I live right outside of Hickory, NC. It's a great medium-sized city that offers beautiful, manicured neighborhoods, lake-side living, lots of parks/recreation, restaurants, bars, and shopping. The NE area of Hickory is the prettiest, specifically the Viewmont area near downtown.

We are about 45 minutes from the mountains, specifically the Boone/Blowing Rock area in the Appalachian Mountains. I grew up there and miss it greatly, and would rather call Boone home than Hickory, but both have their positives.

Hickory has seasons. We have beautiful, mild Springs and Falls, and hot Summers. We have snow during the Winter, but maybe only a handful of times. Only 45 minutes away, and at an elevation of 3500 feet, Boone/Blowing Rock has a healthy amount of snow every Winter, and has 5 ski resorts to show for it.

Each county has a mental health dept -- ours is Catawba County Mental Health, don't know what else to tell you about that. It seems to be pretty big and is located near one of the hospitals. Below is the information.

Phone number: 828-327-2595.

Website: http://www.catawbacountync.gov/MentalHealth/

Let me know if you have any more questions...

If you enjoy working in a mental hospital or outpatiant clinic Morganton is your city. That is the location of NC's largest mental hospital. Is also the home of the NC school for the deaf. If you are wanting to get out of the social work field into a private industry I would suggest Statesville or Mooresville both in Iredell county. These two cities are quickly becoming hightech havens due to their location. Morganton is in a very schenic area but I have spent very little time there. I do know that Statesville and Mooresville are very friendly cities with reasonable living costs taxes and good schools. You might want to look at Shelby in Cleveland county. This too is a very nice small town with reasonable employment and a low cost of living and also in a very schenic area in the NC foothills.

Thanks so much for your responses.

I currently work with people with Mental Retardation. Are there any state agencies in the Morganton, etc area that work with this population? I'm thinking I might like to stay in this field.

My husband paints vehicles and will be looking into finding a job while there. I know he'd love to work on the Nascar cars painting them, if possible. Is there any Nascar shops in the area he can look into while there? Does anyone know of any other places where they have good body shops that he can look into while there. He doesn't want to work at a smaller company as they may not have as good a set up as he currently uses for his paint booth.

The closest Nascar 'plant' we have is called Evernham Motorsports, which is located in Statesville - 20 minutes from Hickory and 45 minutes from Morganton. They own Kasey Kahn, Bill Elliott, and some other folks (sorry, don't know much about Nascar). The plant is amazing. I was able to watch them building a chassi. Hope this helps.