WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO RETIRE?

Mrs. El Fisho and I have been spending much time the last few years trying to figure out our next move. It may even be before retirement, which means the added complication of finding a place where we can both work in our respective fields. We love Texas, of course, and even though I'm a fifth generation Texan, I wouldn't mind having a place in a another vastly differently clime.

I was born and raised (or reared, as my Father would have said) in Houston, where at most times between May and September, the humidity was so thick you could cut it with a knife. I never really thought anything of the humidity in Houston until my early twenties when I first visited California, the Golden State. I spent the day at the beach, fishing and surfing and generally doing lots of physical activity. I was barely sweating at all, and at the end of the day my face wasn't oily like it always was from the humidity in Houston.

Even since that two week trip to California in 1982, my life has never been the same as far as tolerating humidity. Sure, I've done tons of fishing and camping and boating and other outdoors stuff a lot since that California trip, but all of a sudden, I really noticed the humidity.

So I'll always have a place in Texas, someplace to call home, but like one of my recently retired friends did, I'd like to do at least summers in the Pacific Northwest, perhaps in Washington state. Although I've never been there, the wife likes that area and after doing a lot of research on towns and areas and various educational and social type issues, it's got a lot of nice possibilities.

I have a longtime friend who is a Tacoma native, so I know a lot about living there. A retired Texas judge friend and mentor who moved there a few years ago just loves it, and has a very interesting (non-lawyer type work) business that is quite productive. I'm attracted to Washington for the varied and prolific fishing opportunities. Another Judge friend of mine travels there regularly to fish for all kinds of cool and big fighting fish with his friend who lives there, and we're discussing me going on a trip with him to fish both inland trout streams and salmon rivers as well as one of the large bays.

Mrs. El Fisho just loves Port Aransas, but I'm wary of a making a permanent home in hurricane prone zone. The question is not if another hurricane will hit Port A, it is when. And how bad it will be. I do love my Port A fishing. In the surf and bays. Offshore. It is often fabulous.

So where would you like to retire? What kinds of things to you want your retirement locale to have?