[Craig T]

My wife and I seriously considered Boise for retirement. I spent six month there on business from April to Oct of 2012 and really enjoyed it. The downtown is vibrant with a good nightlife and restaurant scene. The university insures a good diversity. It's a great area if you like to fish, which is a passion of mine.

I brought my wife up a lot on weekends and she did a lot of house hunting over that summer. It's still cheap by CA standards. She discovered there is a large Mormon population that is almost it's own parallel universe. Those communities are easy to identify.

What killed it for us was going up over the winter. BRRRRRR! They can have weeks of sub-freezing temps. Not a lot of snow, but damn it gets cold. That's not for us an we removed it from the list.

There is a lot of right-wing nonsense up there once you get outside Boise. I have a friend who retired close to Coeur d'Alene. At first they loved it, but just couldn't make friends. His wife is a Harvard educated Brazilian with dark skin. Somebody at his golf club made an insulting comment that really upset him. When he talked to his golfing buddy he said..."what did you expect". They are selling and moving to Scottsdale. I asked why AZ? He said..."One winter was enough!" Lol