I understand that this is not center to the point you're making but I am curious! What makes you hate the Bay area? I lived there for ~4 years and recently moved to Pittsburgh. I can't wait to move back. In fact, the mere mention of these places evokes a strong sense of homesickness in me for some reason.
The few things I liked about the Bay Area: lots of economic opportunity (esp. as a software dev), nearby greenery, and lots of food options. Oh, and the ability to find others who would like to play board games. I can't find anyone to play board games with out in the middle of nowhere (my family is not interested in any).
Even the townsfolk would complain about some mental hospital closing down forcing mentally ill people to live on the streets and you could see them everywhere.
That said, I didn't have a guide, I'd just walk with friends for an hour or two aimlessly starting from the pier. On the other hand, this is how I'm used to do it and I've been to 20+ countries.
I don't even want to know how it would affect a person to see that every day and think it's normal.
I've collected some pictures from my hikes in the Bay area here: https://madaan.github.io/hiking
Sierras are amazing, but far away (both Rockies in Denver and Cascades in PNW are much closer and the traffic is not so bad), and the ocean is very cold, you have to be really psyched to surf or do anything like that in the Bay Area.
I mean sure it's better than most places East of the continental divide, but not particularly great. Especially with all the people :)
On the hikes, I'd recommend Windy hill and Russian ridge if you haven't tried them. The former especially really takes you deep into the woods.
Cañada Road
$300k/yr is nowhere near big leagues to buy a home and raise a family in the Bay area, just fyi. It's more like a comfortable single income where you aren't worried about paying rent or going out to dinner.
You try and raise a family on a mere $300k in SF/SV, you're one layoff or recession away from being completely screwed.
There’s plenty of 3BR houses in the east bay for less than a million, which puts your mortgage+property taxes at around $60k, which is totally doable at even half the salary you’re talking about.
Half that salary? That's $150k, or after taxes, about ~$8k/mo. or $3k/mo for everything else after your alloted $5k/mo. Yes, people can survive on a lot less, but why in the world would you want to live in the Bay area just to eek by on such a paltry net outcome without nearly enough to set aside for the rainy day that's coming soon.
And more importantly, that I think the vast majority of SF/SV kids seem to forget is, what happens when your cushy job disappears? How long can you survive dropping $5k/mo for a house that you could be paying $700/mo in a small town.
The MID is also worth much less because of the higher standard deduction and the SALT cap.
The majority of housing stock listed for sale in SV is being pulled off the market in a panic. I'm not sure what exactly it means, but if I had to guess, I think it's due to a huge reduction in demand.
No one is buying, so sellers don't want their homes to be listed as unsold for a lengthy period of time. Eventually, people will need to sell, and then we'll see a race to the new bottom for the market, which might still be incredibly unaffordable for most.
$300k will take you further then, but the issue will be whether companies will keep paying engineers that much when housing prices no longer warrant it.