Where good fruits and vegetables grow year round, where water and sun are plentiful, and where the temperatures aren't extreme.

are more options for road trips.

I've been to Hawaii and while it is just incredibly gorgeous, I think I might go bonkers and feel very isolated after a while. But that's just me - I love road trips.

Not so much from Costa Rica. I think I would last about six months in Hawaii. Costa Rica I could live in. Actually considered it before the housing bust. I would still consider it if circumstances change.

Hawaii is expensive, but you can live like a king in central america.

Happy spring!

It rarely rains here, and I love a good thunder shower or a cleansing/cooling afternoon downpour.

But you can't have everything......

or can you?

Considering our age, it will probably be the last place we ever buy. The decision was mostly a financial one and I'm sure our decision was influenced by spending most of our lives in the S.F. Bay area. Lets just say that my monthly nut for the newer, 4 bedroom house with a decent yard and a pool in a very good neighborhood is less than I could rent a studio apartment back home. PITI is about 20% of my monthly cash flow. It appears that housing has about hit bottom and is starting to go the other way and I don't expect to see interest rates this low again in my lifetime. We have family here and I have really grown to love Tucson. Most folks think of Tucson as being in a desert and it is but the Sonoran desert is unlike any place else on earth! The abundance of flora and fauna here is mind bending. Tucson is also in a basin, surrounded by mountains. It's like living in a national park!

From a water perspective, probably not a great choice but from a Solar energy perspective you would be hard pressed to find a nicer location, and yes, the day I move in I will be calling solar companies.

Lastly, spending about eight or nine months per year in shorts and flip flops does not bother my retired ass one bit! Not much market for my full length, Cashmere coat here though.

45 miles west of Palm Springs, Ca). If I can't be near a beach, then the desert is a very very very close second. The colors and climate are so beautiful; I do worry about water quality, though. I might not be able to be nice about green grass lawns and sprinkler systems, though (always drove me crazy in the desert in CA....)

Glad you are happy with your choice!

New York City - the greatest city in the world.
Why would I want to live anywhere else?

i wouldn't live any where else.
hope to have a kid stay close by to shovel the snow, but that is about all i would need.

Manhattan. LOVED IT.

Would definitely live there again if I had enough $$$ to buy a place.
But then again, I'd only do it if I had access to a big balcony or had a rooftop all my own because I love gardening -- so my lifestyle interests are now incompatible with NYC unless I become very, very rich.

I could garden all year long

I'm from SoCal (LA/San Diego) and there's a hell of a lot of concrete covering southern California, sadly...

Essentially off the grid, husband able to work via internet, great weather, relatively easy access to the city.

I miss a couple of things, though. Gardening, bath tubs. And something is always on the fritz. But, overall, I can't imagine anything better.

OTOH, I don't think we can do this forever, so I anticipate moving to land at some point, but maintaining a very similar lifestyle if we do.

will be interesting... maybe your road trip will give you some ideas about location. That's one of the reasons I want to take a trip, too -- check out where else we might want to be....

We plan to hug the Florida panhandle and the east coast from Florida to DC in order to explore it. Ideally, we would like to be on the water and maintain our boat or something smaller. All of our kids live far from us now, and once they start having kids, I know that I am going to want to be closer.

But DH is not ready to seriously look at this option, so we shall see.

Now, about your road trip..........

and am glad I was born in Southern California and plan to live here until...

northern Virginia, then western North Carolina, then back to northern VA.

I'd love to be back in California, but not in a big city... but I could see some of the desert-ish areas east of San Diego ...

Places like Topanga Canyon are progressive and in a beautiful area.

Really. I would love to have a place that drew me to it, some place where I can just be in love with my surroundings. I hate where I am right now...but I can't find that "right" place.

I would definitely be further south than I am. I have no desire for change of seasons, and definitely could live the rest of my life without ever seeing snow again. I thought that the southwest would be great, and it is beautiful, but I realized that I love green and trees as much as I love sun....the green and trees that I only have seen east of the Mississippi. As I get older, proximity to medical centers or decent hospitals is important too. I would like to live rural, but not so rural that I am far from shopping and health care.

