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Atlanta.

It’s honestly the west coast cities, specifically Southern California, then everyone else. You have the ocean and mountains, along with the desert to go with those two in Southern California. That, coupled with the weather to be outside pretty much every day in comfort makes its an outdoor enthusiast paradise. Surfing, sailing, hiking, mountain biking, off roading, deep sea fishing, lake fishing, horse riding, etc, etc, not to mention regular sports/activities that need decent weather like golf, bicycling, skating, running, baseball/softball, soccer, etc, etc all can be done daily year round. Come winter you have all the winter activities you’d find anywhere else, but often much better in many cases than elsewhere in this country within a short drive.

I think the entertainment options speak for themselves. Whether it’s nightlife, amusement parks, professional and/or college sports, concerts/music festivals, you name it, that all covered too.

Not to say there’s not other great places in this country for outdoor activities and entertainment, just not the variety in close proximity you’ll find on the west coast, and weather to go along with it in Southern California. What do you do if you live in some of the cities mentioned in other posts if you don’t like winter sports? You’re kinda SOL for several months out of the year. What if you do like winter sports and you’re in the south? Or the ocean and you’re in the middle of the country?

I love to surf, ski, run, sail, ride my bike, hike (actually that’s more my wife’s doing), and I play a lot of golf when the surf is flat. There’s really nowhere else I can stay this active.

If mountain recreation, whitewater, or rock climbing are important in this equation, SoCal is not very good compared to Denver or the Pac NW. Big Bear isn’t much. SoCal has the ocean but the mountains are an afterthought. You said you like to ski. Honestly how many times a year do you go?

I spend a lot of time in SoCal and I love it there, but I always laugh when people in LA tell me they have mountains like Denver does.

The Sierra Nevada are within 5 hours of LA (and closer), so yes, LA does have mountains in the 14k foot range (not just the 10k heights of the San Bernardino’s and San Gabriels).

Yes but most people in LA rarely get there. To me there is a big difference between being able to be at the base of a 14,000 foot peak in an hour and change versus 5 hours. One is a day trip, one isn’t.

I would hardly call the mountains a afterthought. I ski all the time. I have a cabin 2 hours from my house in San Diego thats minutes from a ski resort. In fact I often surf and ski the same day because of it. And yes while the local resorts aren’t that of what you’d find in the Rockies or Cascades, I often go to Mammoth in the Sierras that I’d put up against most resorts in this country. I also have family with a place in Park City, UT so I’m at deer valley a few times a year so I’m quite familiar with the Rockies.

Albuquerque, left off the poll list, as usual, is located near the southern end of the Rockies (in view of the Sangre de Cristos) where the mountains meet the Chihuahuan Desert along the rift valley of the Rio Grande. The Sky Islands offer unique recreational opportunities and the Chihuahuan Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in the world. The climate is such that there's not much need for indoor venues but there are some. Within five hours you can hit almost any type of recreation you would want from white water rafting the Rio Grande Gorge, skiing at Taos or other spots, mountain biking into the Sandias or Manzanos, or rambling through the desert and volcanic fields. Located in the desert, there are fewer watersport opportunities but fly fishing in the San Juan River, Chama, or other mountain streams is popular and there are several reservoirs for boating. The climate means you can enjoy being outdoors twelve months a year and the low population (only 2 million in NM) means you can easily get out and away from the cities and are not crowded wherever you go.

It is a minimum of 5.5 hours to good skiing from LA. 8 hours to really good skiing.

Like I said, I love SoCal. It’s just that LA residents like to say they have everything but it’s more of a check the box exercise than an evaluation of the quality of the offerings.

Other

I tend to agree with you—having lived in SoCal for 30 years, local skiing (Big Bear, sometimes man made snow) is NOT in the same class as Mammoth and Tahoe, which are good distances away....but SoCal does have The Rockies beat on swimming, surfing, etc.

I actually preferred the outdoors of the SF Bay Area, beach aside (though decent number of surfers) to SoCal...local hiking in Marin (Muir Woods, Mt. Tamalpais, Angel Island), 3.5 - 4 hour drive to Tahoe basin, great sailing in the immediate area, world class Wine country with rolling hills, more greener and picturesque than SoCal desert mountains, great white water rafting further north, used to be great water skiing at Lake Berryessa (not sure about now), great national parks within 5 hours (Yosemite, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Shasta Trinity National Forest). Good weather most of the year for jogging, mountain biking, bicylcing, kiteboarding, hiking, kayaking, hang gliding, tennis and golf...I used to live in Marin, which was like living in the country with deer coming up to me in the morning, yet was only 15-20 minutes outside a great cosmopolitan city (great restaurants, wine, music).