Not enough time

The sucky thing about these little trips is they always leave me wanting more. I mean, this trip was productive...we cleaned the Visitors Center out of brochures and maps and drove through Lexington, West Columbia, and Cayce, just to get a feel for the areas. We got so much material I was overwhelmed and didn't look at the stuff until the next day, and once I did, all I could think was ok, now I want to see this, this, and this.....because if reading about Columbia tells you anything, it's that the city has serious traffic issues like any other, so unless we're certain that Les wants to study nursing, we should look at living on the city side of the rivers.

Columbia is a bridge city just like Jacksonville, only there's 3 rivers instead of just one. The Broad and the Saluda flow into the Congaree in Columbia, separating West Columbia/Cayce and Lexington County from Columbia proper. The reason I bring up the nursing is because the local CC there, Midlands Tech, only offers nursing at the Airport campus in the SW Columbia/Cayce area. Probably silly to let his schooling dictate where we live, since all we've done for years is talk a good game about it, but it is quite a ways from the city and gas prices being what they are...we're looking into the WIA and other programs that'll give him schooling for free. I mean, he never finished any college, so he's still eligible for the Pell Grant and all sorts of other federal funding. Even if he's still looking at nursing, it'd be better for us logistically/financially/etc. though, if he went to USC. The campus is right smack in the middle of downtown.

West Columbia/Cayce felt ok; we didn't see much, but I didn't get an unsafe or trashy feeling from the area. Lexington has the small town/Main Street look to it, but it doesn't pull off the beauty and charm of Aiken. We both recognize that there's such a thing as living too close to family though, so we're not looking at Aiken; besides, the job market there is paltry. When push comes to shove, we're stuck looking in the cities because that's plain where the jobs are.

But the temps dropped and the leaves are turning, so I walked around with a big grin on my face all weekend, and I'm very motivated to plan our next steps in this process.