Moving to Minnesota from CA?

Thanks everybody some really great insights! Keep em coming! A little more info if I didn't mention already is I grew up in MO, lived in CO for 7 years and now CA for 7. Wife was born in Alaska till 3rd grade then grew up in OR. Lived in CO for 7 years. We are used to and can deal with the cold especially if recreation is involved. When I was a kid we did so much in winter from sledding to pond hockey. I'm not sure if the bugs will be a problem for us in summertime though. Even CO has pretty awesome bugless summers.

One thing that will be hard to leave is mountains. Sierras are beautiful and even Orange County has peaks of several thousand + feet! But man looking at the boundary water canoe area I love that type of recreation. I'm an avid outdoorsman etc. I could really get lost with my two boys in country like that.

My wife's home store is in Edina but is there any suburbs that you'd recommend? We are used to things being nice and uppity in Orange County but we are not. Our incomes put us in an upper income bracket , we could afford $700k for a house but $450-$500 would be preferable. I'm sick of the soccer mom demographic so I've heard the cake eating hockey mom demographic describes Edina?

I've been living in Minny my whole 18 years and its a great place compared to many many states. We were recently voted #1 state to live in. I went to Edina, middle school thru high school and I can tell you that Edina is miles ahead of other school district ts in terms of MCA scores and graduation rates. Im extremely thankful l got to go there because its a great school. And Minny over all is amazing. Ice fishing is a must because there's a lake 5 miles in any direction, hunting lands a plenty, and the city life of Minneapolis is hard to beat. The people are no e here, generally speaking. It really is a great place to live.

originally posted by: stevenbond
I've been living in Minny my whole 18 years and its a great place compared to many many states. We were recently voted #1 state to live in. I went to Edina, middle school thru high school and I can tell you that Edina is miles ahead of other school district ts in terms of MCA scores and graduation rates. Im extremely thankful l got to go there because its a great school. And Minny over all is amazing. Ice fishing is a must because there's a lake 5 miles in any direction, hunting lands a plenty, and the city life of Minneapolis is hard to beat. The people are no e here, generally speaking. It really is a great place to live.

I'm not disagreeing that it's a great place to live but I wonder how, if you've lived there your entire 18 years, you have any basis of comparison with other states where you've never lived?