Mike it's too bad that CA is going downhill so quickly. It really is a fantastic state but there's just so much chaos and corruption it's terrible.
I'll give you the Reader's Digest rundown on South Dakota though and maybe it will pique your interests. South Dakota is best classified by two sides -East River and West River. The river being the Missouri of course. East River has a larger more liberal population and it has SD's largest city, Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls has about 150,000 people and it's one of the fastest-growing cities in the midwest. Sioux Falls is home to many finance corps and credit card companies -unfortunately these companies are seeing lots of layoffs nowadays.
East River and the Sioux Falls area is very flat and it has long, hot, humid summers and long, bitter cold, wet winters. It's also about a 3 hour drive to Minneapolis and a 2 hour drive to Omaha.
West River is more coservative and less populated and home to SD's second largest city, Rapid City. Rapid City has about 80,000 people and is at the foothills of the Black Hills which is the small mountain range home to Mount Rushmore and Harney Peak -which at 7,000 feet is the highest point between the Rockies and the Alps. Rapid City is more blue collar than Sioux Falls and is home to many engineering companies and service centers. We haven't seen as many layoffs as Sioux Falls but a couple businesses have had them.
West River, the Black Hills, and the Rapid City area ranges from hilly to mountains and the weather is dry, and arid from the higher elevation. Rapid City gets long, hot, dry summers and long, cold, dry winters. Overall, most people prefer the milder weather of Western South Dakota over Eastern. Rapid City's about a 4 hour drive from Fort Collins and a 5 hour drive to Denver.
Any more questions, fire away!
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thinking about moving to S.D.
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