Very interesting thread. I've lived in:
Akron OH
Ithaca NY
San Francisco CA
Denver CO
I would love to live in New England or the Pacific NW. But I'm not sure if we would be just chasing fools gold. We live in a paid off house on an acre of land (so the dogs can run around all they want) and can walk to 3 grocery stores, Lowes, Walmart, Target, a 16 plex movie theater, more restaurants than I can count, JC Penny, Macy's, a dollar store, Ross etc (basically tons of shopping), a 24 hr emergency room, miles of hiking trails and a fishing lake that seldom has more than a few other people enjoying walking around it when we do.
I tend to see the positives of where I am and maybe over emphasize the potential negatives in the unknown. The population where we are is pretty educated, pretty open minded and pretty easy to tolerate. We are however, not diverse. But things are getting better as the region grows. The cost of living isn't really cheap and isn't very expensive. The area is desirable so the housing prices haven't fallen that much. And we don't have alot of bugs or creepy crawly things. However the sun is intense, the area is brown alot and kind of scraggly. Denver has lots of good city activities and many clean safe areas in the urban environment. There is also easy access to the national forest where camping is free and if your lucky not too many other people are around.
In the Denver metro area you can pretty much find any kind of environment your looking for whether it be county, horse property, urban, suburban or some other variation. And yet somehow I still want to live in other areas of the country.
We could move and then come back if it doesn't work out but I hate home improvement projects and we've customized this house to us.
I suspect after the dogs have lived out their natural lives we will close up the house here and do multi-month rentals in areas we think we might want to relocate to just to see if the grass is greener. In the mean time we bought an RV and take the dogs with us when we go exploring.
Since the OP has lived in Denver and all those other exciting places I'm curious as to their thoughts regarding the desirableness of Denver vs. their other locations.