About 7 or so years ago I visited Boise for the first time when I was coming back from a backpacking trip. I instantly fell in love with the city, and if proximity to family wasn’t a priority for me (I’m on the east coast), I’d have started looking for jobs there the next week. (I may have done a cursory search anyway, but not with any real seriousness.) It surprises me zero percent that it’s been growing like crazy, and I think it absolutely merits being included here.

Denver, on the other hand, has already “arrived” in my mind, as anyone I know who had any inkling of outdoor adventureness in them ended up there 10 years ago, the traffic is/has been a mess for years, and the ski slopes are way too crowded.