Have you ever been to Boise? I have a few friends that live there and they absolutely love it. It seems kind of like Des Moines in the mountains.
Your comment made me do a deep dive into Boise. That city looks awesome. Mountains are pretty, people are probably alright. Would have been a fun college town, no Ames, but still lol.
Boise is great, and has really picked up as people have migrated in from more expensive western cities. Weather is near perfect imo, lots of outdoor utilization.
The description of it being DSM if DSM were near mountains with great weather isn’t too bad in the general sense. I’d say it’s more prominent in its region than DSM, and it’s obviously more west coast (California and NW influx) and mountain west than Midwest. More isolated, too.