You live in Iowa?

[aMurderOfCrows]

Tell me why you like Iowa.

My son is looking at Iowa for school.

My wife and I are unfortunately looking for a different state all together.

 

[Bluefish]

Really depends where in the state you live. The bigger cities are similar to most other states. Both my wife and I grew up and went to school in Iowa. I went to Iowa state and she went to Iowa, engineering and accounting respectively. We left right after school and lived in Colorado for 25 years. Have now returned to Iowa due to joining the dead dads club and wanting to be closer to our mothers as they age. We live in a small town that is rural, 17k people in the county vs the 500k in CO. Overall it’s been a good move as I am not a fan of cities and lots of people.

Iowa city is the boulder of Iowa. Quite liberal, good or bad depending on your views. The town has become to be dominated by the university and university hospitals. Ames is a little more conservative and a different vibe as the university was originally not in town, but now town has moved to engulf the university.

The good, a lot less stress from people. No real traffic, public hunting is close, and accessible. Weather is pretty good in summer, not Colorado, but also not Houston. Lots of little gun ranges, my local one is $40/year for a 200 yard range and pistol bay. Lots of dirt track racing. Overall pretty happy with the move. Housing is cheaper than CO, but not by as much as you would think.

The bad, food is mostly meat on a bun, although bigger cities do have more variety. Winter is cold at times, but really only 3 months. It’s a small town so limited shopping. Not as big a deal as it used to be with Amazon. Employment pays lower in smaller towns. Not an issue for us as I am retired and wife works remote. We are an hour from big cities, so we can go there if we need something, but it’s 2 hrs of driving to get it.

 

[Willie IV]

If you enjoy all 4 seasons of weather you'll love Iowa. In fact, you might get all 4 seasons in one week at times! I live in the country but was raised in a small town of 800. We're about 45 minutes to the city to get what we can't get in the small towns but we support local as much as possible. Des Moines and Iowa City both have a Scheels store. Several nice little gun shops located throughout the state and some decent ranges as well. Like most states, the cities lean liberal and the rural is very conservative.

 

[gabenzeke]

Iowa is a decent place. Cost of living is fairly reasonable. Employment opportunities are okay in the central part of the state. Not real familiar outside of that. Parts of Iowa are pretty affluent, others not so much. Not a ton of public land, but it's not unheard of to get permission if you get away from cities. Deer hunting and pheasants are not what they once were.

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[LongWayAround]

I grew up in northwest Iowa and went to college in Iowa City.

I honestly think it's a great place to live. If I were ever to move back, I would be looking hard at the eastern part of the state. It's definitely more liberal than the west side, but there's more to do and better scenery.

University of Iowa is a good school if you can keep the partying to a reasonable level. I'm not sure how it is now and haven't been back since about 2015. Football games at Kinnick Stadium are a good time and I'm not even a sports fan.

One thing that Iowa has going for it is the opportunity for small outings. It's very reasonable to get in a couple hours of hunting or fishing before/after school/work. Living in Colorado everything is kind of an adventure to go get out.

Around Iowa City we hunted ducks, geese, deer, and turkeys. Catfish, walleye, and white bass in the rivers.

Send me a pm if you would like to get more specific on anything. I'm happy to help if I can.

 

[getcervid]

Went to school in northwest Iowa for 4 years! Sioux County was a great place to spend time with likeminded people. It was a bit of a culture shock coming from the intermountain west, and the landscape is markedly different (duh)- flat, little public land.

The people were amazing - friendly, hospitable. Many of my best and greatest friendships were formed out there. Not saying its better than anywhere else, but it was a great place to meet people.

None of that was enough to keep me there, I still prefer where I grew up. But, I could see how if you grew up there some of the culture/community would be really hard to give up, and I would never fully rule out living out that direction. It would/could be a great place to raise a family.

For me, Iowa was a low-key enough/boring enough/winter-is-so-darn-long-and-cold type of place that I had plenty of time for keeping up with homework and staying out of trouble, and not much to distract me. I'm sure if you want to find trouble you can, but it was a great place to go to school! Depending on the major, your son may be able to build some really great networks that lead naturally to internships and job offers. Seems the people out there are very helpful and often oriented towards helping each other and hiring from within the state/local colleges.

