Ask Cooper Anything 5: Where to Live

"If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why? Assume for the purposes of this question that the people you want to live close to would also be there, and that you would be able to find a job."
- Erik C.

To come up with this answer, I had to start be eliminating the places I wouldn't live, coming at this from a practical point of view.

For starters, and this may seem incredibly lame to some people, I'm going to go ahead and disqualify a massive percentage of the world.  I actually wouldn't really have any desire to live outside of this country.  There are places around the world I think would be neat to visit (New Zealand, England, Egypt), but this country is my home and I don't ever see myself living away from it.

Next, however much I love the ocean, I don't want to live next to it.  Especially in Florida, or any place where hurricanes are a real possibility.  That's just something I would never want to deal with.  While places like California eliminate themselves due to the ocean, I also wouldn't want to live anywhere that has a good chance for earthquakes.

I don't want to be too far south, as I'm not a fan of scorching heat, and I really do enjoy being able to experience all four seasons.  Geographically, Alaska is my favorite state, because of the mountains and the ocean.  I'd be more likely to live near the ocean in Alaska than in Florida, but the high temperature in southern Alaska is maybe 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, so the window for enjoying the outside during that time is fairly small, and I want to be able to play softball and do other such outdoor activities for a good amount of the year.  So no to Alaska.

Oddly enough, my current state of Minnesota fits everything pretty well so far.  The one thing that it is missing is my favorite geographical feature: mountains.  So, I would probably choose somewhere with a similar climate to Minnesota, but more mountainous.  This puts me a little farther west or southwest, ending up in western Montana, or perhaps somewhere in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, or Colorado.  I do like having access to the big city, and yet I'd be just as happy being in the middle of nowhere, though preferably with some kind of city within reasonable driving distance.  I'd love a large amount of (low maintenance) land, where I can't see any neighbors.  As long as I can have access to high speed Internet.

I'd probably end up picking somewhere in western Montana.  That probably is quite a pathetic answer to some people, but it seems pretty nice to me.