Trent started looking for jobs at the end of October. Right away he got a call from a dermatology clinic in Lehi that sounded really promising. He talked with the office manager and then didn't hear back from them for a while. He started to get contacted by many different medical recruiters. Most of them hiring in very rural towns. He would interview with the recruiters, then have a phone interview with the office manager and doctors. If they were interested enough they'd pay to have us come out for a face to face interview/site visit.
The first site visit we went to was in Scottsbluff, NE. A very small town of about 20,000. It was a family practice job serving the lower income/uninsured population of this little town. We decided last minute to drive out there, about 4 hours away, on a Saturday morning (and then drove home in a wicked snow storm). We met with the office manager, he gave us a tour of the office, and then he and Trent chatted about the practice for just about an hour. Jeff, was his name, then got in our car with us and took us on a tour of the town. It was a cute little town out in the middle of no where. The closest Costco to them is in Fort Collins, CO, 2 1/2 hours away. The 'biggest' town is Cheyenne, WY, which really isn't a 'big' town, is 2 hours away. However, there was a Target there. Our nearest temple would be Denver, until Fort Collins was completed. I wasn't opposed to the place entirely, although it was a very small town. There was also another job in an even smaller place in south Nebraska that wanted Trent to come out for a site visit, but we decided that we'd pass on that one.
In a weeks time we went from having no job opportunities to more than we knew what to do with. Almost everyday he had an interview with someone. He found a job listing for a hospitalist at UVRMC and he applied for that, and they requested a second interview from him. He saw a listing for a job in a little town in WA that was way up in the mountains at the base of the Columbia river, on a lake. He fell in love with the town. The job sounded awesome too. Then when he applied for the job he found out it wasn't even in that little town, but an even smaller one 2 hours North of there. So he found a job in that little town, Chelan, that was listed on their hospitals website and applied for it. He interviewed with the doctor, it's an orthopedics job, and during the interview he said he spoke Spanish, the doctor asked him how he learned Spanish and Trent replied that he served a mission in Honduras for his church. The doc asked him if he was LDS, turns out the doc is a member of the church also.
As we were making our plans to go home for Christmas the dermatology clinic called back and asked if he'd come shadow the doctor for a morning. On Christmas eve he had his face to face interview with UVRMC and then two days after Christmas he and I flew to Washington for a site visit there. The day we got back from WA he had a Skype interview with Page, AZ. As soon as he was done with that we drove to Las Vegas for an interview there.
Soon we had more job offers than we knew what to do with. The offers ranged from $130k-74k. Utah being the LOWEST offers by 30k. A little disappointing as we kinda had hoped to move back to be closer to family, and Trent will still be drilling with Utah National Guard.
We put all the job offers down of paper, and then rated them according to the type of job that will allow Trent to go where he wants to eventually end up in his career, pay, proximity to stores we shop at, proximity to a temple, proximity to family...I think that was all.
While Washington didn't come out exactly on top, that is where Trent thinks will be best. So at the beginning of January we accepted the orthopedics job in Chelan, WA. It is a very little town, 8,000 (growing to 25,000 during the summer) but it's only 45 minutes to the much larger city (100,000) Weanatchee.
Chelan is a resort town. It is right on a 50 mile lake. People come from Seattle for the summer because it is always sunny there. It's about 3 hours east of Seattle, 3 hours west of Spokane, and 3 hours north of the Tri-Cities area. The homes there are very expensive. Almost twice what we want to pay for a house. We just spent a few days there looking for a house. We saw many, many houses, All need 50,000+ work on the inside and they are priced at the tippy top of our budget. There's no way we can get a house for our budget that needs that kind of work. And there are no rentals. No long term rentals that is. There are plenty of vacation rentals, in peak season they rent for 4k/week. Even the RV park is already booked for the summer. Most of the rentals we've found are only until the end of May, and they are all furnished.
We saw one house we really liked while there for the site visit, however, it had just sold. So we met with the builder to see what it would cost to build a home. The home was listed at 343k, the homes we had been looked at were all upper 300's-440 range, but all need work. We decided to look into building. If we can get a new home, with no work for 343k, that would be much better than buying a home that needs lots of work. We found a lot we really like so we are going most likely going to be building a house. I found a very small, 1000 sqft, full furnished rental that we can live in until mid June. It's cheap, $1200/month, so we'll be able to save a lot for a few months. Hopefully we can make it work out so that we can get a home we can afford, that doesn't need tons of work.
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