I love where we live… though I have to admit, this spring (early summer) the weather did get to me.  I have NO intention of moving, but for the sake of this blog post we’ll make the call that I had to move my family from Washington… we’ve been outlawed or something like that… so, the criteria for this top five is that I have to pick the top five places I would move if we were to vacate WA.  I will throw out the stipulation that it must be in country as well, just to make it a little more narrow. I have to admit, this is a tough list to do because I know my wife won’t agree with all of them… good thing we haven’t been outlawed… yet.

Without further ado, the list.

Honorable Mentions: Maui; Santa Barbara, CA; Boulder, CO; Durango, CO and Bend, Oregon.

Five: Boise, Idaho or Redding, CA.  This pick surprised me as well.  I like the climate that both of these places would offer and most importantly the pace of life that I could imagine both these cities offer.  Both are about equal drive time from family in Western WA. Advantage to Boise because of the bigger city amenities but advantage to Redding because of In-N-Out. Enough said.  I like being outside and both have a great season of sun and a great winter season.

Four: Suburbs of Atlanta. I know, weird.  I wanted to throw at least one oddball one out here in this list.  Cost of living, sprawling estates and some southern hospitality all seem to be nice benefits to this area.  I think I could do okay, but not great, with the humidity.  Of all the places I’ve been back east, Atlanta had the most appeal as a place I could live.

Three: North Colorado Springs/Monument/Castle Rock. I like it in Colorado, I could very easily see us living in that area.  I think Denver is a pretty cool city, I could get into the Rockies, but never the Broncos.  I really like the area south of Denver and would want to live close enough to the airports to get out to anywhere in the US.  Colorado would make a lot of sense for the business/ministry side of things.  I love the outdoors and 300+ days with some sunshine coming through is a nice appeal to the state.

Two: San Antonio. Seriously, did I just write that?  Weird.  I know, I’m not a Texas guy, but San Antonio doesn’t feel “south” to me, it has a unique culture there and seems like the hills north of the city would be a pretty cool place to be.  I have relatives in the area and I think for Youthmark’s purposes being near the Bible belt could provide for great business rather than the highly unchurched culture of the west and specifically the northwest, but I do know that for now we are called to our PNW culture!

One:  San Diego County.  I really don’t want to live in CA, however, I can’t think of another place outside of the greater Seattle area that I’d want to live more.  I love the climate of San Diego and would probably pick somewhere in North County.  We’d be only a couple hours from in-laws and very close to many friends and ministry associates.

Got any suggestions and/or major disagreements/reasons I’ve made a poor choice?  Anyone agree with any of these choices?

Grace,
Brian