My most recent new state visited was Wisconsin back in 2014. I was in MN (specifically southeast side of the twin cities) for several days for a work trip. My colleague and I were sharing a rental car, and we figured why not go across the state line just for funsies. We wound up driving to Prescott WI, stopped for some pictures right across the bridge, visited a liquor store on the edge of town, and returned to our hotel in MN.

This was a very small sample size (about half an hour in total), so it’s hard to give a positive or negative recommendation based off of it.

I will note for the record that nearly 6 million people live in WI. It’s implausible that they could all be wrong, so clearly there must be a decent amount of upside to the place. I hear UW Madison is an amazing university. They have MLB, NBA, and NFL teams. They like drinking. They have plenty of museums and touristy shit and natural scenery. If you went there for a week and didn’t try to eat all your meals from the nearest gas station, I’m sure you’d have a decent time.

Flew into Boston (Massachusetts) not too long ago. It was a business trip with a tight schedule, so I didn’t get to do any tourist-y stuff, but it was a pleasant place to visit; it definitely made a good first impression. It was in February, and on my second-to-last day there, there was a big snow storm. The efficiency at which they dealt with the snow and cleared the roads/sidewalks was quite impressive.

Utah was a recent new one for me.

Salt Lake City was unlike any other place I’ve been to. The train system is super cool for getting around. The highway system is well planned and isn’t nearly as chaotic as other similarly sized cities. There are some interesting rules especially around alcohol. In a restaurant you can’t just order a beer and not eat. You have to have food in front of you at all times no matter what. Overall kind people there in my experience but you can sense some friction between mormons and non. If you go hit up Ruth’s diner for breakfast

Passing through the western border with Nevada there’s a tiny town called Wendover. That border also changes the time zone so things get weird there. If you want to live Fallout New Vegas in real life that’s the place to check out.

The Nevada side has a few casinos and marijuana dispensaries. The Utah side has most of the homes and an old WWII airfield used to train the atomic bomb aircrews. They also have the salt flats where land speed records have been set. You can literally see the curvature of the earth from the nearby mountains.

I think Salt Lake City is worth a visit with enough stuff to do and the beautiful landscape. I probably wouldn’t want to live there though

Ohio.

Fuck no. Three people got shot across the street from where I was at - I didn’t stick around long enough to find out if any of them lived through that ordeal or not.

Sorry if that’s depressing - it’s life in America, sadly. The opioid epidemic + pandemic seems to have hit that state pretty hard too.

Edit: I am sure that not all areas in that state are that way - the major cities have some issues though, especially for someone who doesn’t know the area, like where it’s safe to go or not go.

Hmmm, I think that’s gotta be Pennsylvania.

Visited my wife’s family. They’re mostly in and around Pittsburgh, so that’s really the only section I saw more than the side of roads.

But I loved it. I’m not a city boy at all, to the point I outright hate most of the ones I’ve been to for any length of time. Pittsburg is a rare exception. If the rest of the state is like that city, it’s fine by me!

You know how you enter most cities and the air starts to kind of abrade your sense of smell, even if it isn’t exactly bad smelling? Pittsburgh mostly smelled nice, even by the river. River + city normally = stink in my experience. Downtown is bloody gorgeous. The typical touristy spots (like the cathedral of learning) were all fairly unbusy since the visit was around Christmas, but because of the time of year, there was a lot of traffic by car and by foot, but the people were still way nicer than I’m used to in a city.

Like, compared to Baltimore, where I’ve visited a friend a few times, there was just a different vibe on the street with people. And it was miles better than New York where damn near everyone is a dick in my experience. Atlanta is fairly close in terms of people being friendly and helpful to an outsider, so is Charlotte, but neither felt as genuinely welcoming.

Part of that could be ascribed to Pittsburgh just being nicer to southerners, I guess, but if that’s the case, it’s still better on my end of things. But even when I wasn’t talking and being obviously southern, the reactions were just nicer. I hobble on a cane, and was doing so for the other cities I’ve mentioned. Pittsburg was the one city where nobody that bumped into me was a dick about it, and it was by far the place where more people that did so stopped, apologized, and offered help.

Like, that’s such a rare thing. In New York, it was, at best, someone stopping, seeing I wasn’t on the ground and moving on. Atlanta was worse than that in some ways, but wasn’t as crowded either, so it’s hard to judge. The number of people that would bump into me I Atlanta, but tell me to watch where I was going was higher than new York, even though there were also more that stopped to be sure I was okay.

I dunno, I love the South, and I can’t see leaving, even if I had infinite wealth. I’d rather just remodel my house and stay here. But if I had to move, and it had to be a city, it’s Pittsburgh.