I live near Boise, Idaho, and for the most part I like it here. Still, when I go to other places I see things that I wish we had back home. One of my favorite visited cities is Seattle. As we’ve been getting lots of rain lately-- quite a bit more than usual for June especially-- it got me to thinking that this must be what living in Seattle would be like. Unlike most people, I enjoy the rain and cooler weather, which is one of the things I like about the Seattle area and wish we had more of here. I also wish we had more forestry around here (we do, but the immediate area is mostly high desert country with sagebrush). I also wish Idaho had more of the big mountains (fourteeners) that Colorado boasts about. We have plenty of mountains to call our own, but Colorado still beats us hands down in this department.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy where I live, and we do have other qualities such as a low crime rate that other areas can’t brag about, but still, I can’t help but feel envious towards some of the things people have in other areas (or more of it) than what we have here, particularly where scenic and natural beauty is concerned.
So my question to everyone is, what things do you envy in places other than where you live?
Europe - I have always envied being able to travel to so many different countries, so easily. I live in NY, so we can visit Canada, which is lovely, but that’s it, and pardon me Canadians, not really that different (though Montreal is beautiful).
I want to be able to get on a train and visit Spain, or perhaps drive across the Channel to France. Le sigh.
Mountains. Growing up, my family took 3-week summer vacations out west in a station wagon towing a pop-up trailer. We always headed for the mountains to go camping and hiking in national parks. Visiting places where you can see for miles and miles - where the landscape towers above you, snow persists into August, and the air is so thin that even the trees gasp for breath - is still a very fulfilling thing for me.
Twisty roads. I am an avid sport-touring motorcyclist. Twice yearly I head down to the Smokies to meet up with friends and ride on some insanely twisty roads. Somewhat less often I head west, visiting the mountains and desert southwest of Colorado and southern Utah.
In the wintertime, particularly, the dryness of the air in Colorado can get really annoying. Beyond the extremely dry skin , there’s static electricity to deal with everytime you touch something.
I’ve lived almost my entire 40 years in Colorado, but having lived in Houston for a year and a half, I know I don’t want too much humidity – just something barely into the double digits would be nice. There’s also the smell of moist air that I really enjoy when visiting places with humidity (although the thin air of Colorado does have its plusses, as mentioned upthread).
Other than that, I’m pleased to live in Colorado. Mountains are cool.
I wish I lived on the sea. I’m surrounded by the Great Lakes but frech water is almost steril compared to salt. I love the marine life, the tides and everything else that goes along with that. I also envy some places their climate. I would love a climate like northern California. Never too cold and almost no snow but if you want real winter all you have to do is drive up the mountains to get it.
Oh, man. I visited Colorado and Vegas a couple of years ago - I’m from NY, as I said. I loved it, but at the end of the trip, we went to Los Angeles, and I was really shocked to find how much I missed humidity.
Oh, and we have mountains here, at least. However, they are not the steep unforgiving (though stunningly beautiful) mountains you have. We have rolling hills, every inch covered with trees, but you still get beautiful vies, and the Adirondack Mountains are gorgeous.
Cheap booze, nearly everywhere else on earth.
Mexican food in the US.
The more outdoor, public nature of culture in continental European cities as compared to here.
Galway has more fun and sound people per square mile than anywhere else I’ve been.
Wait, about Seattle. People have a misconception about the rain. We don’t get rain all the time, just all winter. The summers are clear and sunny.
So instead of snow you get drizzle and clouds for six months. And it hardly ever really rains hard, it’s almost constant drizzle rather than downpour. The radio stations here have a term I’ve never heard anywhere else, “sunbreaks”. As in, “We’re expecting 43 degrees and overcast tomorrow, with scattered sunbreaks throughout the day”. It’s considered noteworthy that there will be a few minutes where the sun breaks through the clouds. But that’s just from October to April.
Forests
Mountains
Humidity
The ocean
Scenery
Beer and wine at the grocery store
Big music acts on Friday and Saturday nights
Museums
Pork barbeque
Seafood
Long history, like 1000’s of years worth, hundreds would be OK too
Grass. Taking your shoes off and walking through the soft, green grass underneath. Having a nice yard of green, green grass, with the smell of freshly-mowed grass every couple of weeks. Ah, grass. I do miss it.
Proximity. Probably my only complaint about the Bay Area is that people end up being spread out too far to make casual socializing easy. In grad school, I was in a smallish Midwestern college town, and you could call up your friends on a Thursday night and have everyone meet at a bar for a beer ten minutes later, or run over to someone’s place to hang out and watch a movie. Here, we tend to see most of our friends only on the weekends and most of them we have to schedule in advance since it’s more of an event.
Vacation time. When my Irish cousins complian that they have started a new job and are back down to only five weeks vacationn - I just about lose the block.
A kindred spirit! I live in Boise and I have been loving the weather. I could have written a very similar OP, but substitute Portland for Seattle and the Ocean for the mountains.
I have always thrived in gray, rainy weather. People I work with are moping around, bitching about how they want summer to be here and I’m in the best mood ever and I don’t want the rain to go away!
I’m pretty happy with the geography hereabouts; ocean, sugar sand beaches, salt marshes, tall pine forests, low gentle hills. The weather’s a bit hot for my tastes, but, unlike South Florida where I lived for about three-odd years, there is a slight winter here. For an ol’ boy originally from North Central Texas, it’s the perfect semi-tropical, Jimmy Buffett-esque locale.
The things I envy most about other places (Seattle, Portland, Austin, Boston, Miami, San Francisco, etc.) are more sociological than geographic; cultural diversity, open-mindedness, tolerance, an art scene, a music scene, interesting neighborhoods, intelligent conversation. They’re all here, you just have to look really, really, really hard to find 'em and not expect a huge quantity when you do.
