I lived in Bellingham, WA for 3 years in the early 90’s… I loved it. But it does rain a lot. During the summer you can choose between going swimming from a beach into the puget sound, or from a beach into a lake (Whatcom or Padden in the b’ham area.) Lots of boating… University in town. Vancouver BC was close for night life, Seattle was also semi close – about 90 minutes away. My best friend still lives there so I still get back there a lot. Surprisingly, there’s a decent number of tech/programming type jobs – a lot more than when I lived there and there was only 1 engineering company in the whole city.

I have friends who live in/around Portland. It’s definitely hip/urban. You can get a LOT of house for small $$.

I’d give big thumbs up to the pacific northwest.

I spent a lot of time in Denver/Fort Collins (back and forth between them) 2 years ago… My brother was going through chemo, then surgeries, then finally hospice. It was Fall/Winter. The mountains are beautiful but the weather is entirely too unpredictable… 80 degrees in the moring – snow storm that night – literally.