I can't really decide. I enjoyed my time in Lycoming county (middle of PA) and I've liked aspects of my homie's county (Tioga, in NY) although I'm not very fond of the fact that it seems the only social entertainment there is all bars all the time. And then there's Merlind. Which I keep thinking I'm going to get kicked out of because I don't care for crab.

I don't know. I'm horrible at these sorts of things. (FindMySpot doesn't really work for me because I'm too undecided.)

My first instinct is to say New Jersey! Woot woot! Cause that's my 'hood. But realistically, I suspect that I would very much enjoy living in Hawaii or the Florida Keys.

I really like my adopted state of Maine because it's beautiful and not crowded -- I grew up in intense suburban sprawl and feel like I'm going to break out in hives when I'm stuck in traffic. It's also on the coast, which is important for me.

I've never lived there, but in Canada I adore Nova Scotia for the same reasons.

Nunavut has a neat name.

Bias towards the home state here, I'm for New York all the way. It's like a microcosm of the whole continent. Huge massive overwhelming cities, tiny little rural farms and everything in between. I think most people visualize NY as just urban, but that is so not the case. Yeah, it's a huge part of the state, but for every man made wonder there like the Empire State building or Statue of Liberty, or the Frank Lloyd Wright houses there's also something like the finger lakes, Niagara Falls, or the Thousand Islands, little areas of breathtaking natural beauty.
Plus there's the cultural microcosm in addition to the physical. Buffalo has, from what I know, a very "midwestern city" feel to it. NYC is the definition of metropolitan. My ex husband grew up halfway between an indian reservation and a town that could pass for mayberry. My sister used to live in an area surrounded by wineries and vinyards, my mom in one where the sky was so clear at night you could see shooting stars like clockwork.

Shame our state government sucks so much ass.

Maine. Progressive politics, geographically beautiful, ocean, lakes, mountains, clean air and water. People are down-to-earth and honest. I love my home state.

My favorite state is North Dakota, because I'm not convinced that it really exists.

♪ I wish they all could be Willamette Valley Girls! ♪

I'm awfully partial to the middle-ontario area I live in, in the summer. The lakes, the trees, man, it's just about my favourite place on earth, that I'm aware of anyway. In fact, I can tell you EXACTLY where my idea of heaven is.

It's right here, looking out toward Picnic Island, right before we head out in a canoe. On the right summer day, I feel like I can float above the ground when I'm there.

Plus, most of the time, I feel like I'm living in a Group of Seven painting. I'm never sure if I like paintings because they remind me of the land, or the land because it reminds me of the paintings.

I do love Wisconsin, where I grew up, but I also love Chicago, where I was born, and as a city generally. Chicago (now Third City, technically) is not as full of itself as either NYC or LA which I find problematic in almost opposite (and not just geographic) ways. I do suspect I'd like a number of other cities -- perhaps SF, Portland or Seattle, but also Minneapolis, and definitely Madison, but I just never really got to liking Milwaukee even as a lesser cousin of Chicago. Dunno why.

Wisconsin as a whole, though, is chock full of homey rural farming or woods and natural features and nice folks and slightly Yooper-Fargoish accents. On the other hand, my home city is chock full of unaspirational xenophobes and pessimists.

My home state of Maine. It's in my bones.

/unrepentant corniness

I liked upstate New York; but I was there with the 2001-2002 Winter which was mildest on record. I liked the greenery, wildlife, seafood; and wilderness of it all.

The remaining sense of independant colonialism seems to still be in the rural parts of the North East and it was always a unique feeling in contrast to my Mid-Western sense of liberty.

Were it not for family; I'd be closer to somewhere West of the Hudson.

I'm partial to Maryland; it's got a lot of the things other places have but a lot closer together, it's got a few things no other place has; it's the cradle of my youth, where I go when I can't bear to be elsewhere anymore. It's home to me the way nowhere else will ever be.

Plus the State House in Annapolis has cool fossils in the floor.

Maryland also apparently inspires me to an embarrassing surfeit of semicolons. Yuck.

I'd probably have to go with Hawaii too. The beach and health care, the only thing more I could want is packages delivered easily and cheaply to my doorstep.

Montana. Clean air, beautiful mountains, sparsely populated, effectively no speed limit, winter is much better than you'd think, politics are much better than you'd think.

Downside: bears that will eat you.

I have three favorites, but I'll stick with my first one:

New Jersey. Yeah, we're the butt of jokes. Yeah, people have the completely wrong idea of us from silly tv shows (reality or not). But from where I am it's just over an hour to Philadelphia, New York, or the ferry to Delaware. We have beaches, mountains, forests, hills, flat lands, industry, parks, nightlife, museums, historic areas. Everything you could ever want can actually be found here! Plus my family and friends. Yep. I love New Jersey.

New Jersey! Cause two centuries of being a suburb has made in amazingly strange. It has fancy bedroom suburbs, dowdy train suburbans, overworked university towns, the Cloister Of Princeton, the blue collar seaside and formerly wealthy hoods full of victorian mansions and Hillbilly woodland and insular small towns and Atlantic City as a seedy shadow and Asbury Park as a post-apocalyptic funfair with gay summer homers.


Plus there is a road called SHADES OF DEATH. How can you not win?

I'M FROM NEW JERSEY

Man, something about this thread really brought out the Maine and New Jersey fans. Or else Maine and New Jersey are just really really great.

YES THEY ARE

Shame our state government sucks so much ass.

Native New Yorkers say that, and not without reason. But try living under one of those state governments that's busy banning dildoes and trying to keep the spectre of evolution away.

For me, either New York or North Carolina. Unless "Air Force Base" counts as a state.

When I was younger, I would have said California because I lived near Disneyland and attended a high school that had a surf club and a ski club. The idea that you could go surfing in the morning and skiing at night in the winter was just so damn cool to me, and California also has farmlands, prairies, tons o' desert, large cosmopolitan centers that aren't trying to be New York City and did I mention the "ancient" rite of adolescence that was getting your first annual pass to Disneyland and being able to go any damn time you wanted?

Now that I'm older...? I don't think I've visited enough U.S. states to have a good sense of what they're like, nor have I been to enough Canadian provinces to say the same. I will say, however, that it was only recently that I've started to like Baltimore-area Maryland again because I've been able to visit when it isn't so damn humid.

I'm in love with Massachusetts!

Most of Oregon, most of Washington, Northern Arizona, Central California coast, Mt Shasta area, North San Diego County, the Big Island, NYC, I love all of these and could live in any of them.

Man, something about this thread really brought out the Maine and New Jersey fans. Or else Maine and New Jersey are just really really great

Yep! I grew up in New Jersey, and have lived in Maine, and both are great. For really different reasons! I was going to say that as a place to live, Maine edges out NJ for me, because I'm outdoorsy and down-to-earth. But NJ is a really great place to have grown up - diverse, sophisticated, lots of opportunities, people of all backgrounds, and the BEACH.