California: Time to hit the road?

[SantaLuz]

If I were seriously considering such a move I guess I might take a few short family trips. Take the kids to Texas or Raleigh, for example. While they are playing you can survey the situation. Talk to locals to get a feel for the community, jobs, hassles, bad neighborhoods, etc. Look for houses and jobs while you are there.

This is what we plan to do. I had been thinking of taking a job in Plano, or Raleigh but realized that we didn't really know the area. I want this to be our last move. We can afford to do this for a year or two and still have money for a down payment on a house. But I don't really know about the areas. I want the whole family to get a chance to see the place. So we're planning on visiting about two states a month and spending at least a couple of weeks in the areas we are most interested in. So only 25 states at most in a year. We can't see everything unfortunately. We live in a great big country!