 

[nomadicbohunk]

I went to Iowa State for my masters. My wife and I have lived all over. AK bush to Manhattan. She's from the east coast big city and I'm plains. Our families are all over. We both went to schools all over the US. I've joked about putting stickers from all of them on our vehicles. It'd be kind of hilarious. Harvard to Jesuit to Land Grants. So we've got some perspective.

When it comes to colleges, we're going to push super, super, super hard for our nieces and nephews to go to midwest or plains public colleges. They are cheap. The cost of living is excellent, so you can actually do stuff as a student. People are nice and will drag you home to do neat things. I mean, I took kids back to the ranch all the time. Freshman year fall break my parents were confused at me and a carload of Hawaiian kids.

Are you going to move there with him? To an adult I'd have different things to say. Des Moines is fun, has good biking, great restaurants, etc. I don't know anyone who doesn't like Des Moines. I mean one of my wife's relatives from Manhattan recently went and was so excited to tell me how much he liked it and wanted to know how far it was from where I went to school long ago. Iowa City I don't know so much. The Northeast also has a lot of small liberal arts colleges. I like the driftless region and the Mississippi river towns up there are pretty fun. My wife goes a lot for work.

Iowa does have really good fishing. Hunting can be tricky without private, but I figured some decent things out on public for whitetails. That's not hard. A pro tip is to look for stupid areas no one else would hunt. I honestly think the trophy whitetail hunting is/was better in some other states. Iowa culture and party hunting has you show off the deer you got. I remember all the natural resource kids crapping their pants at some of the whitetails my family shot at home and some others did. We're like, no, we did not turn it into boone and crockett. Why would you pay money for that? I don't want the neighbors to know how big of ones we get.

We live in a hip place right now with a college that's nationally known as being one of "the" places to go if you're artsy or outdoorsy. It's cool. It's pretty much the last place I'd want to go as a student if I didn't have a trust fund as you couldn't afford to do anything. I have a lot of students who work under me. One was complaining a while back about the 2k a month per bedroom rent. And how she had no money. But she also went out 2x a week for a $75 fried chicken. Yes, that is not a typo. We got it once and I'd rather have fried chicken from a gas station. Iowa is full of stuff like that. Oh, and Casey's breakfast pizza. That's a life changer right there.

 

[Willie IV]

Oh, and Casey's breakfast pizza. That's a life changer right there.

He's not wrong...

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[kpk]

I think Iowa ranks very high for engineering programs.

The "Driftless" region is some of the best trout fishing you'll find and drastically different landscape than anywhere else. All of the little towns in the driftless and along the river in IA, MN, and WI are pretty great really.

 

[ChrisA]

Personally, I boycott Casey's. They've bought, or should I say ruined, a lot of mom and pop convenient stores within the last few years and gave them the Casey's makeover with their overpriced greasy pizza, single person bathrooms, and line stagnating "Casey's Rewards?"

I cant think of any Kwikstar that isn't jam packed while across the street is a Casey's with one or two customers.

Enough of Casey's. The Mississippi is a great fishery as is some other man made impoundments and the natural lakes in the Northwest and North central parts of the state. Plenty of channel and flathead catfish in the rivers, and panfish in the many county lakes. The Loess Hills in Western Iowa are pretty darn cool and the driftless region in NE Iowa offer some beautiful country and trout fishing.

The cities are cities and I avoid them if possible. Whitetail hunting is usually good but populations have been impacted by EHD the last few years. We have some waterfowl, usually plenty of pheasants, and some coyote and furbearer opportunities.

Plenty of hunting land is getting leased, and we're seeing quite a shift to food plots and heated blinds vs landowner permission and party hunting drives of yesteryear. That's not to say knocking on doors cant be productive, just less so than even 5 years ago.

There's big enough cites with everything you need and airports within 1.5 to 2 hour drive of most of the state. Depending on where you are in the state, Lake Erie, Oahe, Devils Lake, Lake Michigan, etc are all a days drive or less.

I've been here all my life but couldn't wait to leave when I was younger. Now I'm content visiting other places of the country but can't see myself living anywhere else.

Oh, and the Cyclones and Hawkeyes provide plenty of ups and downs for the colllege sports fan. We have a divided household.