I'll be more objective this time...
I'm sorry-I don't mean to pick a fight. I just made a nasty comment about Fargo because we usedtato visit my boring lutheran minister brother there when I was at that bad attitude age of 14-16, so I just made a nasty bad attitude comment about an otherwise fine place. My snotty remark about Eden Prarie was driven by that silly old Saint Paul/ Minneapolis rivalry thing (E.P. is a Minneapolis suburb-I was born in St. Paul). Thank You Robert for the pictures of your visit there. The midwest is charming in a way that Maui is not and I sure don't trip over vintage washers here the way I do back in Minnesota! I completely agree with Hydralique that the buildings and house here are mostly horrid and there was some terrible planning involved for sure.
I cannot lie and say that it is cheap to live here at all. In St. Paul we spent $600 a month for a 3 bedroom home vs. $975 here for a 1 bdrm cottage. Food is a bit more expensive if you are careful or a lot more expensive if you are not. Nobody ever said Hawai'i was going to be cheap.
The roads here are horrid. Our local government teeters on the edge of being a banana republic, corrupt with greed, nepotism, graft. Things are run down and people don't care for their lawns like the fine folks in Omaha do. There sure were some things here that took some getting use to because this ain't the mainland! 85% of the people who move here from the mainland move back within a year.
I still think I live in the nicest place.
I see flowers every day of the year. We have less than 5 cloudy rainy days each year. I walk out onto my lanai in my nightclothes first thing every morning and it is almost never too cold to have our morning coffee outside. I typically see no less than 3 rainbows per week. Nearly every Sunday, we attend that great cathedral known as "the beach" and say our thanks to the Great One. Being imperfect being, we do sometimes say things like "I wonder what the kids in Minnesota are doing today?" when we know full well it's January 21.