You said that politics is not in the mix, but that is one of the major factors holding me back from some of the areas that I find the most beautiful of where I have been....Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Alabama, etc. Some things can really make a beautiful place feel like hell.

I think if I visited Belize, Costa Rica, Equador, etc., I might want to live there. From what I have heard, these are beautiful places with great weather year round. But I don't know that much about these places since it is just out of my "safety" range.

up a little bit north - Davis is very green and very pretty. But much of California is $$$.

We have friends who have land in Belize -- and some of those areas are retirement havens with good medical care. My husband is 15 years older than I am, so it is definitely an issue.

Asheville, NC is gorgeous, green, and pretty liberal. We lived about an hour from A'ville and it was definitely RED and weird-ass religious shit went on ... if we'd been closer to (or in) Asheville, we very well might have stayed. But by the time we could hoist ourselves out of the hole we'd fallen into there, I wanted nothing more to do with that area. A'ville does have winter and some snow, but NOTHING like what you're used to where you are... sometimes it has a whopper of a storm, but overall it is definitely milder.

I'm going crazy for warmth and a more relaxed, easygoing, outdoorsy environment that I'm even considering coastal SC or Florida. Georgia doesn't sit well with me ... not quite sure why. Husband is from SC, and the Colberts (as in Stephen) are from SC, so there is definitely a streak of wild liberalism in the state (that has been getting smothered by fundie religious types).

I've read that St. Augustine, Fl. is a nice artsy community. But I've read enough Carl Hiassen books about the destruction of Florida's natural beauty by an overflow of 'snowbirds' that I'd almost feel guilty moving there and putting one more strain on the water and natural resources...

and since I have a sister there, it would be nice to have some family closer. The weather is great. But it is prohibitably expensive. I would starve to death there, and I am doing fine here. I see the property prices, rents, gas, utilities, taxes---everything is high, and I have to think about where I can afford to live when I hit Social Security age (sooner than I like).

Georgia----I think it has a bad connotation. I don't know what it is like there. Florida has some nice areas, and all of it is not overcrowded. I read Hiassen also, just remember that his stories are mostly around the Miami area....but I get the same feeling as you do about harming Florida even more. (Although I have heard that a lot of the snow birds are moving back out of Florida to places a little more north and inland because they are sick of all the storms and humidity.)

What you really have to do is start travelling a little. I have a friend who got sick and tired and just got in her car and drove the country until she found where the right place was for her.....it turned out to be in New Mexico in what sounds like a commune, but she says it isn't really a commune. Not where I want to end up, but the point is that she had to go there to find it.

I really do try to tell myself that where you are can be fine, no matter where it is, or it can be hell---it is all in your attitude. Personally, I have attitude problems (cranky and depressed) here in the winter because I hate cold and we have so little sun (and I am definitely solar powered).

I couldn't do it unless we had the $$ to spend 4 months every winter in southern Spain or somewhere warm and SUNNY.

You know, the thing I worry about living in the US is long term health care. Obamacare isn't doing me any favors - it has been great for some I know, but I think we're going to get reamed next year because we buy our own personal insurance... and I really don't like the way it's administered.

So, I'd consider living in another country with cradle-to-grave healthcare.

But I don't want to be cold. And I love the desert southwest of this country and the southern US coasts ... If somewhere like Belize or Costa Rica had good and affordable health care, I'd think about it long and hard.

What I think will happen is that we move somewhere warmer in the short term just so I can cope with life, and then maybe in 5 years or so consider moving somewhere abroad for health reasons.

