The moment my wife and I finished earning our college degrees, we were ready to leave Utah.

We’d been living in Orem, a city with about 95,000 residents, while attending school nearby. Now that we weren’t tied down to the area, we wanted to move elsewhere — ideally, someplace cheaper.

I’d started working as a remote freelance writer, so we were flexible on location and interested in seeing where my modest income would stretch furthest.

Most of all, we wanted to live somewhere that would help us save for a down payment on our first home. Eventually, these goals led us to a tiny town in Wyoming.

Wyoming’s Bridger Valley offered lower rent, taxes, and gas prices

After learning about our moving plans, my wife’s aunt suggested looking in Bridger Valley, where she and her husband lived. We’re glad we did.

Located on the southwestern tip of Wyoming by the Utah border, the area had a lot of relatively affordable rentals, and we settled on an apartment in its small town of Mountain Valley.

Our rent was $650 a month — nearly half of what our existing lease would’ve renewed at for about the same living space. Both apartments were two-bedroom, one-bathroom units in a fourplex.

Over the next two years, we discovered other financial benefits of living in Wyoming, such as not having to pay a state income tax or sales tax on most groceries. Even gas was significantly cheaper here than it was in Orem.

As a result, we were able to save more of our income each month.

But living in a small Wyoming town also had its drawbacks

Mountain View has a population of just over 1,000, and many residents work at one of the nearby trona mines, making them a hardy group. I felt like an outlier as a remote worker, and I only met one other person who worked from home while we lived here.

Meanwhile, though we were only a two-hour drive from my wife’s family in Utah, it was far enough that we saw them much less — maybe five or six times a year.

Compared to Orem, there were also fewer amenities: We had a gas station, a grocery store, a bowling alley, a tiny library, a handful of restaurants, and little else. However, we didn’t mind much, especially since we made good friends at church and in the community.

The hardest part was the cold. Winter weather in the area basically lasts half the year, from about November to April, and temperatures regularly drop below freezing.

On occasion, the freeway connecting Mountain View to Utah was even closed due to dangerously icy road conditions. We stayed indoors a lot and missed Utah’s milder winters.

After 2 years, we’d saved enough to buy land in Washington, where we plan to build our first home

Our move ultimately paid off.

During our time in Wyoming, we saved $20,000 to put toward just over an acre of land near my family in rural Washington.

Today, we own the land outright as we prepare to have our first home built on it. In the meantime, we’re living in my parents’ newly renovated ADU nearby.

Looking back, those cold Wyoming winters and quiet weekends were worth it. We traded convenience and proximity to family for financial breathing room — and in two years, that breathing room helped us buy real estate.

Plus, we came to love so much about remote small-town living, like its slower pace of life and the friends we made. For us, it was exactly the sacrifice we needed to make homeownership possible.

During the holiday season, Wyomingites get into the spirit with festive cocktails that look, taste, and feel special. If you’re one of those folks who love a good ol’ hot toddy, whiskey sour, or a bourbon-spiked hot chocolate, there’s a new bourbon from Wyoming Whiskey on the market you need to check out.

Wyoming Whiskey’s National Parks No. 5 Straight Bourbon Whiskey: A Tribute to the Tetons is now on shelves and ready to spice up your holiday cocktails.

READ MORE: Whiskey Inspired By One Of Wyoming’s True Heroes, Buffalo Bill Cody

The straight bourbon was distilled, aged, and bottled right here in Wyoming, and is the fifth bottle released in the National Parks Series. Co-founder of Wyoming Whiskey, David DeFazio, explains the importance of the series not only to Wyoming Whiskey but also to the National Parks in Wyoming.

For those of you who’ve been following Wyoming Whiskey over the years, you’re aware of our ongoing commitment to the preservation of wide-open spaces. The cornerstone of our commitment is the support of our National Parks. Over the last four years, we have made donations to Yellowstone Forever, the Grand Teton National Park Foundation, and Friends of Acadia, the philanthropic partners of each Park. With National Parks No. 5, we feature Grand Teton with a historic image by Thomas Moran titled The Three Tetons. This straight bourbon whiskey is five years old, bottled at 96 proof, and I must say hitting all the right notes with the flavor profile.

In conjunction with this release, Wyoming Whiskey has donated $5 for every bottle, totaling $50,000, to the Grand Teton National Park Foundation in support of ongoing efforts to protect the Park, enhance visitor experiences, and ensure its resilience for generations to come.

READ MORE: Wyoming Whiskey Honors The Queen of the Tetons: Grizzly 399

This donation, in combination with the previous backing, has helped:

• Restore more than 10 miles of the Teton Crest Trail
• Enable 250+ volunteers to contribute over 17,000 hours toward resource stewardship and visitor education
• Engage 350+ Indigenous youth in the park, deepening connections to their ancestral lands
• Advance critical natural resource restoration and wildlife research projects that protect Grand Teton’s iconic landscapes, and much more.

Made with only locally sourced ingredients, National Parks No. 5 embodies a richness that is uniquely enhanced by the extreme weather the hand-selected whiskey barrels endure. This whiskey blends deep, dessert-like layers with a touch of rugged refinement, underscoring the spirit of adventure and natural beauty that Wyoming Whiskey and this series represent.

Bottled at 96 proof and aged for 5 years, the whiskey reveals notes of baked honey crullers, almond, and cherry liqueur, with a warm finish of cinnamon spice, espresso, milk chocolate, and leather.

Whiskey’s Named After Wyoming Legends