Where in Colorado do you live? After state shopping online, my son has decided that he wants to move to Colorado. Are there any cities/areas that you would say he should look into further?
I have visited Vail and Winter Park in the winter and Breckenridge in the summer, and all were breathtakingly beautiful!
T*Bird, I live just north of the Air Force Academy. I'm 15 minutes north of Colorado Springs and 40 minutes south of Denver. Perfect location. This area of the state is called the Front Range - it's the front range of the Rocky Mountains.
As far as cities to suggest, my own thoughts are that living along the Front Range is best because you've got the best of both worlds - access to all the benefits of cities, but you can easily get to the mountains. Colorado is a great place for long weekend trips - we are always discovering some new "burg" in Colorado that we didn't know of before. So, that being said, I'd look into some of the Denver suburbs (Arvada, Westminster, Lakewood, Littleton, come to mind, but here are more for sure), a couple places like Morrison or Evergreen which are more into the mountains but still close to Denver, and then some other cities close by like Golden, Broomfield, Longmont, Loveland, etc.
Fort Collins is a great city, very friendly, but it's a bit further from the moutains. Pueblo is warm, but it's not my cup of tea - although it does have a nice reservoir when there's plenty of water. Grand Junction is also growing on the Western Slope and is a nice change of pace.
Boulder is a wonderful place; both our kids went to CU-Boulder (one still there as a junior), but it is VERY expensive to live there. But the restaurants are to die for - they are "anti-chain" up there and the local places are original and create amazing dishes. Real estate is sky high too.
I like Colorado Springs a lot, but you will find a whole bunch of people who don't because they associate it with Focus on the Family. They think everyone who lives in Colorado Springs is a Christian fundamentalist wacko. That is a VERY inaccurate, broad-brush conclusion. While there certainly is a conservative lean to many people, you'll find plenty of the opposite extreme. We also have a very strong military presence and a lot of support for the troops here, as we have Fort Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, Shriever Air Force Base, Cheyenne Mountain Air Station (NORAD) installation, as well as the Air Force Academy. It's very pretty here too and the city is right against the mountains. My husband's law office is in Colorado Springs, so I don't think we'll be leaving any time soon (I am also an attorney but I work from home for a legal publishing company).
I too love Vail, Breck, Winter Park, Steamboat, Durango, Glenwood Springs, Aspen, Crested Butte, Estes Park, Grand Lake, etc. The downside to those communities is the very high cost of living. That's why many of us visit them various times year round. We especially love Vail and Estes Park winter and summer - they are wonderful places!!
Hope this helps a bit. There are a lot of attractive options; it all depends on what you're looking for.
It sounds absolutely beautiful! That describes exactly the type of place I would like to live. Maybe the winters would do me in, but I would love to move to the North. I live in Louisiana, and I would gladly give it up. We are at the bottom of every good list and the top of every bad list. And did I mention the humidity? Maybe I don't appreciate some of the good things about my state and would miss them if I moved, but I am willing to give it a try!
I hate it. MA is the worst state I've ever lived! It's dirty, old, torn up and the people are rude and bad drivers! The only thing that keeps me here is the good job. As you can see in my signature, I try to get away as much as possible.
Mass is also very soft on crime.
the east just went through and now their spring
sunny sunny sunny here. 
