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I wanted to get some opinions from all these seemingly well educated and certainly opinionated (which should be helpful) folks here. My wife, my year and a half year old son, and I are trying to decide where to move. We are coming from the Sacramento area in California. We are a young couple with our future in mind. Here is our concerns. We like California, however the cost of living is quiet high. We also are looking for a fresh encounter with different culture. I'm graduating soon with a Criminal Justice degree and want to go to law school. I feel I have to decide on a state prior to picking a law school (due to the fact I want to practice in the state that we chose). California's law system is congested and I anticipate much frustrations with it. (I would like to factor this into the decision as well). We are done, for now, with California.
Here is what we are looking for in our future location: we want a state that, overall, sets high values to education and family. We want a state with a positive outlook for their future economy. I want a relatively simple law system. She wants to be a personal trainer so we're looking for a state that she will be able to do that as well. We are looking at climate but as a secondary importance. We also have family in CA still and would like to visit more frequently. However, I hope to have enough salary coming in that I can visit from any state. In a nut shell, those are the most important things we are looking at.
I don't know anything about the law situation in any of those states. I grew up in TN, which in many ways is similar to NC: It has mountains, has a similar culture and 3 major cities. Raleigh gets mentioned a lot. Its not my personal favorite in NC. I visited it a few years back and to me it felt like you might as well be in NJ or MA. TONS of people from the Northeast have moved there. It felt like a very suburby place. If you're coming from Sacramento it might be just fine since in some ways it reminded me of Sac.
Asheville NC is my favorite city in NC. Its a smaller mountain city situated near the mountains. Probably more liberal than the rest of the state. The only problem is there are fewer jobs there. There's a lot of money there. Lots of retirees this perhaps there would be people looking for personal trainers.
I thought Colorado was great. I've lived in Cali for 11 years. CO matches CA in scenic beauty. VERY outdoorsy oriented culture there. Lots of good food. Denver was pretty nice. Everywhere you look there are HUGE mountains. There was also a lot of dramatic rock formations and deserts. Only thing I didn't like was that it snows there. But locals told me its sunny for 300+ days a year and the snow is dry and evaporates usually in a day.
I've only been to Austin and Houston TX. More so in Austin. Austin is sort of like Raleigh- tons and tons of relocatees from the NE and Cali. The downtown area was nice. It quickly turned into urban sprawl and cookie-cutter houses. That said- the cost of housing was dirt-cheap. If you're willing to live in cookie-cutter land and be 30-40 minutes out of the city, I saw houses for like $150,000 or less. TX has HIGH property taxes though so if you bought a $200,000 house you could be on the hook for 3% of that, or around $6,000 a year. No income tax though. It gets HOT there, but since you're from Sac that might not be an issue. There wasn't a lot of dramatic or even interesting scenery in Austin. It was mostly flat. There was an area called the "Austin Hills" nearby. Coming from Cali they resembled speed bumps. The trees were small and scrubby.
If you're considering NC I'd check out TN too because as mentioned- it shares a lot in common with NC. The added bonus is that it hasn't gotten swamped- yet. Nashville is pretty neat.
Those are some very interesting points to consider... I know TN has a good law school or two there as well. This is a difficult decision and I hope I make a good one. I really appreciate your helpful insight!
I agree with previous post regarding NC. It's a great place to raise a family and in most metro areas has a great quality of life and overall affordability. I personally lived in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area for several years and miss it greatly. You get a moderate four season climate without the massive extremes of summer like TX or the winters of CO. The public schools range from very good to excellent in most desirable areas. In terms of focus I would definitely suggest either the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill or Greensboro-Winston Salem-High Point. Both offer quite a bit in terms of lifestyle options, work and school with minimal sprawl. In terms of law schools, of course UNC, Duke or Wake Forest would be amazing places to attend law school, however check out "under-the radar" Elon University's Law School in Greensboro. Elon University School of Law
Our state is absolutely gorgeous. Texas and North Carolina have their moments but quite honestly, they just can't compete in our league. We have over fifty "14ers" or mountains that are 14,000 feet or higher in elevation. Hike them, bike them, ski them, do anything with them! We also have the vast, treeless Great Plains if you ever feel the need to just be in the complete open!
As far as being a personal trainer goes, you probably won't find a better state for that than ours. The outdoors/active culture is drilled into the average Coloradan's mind!
