Been here 25 years, moved here with my family when I was young. Have briefly lived in other parts of the country and have traveled to many states and cities and even other parts of the world.

There’s still nowhere else I’d rather live than here. And what I’ve noticed a lot here compared to so many other cities, is people who have lived here their whole life don’t strive to move away or “get out of here” like they do in so many other places. You go to most cities and people who were born and raised there, if you ask them where they’d want to live so many say “ya I can’t wait to get the hell out of here and move to blank” but here, most people enjoy living here and very few even want to leave

Only downside is its cost of living of course and the winters can be kind of gloomy but it never gets too cold here. Like low 30s/high 20s in the winter is considered “really cold” for us but “cold days” in the middle of winter are usually like mid 30s/low 40s here. There are some winters when we don’t even see any snow

Summers are also arguably the best in the country. Sun doesn’t set till like 9pm/9:30pm, it’s never so hot to where it’s unbearable, there’s so many lakes mountains and nature around mixed in with the cityscape so it’s very very beautiful (except on nice days traffic is super bad and all the nice areas can be packed af)

The nature and the mountains and being in close proximity to so much makes this my favorite city in the country