WCH - About a year after I retired in 1990 I moved out of the deep snow country to St. George in the SW corner of Utah's Dixie. It was a small town then and kind of a bedroom community, is on the edge of the Mojave so has shirt sleeve weather most of the year where snow is rare, it is a great place to play golf every day, close to several Nat'l Parks, Vegas, year round boating, etc and yet still close enough to some high country when I wanted to go up to mountain snow country. When my son graduated from Dixie College (a 2 year school then) we moved to Vegas so he could finish at UNLV and accept a great business opportunity he was offered. So I've been in Vegas since 1998. The Spring Mountains are only about 40 miles from here if I wanted snow again, but there is no permanent water there so no trout fishing.
If I had instead retired to mountain snow country I would probably have gone to the Ennis to Three Forks or Bigfork areas of MT, Pinedale to Jackson area of WY, Island Park, ID or Heber, UT. All beautiful places with beautiful summers and excellent hunting and fishing, but the winters are a lot to recon with. We'd had enough snow to last a lifetime and chose the desert. Hunting is mostly predators and varmints with no trout fishing worth mentioning here, but the year round weather is much easier to live with.
Thanks for your kind words. If anybody gets anything worthwhile out of what I post on these forums then it was time well spent. I'm still learning from the experiences of others and so really appreciate what they share.
Years ago when I ran with SCI and folks like Hart Wixom I wrote a few articles about hunting and fishing for local newsletters, but the only book I wrote was about the Beartooth Plateau (WY/MT). It was mostly centered around the Lepidoptera found up there though (another passion since the early 60's). I have no interest at this late date to write for publication beyond my posts to a few forums like this one.