museum. For example, you just don't get the same quality of amateur theater anywhere else like you do in SLC and Provo/Orem. That's pretty special. When we lived in Georgia, we got a play or concert about once a year that rivals what we can go see every weekend now. You also have pretty great museums: MOA, Bean, Paleontology, Peoples and Culture ... all in one city, and all are pretty exceptional. That's not common even for university towns.

As for the outdoors: Rock climbing up rock canyon, hiking/biking/running/boating up Provo Canyon. Sundance. Timp Storytelling Festival. Timp Cave. Yeah I'm conflating Orem with Provo, but they're basically the same thing, they blend together .

I think the difference with Provo is that yes you could do any one of these things elsewhere, but it's pretty rare to have this much family-friendly recreation packed into a relatively small city. It's pretty special.