Wondering about good area for children, air quality and year round growing. (San Diego: renting)

[mgilmore]

my husband and I are planning our future move to California (in a few years) and are researching the best areas for raising our children (they're babies now but will be school-age by the time we move), growing fruits and vegetables and air quality. I would like to know which areas are best overall. We would like to stay warm enough to camp and hike year-round, visit the beaches, but would like to avoid the hottest areas. We would like to be close enough to the water to make it an easy day trip but not right on the water. Smaller communities would be best, but affordability is also a concern of course. I know these are fairly broad and vague questions but we would like to start getting things figured out so that we can start planning our information gathering trips. Thanks to anyone who can offer their candid opinions and any experiences you would like to share.

[Charles]

What line of work are you (two) in?
Where will you be working?
Buy? Rent? Budget or price range?

[mgilmore]

My husband is currently in the Coast Guard but his degrees are in Political Science and Envrionmental Mgmt.. My degrees are Environmental Studies and Sustainable Urban and Community Development. We'll be moving to the area when he retires from the CG in about 5 years unless we can manage to get orders there sooner but at that point our location will be one of 3 places so we're looking further into the future at a "retirement" location. We'll still be working age but he'll be retiring from the service. Our children are 1 and 2 now, so we'll be looking at schools as well. He would like to work for a government agency in either policy development or something related to homeland security, and I would like to work for a non-government organizations or a non-profit agency. As things stand now, our combined income will be approximately $225,000/year. We will decide on buying/renting when the time comes - it depends on the economy at the time but ideally we'd like to buy. We're still in the very beginning stages of researching the area - we have finally narrowed our search to California, no further south than San Luis Obispo Co. and no further north than San Francisco. We've both spent time in Cali - I trained in San Diego for a year and he was stationed in Alameda and Novato for a couple of years so we know we like the areas but were not searching for the future at the time. We'll be making our first information-gathering trip next fall and are hoping for some advice as far as good communities to check into. Thanks a bunch for your help.

Maria