Durham NC

[bigbill]

In February of last year, I found the ER at the UNC Chapel Hill hospital to be very good.

[zachateseverything]

My parents lived in various parts of the triangle area from 02 until 15 when they moved out to eastern NC. They started in Holly Springs and eventually moved to downtown Raleigh.

So the good: Winters are mild. Summers aren't instant death. There's a lot going on in general. Cool music venues. Good restaurants. College Basketball (if that's your thing). Pretty decent network of greenways plus a lot of green space. I'm a big fan of Umstead state park. The lack of a freeze thaw cycle means most of the roads are good.

The bad: the sprawl and general congestion is real, particularly anything near the I-40 corridor. A lot of the 2 lane roads get overloaded with car traffic as formerly rural areas/tobacco fields get built out into housing developments and strip malls. Depending on where you settle it might take some doin' to get to safe roads.

[Bob Ross]

there are a couple of secular private schools that might be a good fit for my kiddo

My wife and I briefly planned on moving to Durham when she was considering grad school there ~20-something years ago ...and tbh the thing that most struck us about the area, and that kinda weirded us out in a bad way, was the sheer number of churches per square mile. Or per city block, really. As proud-though-non-militant atheists descended from New York City Jews, we both found that a bit too dense-packed. Not sure if it's different 2+ decades later, but it was conspicuous during our stay.