If you could live anywhere, where would that be?

Have you ever traveled somewhere and thought, "Wow, I could totally live here"?

You know I've traveled pretty extensively throughout the U.S.  I've also been to Ireland (around the Ring of Kerry), the north island of New Zealand, and to the major Canadian cities of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Victoria.

Many places I love, love, love, to visit, but can't imagine actually living there.  New Orleans, New York City, Los Angeles, Montreal, Moab (Utah), and anywhere in Maine, Wyoming and Colorado immediately come to mind.

Arches National Park in Moab--that's me in there!

There's only a handful of places, though, where I have actually imagined myself living on a day-to-day basis.

Prescott, Arizona.  This one's at the top of my list.  It's a funky little city just a few hours from Las Vegas and not far at all from Sedona and Jerome--two of my all-time favorite places to visit.  Prescott has a cute and vibrant downtown with tons of restaurants and bars with live music.  They always seem to have a full calendar of cultural events and the people there look educated.  You're not too far from Phoenix, either.  I tell Mike that Prescott would be a great place to live in our retirement years.  And most importantly... they have a Ross.

Bandon, Oregon.  Bandon is a very small and picturesque town on the sea.  I've been to Bandon only once, back in 2008, and the whole time I was developing a mental strategy on what it would take to move there.  It may be a little too small and isolated for me, though. I flew into Eugene, about two hours away, and being so far from a decent sized airport is definitely a pain in the ass--I know that from living in Laramie and Cedar City.  Plus, there would be no place for me to do comedy and I didn't see a Ross.  Nonetheless, this would be a great place to give small-town life a try while I write my next book.  I can't wait to get back.

Carlsbad, California.  Just north of San Diego, Carlsbad is another place with a cute downtown walking distance from the ocean.  We stopped here when we took the kids to LEGOLAND and it's on our short list for a return trip, a weekend getaway for just the two of us.  It probably costs a fortune to live there, though, and we're spoiled by the low cost of housing in Las Vegas.  But on the plus side, a Ross can't be too far...

Boise, Idaho.  I've talked about Boise so much, you're probably sick of hearing about it.  As you can tell, I love a cute and vibrant downtown and Boise has one of the best ever.  Plus they have The Flicks, a movie theater with independent films and microbrew beer and wine you can take to your seat.  As a college town, Boise has a ton of culture and eclectic music.  Bands like Sonic Youth and The Decemberists will bypass Vegas, but stop in Boise.  On the down side, it costs a fortune to fly out of there to the East coast and the Mormon culture is a little too prevalent for my taste.  But they definitely have multiple Ross stores. 

And then there are the places I'd live in a second if it weren't for the damn weather:  Albany, New York; Northampton, Massachusetts; and Portland, Maine.  I've never been to Portland, Oregon, and I bet I'd really like it but that dreariness would make me mental.

How about you?  Where have you visited that made you want to pull up stakes?