My wife really liked Chattanooga when we were considering where to move. The downsides from my perspective: deathly humidity in the summer time, and according to the locals I asked, no food culture to speak of, particularly in terms of ingredients. Otherwise, pretty, nice size, great river ... we ended up near Santa Fe.
You're right about that. I lived in Knox for a year, and the humidity is worse than Florida in the summer.
Curious where you came from, and how you're liking it? I've lived in high humidity my whole life, and decided to move somewhere drier this year - AZ or NM. Would love to hear your experience.
Born in the UK. Graduate study in Israel & Germany. Moved to Seattle 1989, 7 years there. Moved to Philadelphia, 23 years there. Moved to near Santa Fe 3 years ago.
I personally love the near absolute lack of humidity here near Santa Fe. It changes the impact of the cold, and the heat, especially when combined with direct sunlight. 20F here with direct sun: wear a t-shirt and you won't be actually cold. Subtle things like my running shoes never getting stinky because they never get "wet with sweat".
However, I have fairly weather resistant skin and hair. My wife's experience here has not been quite so positive, though some of that is likely caused by the extremely hard water where we live (fixed that this weekend). At altitude (we live at 6000') you need to get used to wearing sunglasses outdoors all the time unless you want cataracts much earlier than normal.
The other thing to keep in mind in areas similar to the one where we live that nobody tells you (or if they do, you don't believe them): windy season. As the ground starts to warm up in the spring, every single day here for 5-6 weeks starts calm and then spends 6-8 hours of the day in hellacious wind storm. Things calm down in June (there can still be crazy winds, but not every day for weeks). It seriously sucks, and we are coming around to planning travel so that we leave the area for a good chunk of windy season.
You also have to adapt your ideas of beauty. As Stegner put it:
> Dutton describes a process of westernization of the perceptions that has had to happen before the West is beautiful to us. You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale; you have to understand geological time.
NM itself is ... interesting. Just 2 million people in the 5th biggest state by area. I keep telling myself that politics here is like Phila. city council, but spread out across a whole, large state. NM has more poverty and a less dynamic economy than it's neighbors. The upside is empty trails, and wonderfully friendly people.
Do you also find the hot is easier to deal with? I actually shyed away from the northern areas because of the cold/snow, which you make not sound so bad. In transparency, we're considering Sierra Vista and Las Cruces in our search, but they get considerably warmer.
Empty trails sound great. The population boom where we live now is what made us decide to go :).
Being outdoors in the "real heat" (say, above 96F) is challenging. but much easier than similar temperatures in Philadelphia ever was as long you have access to water to drink.
We are lucky to live in an old (1875) adobe house that handles the massive diurnal temperature change (sometimes 30F, occasionally more) very well. It has encouraged us to fall into a lifestyle during the summer where you follow one of two patterns:
1. (most common) get up within an hour after sunrise, do whatever you need to do outdoors (exercise, gardening, construction, whatever). Complete that by 10:30am, then head inside, close windows, stay there until about 6:00pm. Open windows, potentially head back outside (depends on altitude a bit, can still be on the cool side at 6-7k' after sunset). Sleep in delicious temperatures.
2. get up, head up to 8000' or higher, stay outside all day.
Las Cruces is definitely much hotter than Santa Fe. I would not enjoy living in ABQ or further south without adobe (preferably double adobe) during the summer - it would require too much a/c for my taste.
