The 10 Best Places to Live The GOOD Life

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Northeast Indiana/Ohio farm country surrounding Ft. Wayne and stretching into the northwest corner of Ohio, between Defiance and Lima, offers everything a country-living dreamer would want — if you like your land fiat to gently rolling, supremely fertile and well-watered by slow, wide rivers with names like Flatrock and Maumee, where you'll see kids fishing and swimming just like in Norman Rockwell paintings from the 1940s. For what its worth, Lima (pronounced with a hard "i" like the butter-bean, not "Leema" like the Peruvian city) was cited in a recent national real estate survey as having the cheapest hi-quality homes in the nation. This is the real Middle America: church-going, square-dancing, hog-raising country where folks don't lock the farmhouse door or feel they need to count their change at the feed store.

The maritime provinces of east coast Canada have a climate moderated by the ocean, so are not as cold and snowy as it is inland far to the south and west. The mile on mile of rocky coastline is notched with coves and little fishing villages that harbor sturdy but inexpensive homes, sturdy but friendly Scots-descended people, no crime or pollution, and all the codfish chowder, lobster, and home-grown vegetables you can eat. The "Novi" lobster boat, with its high-peaked bow and tucked stern is the most nimble of deep-sea hull designs ... and is still built of wood. The Maritimes are much like Maine was a half-century ago. Ms. Bonnie L. Scott's husband (they are readers from Norfolk, Va.) tells her not to mention their prospective retirement haven in Queens County, Nova Scotia, where they are "largely self-sufficient in food, housing, auto repair, and entertainment ... or else everyone will want to move here."

From Pulaski County, Ky. southwest to Monroe County, W. Va., along the spine of the Appalachians, you'll encounter communities of farming and light industry plus mountainous, tourist areas that have avoided the mining, logging, and rural poverty that plague some other areas of the Bluegrass and Mountain States. David Pike reports that his town of Somerset (Pulaski County, Ky.) "... [has] a nice balance of industry and tourism, [producing] ... a 5 percent unemployment rate. Lake Cumberland is a major destination for travelers: the soil is dark with just enough clay (great for organic gardens), schools rank among the top ten in Kentucky, it has a fantastic medical community, housing is abundant and reasonable and a new, medium-sized home costs $84,500." (When the national average new home of any size costs just under $110,000, we might add.) The only negative is the heat and humidity in July and August. Well, jump in the lake!

At the other end of the ridge, John Chernauskas of Troy (Monroe County, W Va.) points out that his and surrounding communities have stressed education and environmental protection, and — though at the cost of short-term job-growth — have resisted the inroads of such major industries as forest-product giants that strip the forests and pollute the water.

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