Central Pennsylvania Nesties
mrssisler
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Harrisburg - Things to Check out?
My DH has a job interview on Monday in Harrisburg. We are coming tomorrow afternoon (we have a 3.5 hr drive). We will be having dinner tomorrow evening with the prospective employers, and then DH will be shadowing them/checking out the office etc. on Monday & I will have the day to check things out.
What are things that I should check out since we are considering moving to the area if this goes well? We are staying near the river if that helps. I'll have the car & a garmin.
Re: Harrisburg - Things to Check out?
The river is basically the dividing line in the Hbg area - you have the East Shore (Dauphin County) and the West Shore (Cumberland County). If your H would be working in Hbg, and staying relatively close to his job would be important to you, I would focus on these two counties for your exploring purposes.
In regards to school districts - CD East HS falls under Central Dauphin SD, which is a pretty large one for the Hbg area and encompasses most of that general vicinity. Enola is actually not part of Cumberland Valley SD - they have their own school district, East Pennsboro SD, which is a small SD, but a pretty decent one. Enola's also a pretty nice area to live with lots of different housing options. Cumberland Valley SD is HUGE and encompasses many different housing options - it's technically listed as Mechanicsburg area, although Mechanicsburg proper DOES have its own SD, Mechanicsburg Area SD, which is much smaller than CVSD. CVSD does offer a lot of different extracurriculars for their students, which is nice.
Personally, I prefer smaller school districts, so in Dauphin County, I would consider Lower Dauphin SD (Hummelstown) or Derry Twp SD (Hershey - which is pricey for the area). I personally am a graduate of Middletown Area SD, which used to have a great rep, but that's been sliding somewhat in years past. In terms of housing, Middletown has the town and then the outlying township, which are very different in terms of "feel." It's basically between Hbg and Hershey. LDSD and DTSD are both on the smaller end of the size spectrum, and have very nice areas around them in which to live.
Proximity to Hbg and Mechanicsburg in any of these places means that being near shopping, restaurants, etc., is pretty much a non-worry - no matter where you live, you're within 20 mins of a wide variety of shopping/eating selections.
GL to your H!
... every single day of forever.
If you want to get a feel for the area and the people here you may want to go to a coffee shop or grocery store and hang out and people watch. Off the top of my head I would suggest hanging out at Cornerstone Coffehouse to get a feel for the Camp Hill area (across the river from Harrisburg). If it is nice out you can take a walk along Front Street in Harrisburg. You can also walk around the Capital grounds and go inside and look at the dome.
In general the area is a nice place to live, there aren't many places to take out of town visitors (not like someone says oh lets go to Hbg for vacation). Depending on where you are coming from you might think the area is conservative, which could be good or bad depending on your views.
The area is typical in that most of the shopping is in big box stores and chain grocery stores. There is a farmers market in Lemoyne (across the river from Hbg). The main grocery stores are Giant and Weis although we now have a Wegmans (Mechanicsburg area). Second street in Harrisburg has a restaurant district. Most people live in the burbs and commute into the city or office parks in the burbs.
As you can tell there is a East Shore vs. West Shore thing, I really don't get the river being some sort of divide but it is, always has been. There are nice areas on both sides of the river, if you are commuting from one side to the other traffic can get backed up at rush hour (but nothing like larger metro areas). If you decided to move here property taxes are determined by your school district. Usually, the nicer the schools, the higher the taxes. I wouldn't focus to much on that until you decide if you are moving here, as with any area there are good school districts and not so good school districts (if that matters to you).
Sorry, I student taught in EPSD and my dad/stepmom have lived in Enola for well over 10 years now - both of my sisters attend EPSD, and my stepmom grew up in Enola and was a graduate of EPSD. Didn't realize there were parts of Enola that fell under CVSD's boundaries.
... every single day of forever.