I don't think we were quite excited enough about Harvard, IL from our trip there. It was fine, and there was a house we liked, but you gotta be excited to make that kind of change.
Today I visited Davis Junction. I sold a lot of gas and learned a lot about this curious little town. The original Davis Junction was no more than a few hundred people, and now that it's a few thousand, it basically consists of a gas station, Brothers Pizza, Byron Bank, village hall, and they are opening up a Subway tomorrow. 80% of the town is cookie cutter cheapo housing development (very strange to see an entire community of exactly the same thing) and most of the people who live there moved out from the suburbs to this very affordable housing. I consistently heard 5 things from the residents as I asked about their experiences.
1. Cheap housing
2. Low taxes
3. A geographical oddity (2 weeks from everywhere)
4. Good Schools (Stillman Valley)
5. Too many trains and planes (Davis [train] Junction) right in line with Rockford airport runway
Definitely a possibility. The location is right, halfway between Rockford and Rochelle on 39.
Everyone had huge dogs. No chickens allowed. Developing...
Today I visited Davis Junction. I sold a lot of gas and learned a lot about this curious little town. The original Davis Junction was no more than a few hundred people, and now that it's a few thousand, it basically consists of a gas station, Brothers Pizza, Byron Bank, village hall, and they are opening up a Subway tomorrow. 80% of the town is cookie cutter cheapo housing development (very strange to see an entire community of exactly the same thing) and most of the people who live there moved out from the suburbs to this very affordable housing. I consistently heard 5 things from the residents as I asked about their experiences.
1. Cheap housing
2. Low taxes
3. A geographical oddity (2 weeks from everywhere)
4. Good Schools (Stillman Valley)
5. Too many trains and planes (Davis [train] Junction) right in line with Rockford airport runway
Definitely a possibility. The location is right, halfway between Rockford and Rochelle on 39.
Everyone had huge dogs. No chickens allowed. Developing...
December 5, 2007 at 12:27 AM
Interesting! Is moving to a smaller town because you like small towns? Or are sick of Rockford? Or just want a change of lifestyle? Or all of the above?
December 6, 2007 at 8:58 PM
definitely all of the above! and more i guess.
1. i think we need to move somewhere--even if it is just across town. the bad parts of our house are really starting to out-weigh the good parts.
2. i'm beginning to question my decision to homeschool--and that leads to me starting to panic about rockford schools.
3. i love small towns!
4. shawn would definitely like to be closer to chicago because he has to drive to westmont twice a week. but we hate the suburbs! and they are so expensive! so we're kind of looking for a small town somewhere between here and chicago. =)
5. i initially wanted to raise chickens for eggs, but it's crazy hard to find a house in the country that is not a farm. i guess i thought it wouldnt be a big deal, because that's the kind of place my parents live--so i thought they were pretty common. but no. so--i guess i can live without my own chickens.
6. things here have really been sucking lately. i mean really. i feel like i don't have control over anything, i don't have any friends, my house is stupid and cold, and i just want to get out of here and do something completely different. i know that things wouldn't necessarily be better somewhere else, but at least it would be a decision that i would be making, that i would have some sort of control over.
shawn doesn't really seem to care where we move as long as it isn't farther away from westmont. he seems to definitely want a newer house because this one has a lot of maintenance and he just isn't home enough to spend time with us and fix the house. so--that sort of brings us to davis junction. maybe. moving just sounds so great right now. i know it wouldn't fix all of our problems, but it just sounds so great.
December 12, 2007 at 7:00 PM
hey davis junction fans ....
lived in DJ since 2003. Even put up a free community website, forum and blog ....
www.davisjunctiononline.com
nice town but not alot to do