull up the carpets, and hope that the flooring underneath is in good condition. The price was good, we got our bid in early, and now we’re in a very short escrow period. So it’s happening! We’re happy! And we like Chico!