Rich, your comment brought to mind my good friends on Oahu. They're at retirement age and daydream about moving back to the Delaware shore.

The grass is always greener, I guess. :-)

No place is perfect. When you work, it tends to dictate where you live...or at least it used to and may do so again as we get further from the Covid lock downs and work insists employees be on site. When you no longer have work or have kids dictating where you live, the options are overwhelming. We are facing this right now as well. We wound up where we are now because it was close to our vacation home but offered a more urban option with great medical, shopping and even culture. It looked great on paper, but we have decided it's time to move on. We don't want to do this more than once, however, so we have decided to check places out by living there for at least a few months after a place has been put on the short list for checking off all the things we are looking for and passing a short stay to check out the place in person. I detailed how we anticipate doing this via home exchange on the LBYM board: InParadise replies on LBYM travel, and there is a house sitting site I am also checking out, both of which have listings all over the world. We will not again make the error of picking an area because it looks good on paper, without visiting extensively. DH refused to retire to our rural vacation home, so we had to find a place that worked for him or he would keep working. Unfortunately, this place doesn't work for me. The random nature of people asking to swap homes with us will hopefully direct us to other areas we are not familiar with, or at least provide a reasonable way to explore areas in depth that we are considering.

And of course, things change. I find myself feeling bad for all those who moved to CA and elsewhere for the perfect weather, now experiencing drought, fires, floods, mudslides....

IP