When we were Dallas residents, we used to joke that it was a great place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit there. This, meaning that there really wasn’t a lot for tourists to see and do there, though aside from the weather, the great people and the stuff going on made Dallas itself a pretty great place to live.

Well, they say that the people of Provo, Utah, are the happiest in America, but…:

In the happiest town in the country, candy shops outnumber bars. Downtown parking is free. Nobody smokes.

The rugged Wasatch Range hugs its eastern edge. Sprawling Utah Lake lies to the west. And the monolithic 11,750-foot Mount Timpanogos looms to the north.

The residents are mostly young, outdoorsy and religious. And, if the latest Gallup-Healthways survey is accurate, they, along with neighboring Orem, boast the nation’s highest overall sense of well-being. The annual survey of 500,000 Americans in 189 metropolitan areas quantifies attitudes on quality-of-life factors ranging from emotional and physical health to job satisfaction.

OK, so the locals like their lives. But is that reason enough for the rest of us to visit?

Why is there so often such a gap between the kind of place you want to live, and the kind of place you want to visit on vacation?

Why can’t we eat like the French, Greeks, and Italians, but be governed like the Dutch, the Germans, and the Norwegians? This, Pope Francis, is the root of all social evil!