Hah, everything looks good once you're no longer submerged! Pearl Harbor is great though. Well, OK, Pearl Harbor is butt-ugly, but it connects to Hickam AFB,and Hickam's really nice. (Seriously, it's like Dr Jekyl & Mr Hyde, you go from this ugly, rusty, industrial area type thing into a green, treed place where all the houses are the same color...)

Hawaii's a pain for any foodies trying to lose weight, though. A plate lunch tends to have more calories than a large-sized Big Mac value meal! And they're everywhere. Once you add in Zippy's--which are more prevalent than the 7-11s, even--there's just so much good food!

LOL! Good point!

I have never been, but I have alot of friends who live there and they love it! I convinced my husband to move there someday because of how nice it is, we just can't afford to move right now although we are saving. You can find a fairly new home, 3-4 br, a garage (or two!), sometimes with an inground pool for as low as $150K. Because it is close to Houston, jobs wont be hard to find and you will have an easy commute to the city if you work there. Crime statistics are one of the lowest in the country and the schools are amazing! Check out some of these links....

Homes....
www.har.com

Community Info....
http://www.ci.sugar-land.tx.us/

Oh and it is a 45 min drive to Galveston Beach from Sugar Land too, if you like the ocean!

I think anywhere you go, you have to deal with issues. It's just a matter of what issues you are willing to deal with. For example, I've lived in Texas...hot, humid, hurricanes and tornadoes, drought and water rationing
Arizona...HOT, not humid, a hippie kind of feel to the North part, windy
Nevada...only about 6 weeks (was preggers and in the middle of a divorce)
Wyoming...beautiful, but winters can be brutal, windy
Colorado...OK, but winters are hard and then you have all the new age stuff
Oklahoma...here right now and we love it. of course tornadoes are a possiblity as is drought and wind.
Kentucky...really pretty, but you have tornadoes there too

No place is perfect...because we'd all want to live there. But do your research. Good Morning America recently did a spot on 5 up & coming towns to move to...Enid, OK (we're here & LOVE it); but I really can't remember the rest. You should check out their website to see if they have anything on it. It was recently...last couple of weeks, definitely this year.

Good luck and remember no place is perfect. It may seem perfect, but the people may not be very nice.

Joanna

Well I personally believe Texas is practically perfect, but I have lived in Houston and Galveston, and if low humidity is what your looking for then stay far far away. I live in the Dallas area now, and its tons lower in the humidity, and the traffic is much more manageable, and the Austin area is so amazingly beautiful. Good Luck!!

Hey, someone mentioned Kentucky up here, and I think it was the host of this thread. I have to be very blunt about Kentucky here which is where I'm living right now. If you have any kind of sinus problems, bad knees, arthritis, etc, DO NOT PICK KENTUCKY! It is a very damp state, and tends to be wet and rainy a lot during the winters. My whole family needs to move out of this state because our sinus problems are so bad (doctors have even told us to move!) but we haven't due to money, kids, and jobs yet. So keep that in mind as well.

I'm not saying this because I live in Virginia, but Virginia is a great state to live in. However we do experience all four seasons faithfully...Summer's can be hot, and winter's way cold, well at least in the area in which I live, which is South Western Virginia, we nearly border W.Va., Ky, Tenn.....And you wouldn't have a problem finding nice homes @ reasonable prices, in the area I live... you could find a really nice home in the range of 75-to-100,000, and you rarely find one much higher...sometimes even lower depending on how nice you have to have it....Crime in this area is not bad either.... and we never experience things like tornado's....We have our beautiful mountains that block a lot of that kind of weather....

DJ

Come to south Texas. It is only mildly cold at 60s for like one week. Seriously. It is hot sometimes, but not Nevada hot and is cooler then some central TExas cities, probably cause I live a few miles from the coast but where talking about 30 miles or more. A lot of days, this last year, it was sunny but not hot which is kinda of a suprise. It seems to be getting cooler every year for whatever reason. I've been to a lot of places out of state and Florida was okay but sometimes it is hotter than heck. Others it was fine. Just don't move into Tornado alley area cause who needs the hassle unless it's about money.

I lived in Tucson about 20 years ago. It may be the sort of place you're looking for. Warm winters (40 degrees was considered a serious cold spell), and a mostly dry climate, although you can expect some pretty heavy storms in the summer.

The down side is that it was (and probably still is) a fairly high-crime area. Between the homeless who like the area because of its mild winters, the drug traffic coming up from Mexico, and the scammers who move in to take advantage of the elderly "snowbirds", the area attracts some rather strange people.

But it is a beautiful area, and there are times when I wish we could have stayed there. The desert is gorgeous, and the sunsets can be awe-inspiring.

Well, you definitely don't want to live where I live...Northern New York...as in next to Canada. Very, very cold!

But, my brother in law is looking to move from Southern California because it is monsterously expensive and he picked Spokane Washington. We've been looking into Denver, ourselves. Both seem pretty nice. Not sure of the humidity factor, but they both seem like nice places to be with a good balance of population and activity without being too crowded and filled with nice people.

I am originally from New Mexico but left 20 years ago. Still, for what you are describing, I would say definitely NM or Arizona. You can't beat it for the requirements you are looking for!

WE moved from Joisey to NC for some of the same reasons as you.. We haven't regretted it at all! Loving it in the RTP area!