Our schools are excellent - we have the University of Colorado at Boulder, which is very well ranked as a "Public Ivy" institution. There is also Colorado State University, the University of Northern Colorado, and the University of Denver as far as other major schools go. I might as well point out that we also have one of the top engineering schools in the nation - the Colorado School of Mines. As far as law goes, I'm not too sure but I'd imagine that at least one of our schools has an excellent program for that.
You'll find family-friendly areas all over Colorado. Heck, you can even find it in Denver proper! The Stapleton neighborhood - check it out. Denver as a city is very kept-up and clean. It's also has the beautiful mountain backdrop wherever you go. Tell me where in TX or NC you can get that and be in a top-notch major city at the same time! Our suburbs here in the Front Range are also great - some of our best ones include Louisville, Lafayette, Parker, Castle Rock, and Centennial. They're all suburban but without being overly cookie-cutter and actually aren't entirely auto-dependent depending on where you go in each one. All have excellent schools as well! I would know - I just graduated from the Douglas County School District (Parker and Castle Rock) last year.
Colorado costs a little more to live in than TX or NC, but is by no means expensive, especially compared to CA standards. My dad is looking for a home in Castle Rock at the moment and is finding excellent homes for between $250K and $300K.
Our economic outlook for the future couldn't be brighter. TX and NC tend to get more attention because they are the boom-states, but we're doing pretty dang good ourselves. Downtown Denver continues to be built up and made more liveable year by year, and our transportation system is being improved constantly as well. Don't forget about Colorado Springs or Pueblo either, each respectively smaller, but still coming along great!
Oh, and our weather is awesome. "Too cold and too much snow" OH, PUH-LEASE. Our snow melts fast due to the intense sunshine, and our winter temperatures are much better than you would think. Infact, Denver is one of the warmest cities in its latitude as far as the US goes. This is of course due to the chinook effect of the mountains. Our cold is also a dry cold, meaning that it doesn't have that "bite" to it that most of the rest of the country gets.
Summer is gorgeous. It never gets to the level of heat and humidity that Texas and North Carolina are plagued with. The afternoons also include many popcorn thunderstorms - as in they develop randomly and move randomly. They're actually quite entertaining to just sit back and enjoy. Our thunder and lightning storms are intense - they're also very high-based so they can be observed from much farther away than in locations back east where the cloud bases are much lower.
The only bad thing about our weather is the wind, but it's quite honestly not too terrible.
So please, come to Colorado and enjoy a great life. I was brought over when my mom moved from Oklahoma, and I came back to OK for college - it was the worst mistake of my life! I've been admitted to and will be attending CU Boulder next year. I didn't realize how much the plains states suck until I moved away from them and made the mistake of coming back!
You guys are all fantastic! These are the opinions and views that I am seeking! Canine, that's an interesting document. I agree with you in the degree of scariness!!!
Tony, it's great to hear a positive local's (or temporarily not local) opinion on the area. Sounds similar to how we thought of it. Do you guys have some pretty nice/awesome lakes out there too?
We do have a few lakes, but none of them are huge or anything, and they're pretty much all man-made. In the Denver we have 2 lakes, Chatfield Reservoir and Cherry Creek Reservoir. We also have Lake Aurora which is somewhat new but I don't think there is much to do there yet. Cherry Creek Reservoir has its own state park so there are plenty of outdoor things to do there, with the Tech Center about 2 miles away.
In the mountains there are some more - there's Lake Dillon near Silverthorne/Dillon/Frisco which is absolutely beautiful any time of the year. There's also the Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison - it's kind of like a canyon lake but not exactly. A quick Google search would give you an idea of what that one's like. Then there is Lake Granby which is of course near Granby, and nearby, although small, is Grand Lake which seems to be pretty popular for some reason. I'm not quite sure why though since I've never been to that one in particular.
Then there are many small mountain-made lakes scattered throughout the high elevations. I'm not quite sure what they're called specifically but they're the high-alpine, snowmelt, etc. kind of lakes. They definitely wouldn't have fish or anything (at least that I know of) but they're great destinations for hikes and to just relax. I've visited a couple of them before.
Yeah, we're a pretty arid state. The mountains are, of course green year round (grass in the summer, trees year round) but because of all the snowpack they get during the winter. Thunderstorms are common in the summer, but they are Florida-style (hit and miss). We have great water here but there isn't a lot of it.
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We also have the vast, treeless Great Plains if you ever feel the need to just be in the complete open! 