Yes, you can make lemons out of lemonade anywhere, and for some people place might not be very important - but for me, it is. Warmth contributes greatly to my sense of well-being and my activity level. When it's cold and windy outside, I just feel small and shriveled and all I want to do is hibernate.

but this year, I am on a medication (long term) that blocks the absorption of calcium, so I am now required to take a calcium supplement with Vitamin D. I still hate the cold, and I do hibernate (except that I have to work, I have no life during cold weather), but this winter is the first in a long time when I have not had to deal with depression. I believe that the Vitamin D supplement helped me.

Know someone who got a 3-2 cb 1.5 blks from the ocean for under 240 grand. Very salty, humid & corrosive. But fishing's great -- walk to the wonderful beach!

1. Southwest British Columbia. There are some towns that can only be reached by either a boat of their ferry system. I am a native of the Pacific Northwest, so the cool, rainy and temperate climate would not be something I would have to adapt to. I would love to live where there are no roads.

2. Along my favorite river in Washington State...I won't say where...because I don't want a lot of other people to move there.

3. The coast of either Washington or Oregon.

4. In a floating home in a moorage, on any river system in the Pacific Northwest.

I like cool weather, lush green forests, and our temperate northwest climate.

I hate living in cities. Have done it most of my life due to financial necessity, not from choice.

I spent about 5 years living on the coast of Washington, and would happily move back there, if I could afford it.

I also lived in a floating home for @ 5 years. I loved it, and have never stopped missing living on the water. Sigh...if only I could win the lottery. I could be very happy just gardening, making craft items by hand, hiking and camping. That would be bliss.

fulfilled. Oh, and playing with my cats, adopting a dog or two, and doing what I could for charities.

I grew up in the heat-and-light-intensive SoCal (well, San Juan Capistrano and then out near Palm Springs until I went to college in San Diego...)

So I think the NW might drive me nuts, though I love the idea of Portland and Bend, Oregon ... is Bend light and sunny?

The work my husband and I do could be done from anywhere - he wants to be in Finland, and I could see doing that (if for no other reason than access to lifelong health care) but ONLY if we could spend winter months somewhere warm. I would lose my mind otherwise.

He worked for many years in Russia, and when he needed a break or wasn't feeling well, he'd go to Helsinki -- one of the satellite earth stations he maintained was outside Helsinki, and he just loved it -- Helsinki is a really neat city; I've been there 3 times, including once at Christmas. But f*ck, it's cold and dark.

Were I going to that area, I would choose Iceland over Finland. Better scenery. Better politics. More interesting in general.

But still cold and dark in the winter.

Maybe Iceland in the summer and Spain in the winter. That seems to be what a lot of Northern Europeans are doing.

and Moscow is a lot of fun...but living there would be chaotic. I'd prefer Helsinki/Finland just because you can take the train easily to Russia and the ferry to get to 'mainland' Europe easily.

But Iceland is definitely more progressive.

Yes. Spain or Portugal or France or Italy or -- if it were stable and secure - Morocco in the winter.

Helsinki does seem like a good jumping off point for lots of interesting travel, but I don't think it would appeal to me as a place to live.

Now, southern Europe or some areas of northern Africa, is a different story.

Bend is in the high desert. It gets cold there, in the winter, and snow is a strong possibility.

Portland is often gray and overcast. I don't mind...I was born here. I like the coolness, and the moist air. It doesn't rain all of the time, contrary to popular misconception, but it is often cloudy.

Both Portland and Bend can get warm in the summer time...temp.s of 100 degrees are not unheard of. Bend probably has more warm days, and more sunshine than Portland. The funny thing about Portland, is that our summer doesn't really start until after the 4th of July. June used to be a nice month of transition from spring to summer, but with global climate change, now we seem to go from 50 degrees and overcast to 90 degrees and cloudless, overnight! Ack. I miss being able to adjust more gradually.

Finland sounds interesting...but isn't it pretty far north? The farther north latitude a place is, the shorter the daylight hours are in the winter.

It must be really nice to be able to work from anywhere...gives you more choices on where to live. I would so LOVE to move out of the city.

I won't be surprised if citrus is growing in Washington in 20 years