Living in Moab, Utah

In fact, more snow than any other city in the USA except Buffalo.

BTW, this spring, my sister and her daughter are moving to a house they are building in Kanab.

I’ve been to Moab and lived for a while in Cedar City on the other side of the state. I’m not Mormon but never felt pressured or excluded by them; my neighbors were quite friendly. Cedar is bigger than Moab and is a university town but the place shut down at 8pm. The best Italian restaurant was a take-out place that shared a building with a gas station; the best steak was a Sizzler (there was a tourist restaurant outside of town with over-priced–but good–steaks). Be sure that you’re OK with that kind of rural lifestyle.

Another thing to think about: I love Utah and it is a beautiful place but it is very arid (dry). After a while I started to feel like I was wasting resources (i.e. water) living there. The green lawns and golf courses began to irritate me, especially while listening to reports about water shortages.

Pfft! Evanston Wyoming is the Sodom of Utah. Wendover is the Gomorrah.
It’s been many years since I’ve spent much time in Moab, but all my memories are of incredible scenery and a sort of lush, fragrant atmosphere. Beautiful place if you don’t need to be near a big city. It’s not very Mormon compared to the Wasatch Front. Less Mormon than where I grew up in Idaho Falls. And Mormons… I mean, their religion isn’t my cup of tea, but jeez, they’re generally nice friendly people, if a bit too wholesome for my tastes.

Since Syracuse and Rochester get more snow than Buffalo, that can’t be right.

It’s 5th, behind Syracuse, Erie, Rochester, and Buffalo.

AirBnB shows some availability. I actually stayed in an AirBnB last time I was there. It was great.

I think you’ll have to get in line to do something like that. It’s a heavily photographed area as you might have guessed and your likely competition has been exploring the area and running tours for decades. Since a lot of the terrain is ecologically sensitive there might be official restrictions. I’m not sure.

There are some music festivals plus live music in bars here and there (a friend of mine is a guitar player there) so there’s at least a little going on. I think there’s somewhat of an arts community for a town that size.