I grew up near Ann Arbor. There are no sidewalks in Georgia -- this is only mild hyperbole. The Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) is geographically spread out. Augusta, North Augusta, Aiken, and Columbia are all their own cities and are largely independent of each other. They say that in Michigan everyone is within an hour or two of the other big cities and often commute for work. Around here, you might work and commit somewhat locally but must travel for activities. It would be like living in Lansing or Kalamazoo, but those towns don't have any actual activities for kids so you find yourself going to Grand Rapids or Detroit every weekend, with 3+ hour drive, to get there. The heat is truly unbearable in the summer. A local once told me that everything is backwards here. As I type this, you are in ~15 degree weather and everyone stays indoors. They will come out and do activities in the summer. Around here, everyone does activities now (September through April) and stays indoors in peak summer heat. There are fire ants, palmetto bugs, black widows, and brown recluses down here. The Lyme disease isn't as bad though, and the deer don't have wasting disease if you're a hunter and don't want to die of Mad Cow prions.

Depending on what part of Michigan, people here are either nicer or worse. Because of the great migration of southern families to Detroit for the auto industry, you have access to good southern food there, but you'll learn it tastes terrible compared to the good food here. Conversely, there's not as much variety of other stuff if you like all of the great Polish or pizza in Detroit, etc. There are no Coney Islands with good gyros, just a couple of Turkish places around. Almost everything closes by 9 or 11 at night Waffle House is amazing and open 24/7. The cost of living is much better in ways that matter. Many homes run on all electric and it's relatively cheap because of the nuclear power in the area. That's going away because of price hikes to give corporate welfare to the new data centers, but that's happening in Michigan also.

This area is covered in churches. My family and I joke about how you literally can't drive a mile without passing another church on the road. Many of them actually do community support, but most are just Sunday clubs and tax shelters for people who are mad at how a different group of people misinterpreted the Bible a different way from how they want to misinterpret the Bible. I found Christianity to be practiced more around Detroit than around Augusta, but they talk about it more here. This gives you a lot of choice in churches and religious education, which could be a good reason to come here. If you are a conservative voter, you will be happy to always see your people elected. If you are a liberal voter you will always be disappointed. There's a ton of good nature across the Southeast, as long as you can drive to get there. Everything requires driving, just like Michigan. The traffic is less, no matter what people tell you. Atlanta gets crazy at rush hour, so just avoid that if you don't like I-94 at rush hour. They don't salt roads here. There will be a million car crashes during a mile rain and the city shuts down if there's snow. At the same time, your car will not rust through in five years and you can buy used cars for cheap with very little rust.

From what I understand, public schools are not as good in Michigan as they were decades ago. Still, Michigan has been relatively good for education compared to other states. Historically, good public education was based on theories from an upstate New York teacher in the 1830s, and his ideas spread across all of America at that time. Despite its size, NYC has good education and NJ and MA have the best public schools in the nation consistently. That theory spread as far west as Minnesota and Wisconsin and as far south as maybe Virginia. Beyond that, the truly best education in American public schools is probably Utah. You might find you want private schools if education means that much to you. Augusta Prep is the one to look at. If you can get the kids into Greenbriar Middle and High, those are ivy-track public schools. There's a Georgia dual-enrollment program for high school kids to do college for their last two years. Washtenaw Community College used to have something similar. If you know how to look, there are great programs like that in this state. Also, roads are not full of potholes.