Tell me about Corvallis Oregon...
Corvallis has some pretty good schools. Hewlett Packard used to have a major operation there, so back in the (edit) 80’s and (/edit) 90's through early 2000's there were a lot of high paid engineers and business people making good money expecting good public schooling for their kids, on top of the OSU-related families.
Corvallis housing prices are probably pretty comparable to Sandy, $300K for basic 1500 ft2 single family home going up to 500+K for modern nice 2500+ ft2 single family homes, super fancy homes at 600-800K. Oregon cost of living is probably on par with SLC, but I would suspect that pay is slightly better in SLC. No sales tax here, but high property taxes offset that, unless you're lucky to buy a nice house that was undervalued in 1996 when all the tax assessments were frozen and tax inflation fixed (see "Oregon Measure 50").
Crowds, traffic, and development are MUCH less in Corvallis than Sandy. Corvallis is on 99W, which is a really small 2-lane highway ... it's actually about 15 miles west of I5 and the industrial zone of Albany. Central Willamette Valley in general is not that dense (Portland Metro is the only dense area in the entire state of OR). Salem is about 30 mins from Corvallis, Eugene is about an hour, Portland is about 1.5 - 2 hours depending on traffic and what part you're going to. Eugene and Corvallis are university towns - so you have a semi-dense town center and once you drive 10 mins from downtown (in any direction) you get to light industrial zones, once 15 minutes out you are either in semi-rural farmland or undeveloped forests. Good news, even though people drive slower than SLC, the pace of life is also accordingly slower ... chill out, relax, be polite, enjoy the scenery and you'll fit right in. Or just buy a radar detector (gold here).
I'd say "escape" for recreation for Corvallis is probably on par with Sandy in terms of all the awesome things you can do in less than 3 hours drive, with the obvious exception that the Central OR Cascades skiing sucks goats compared to LCC. Like, Corvallis is 1 hour from the coast, 1+ hour from Santiam Pass, and the camping recreation (developed, dispersed, and backcountry) is really awesome. If you are into hunting, there is plenty of that, if not, no worry. Fishing appears superb, but I don't do it myself so I can only rely on word of mouth. MTB is world class IMO, if you are lucky enough to live near Mac Dunn forest trail access, and have flexibility to drive up to 1.5 hours to ride. Very good stuff in 40 minute drive, and amazing stuff 1.5 hours away.
The rain is what it is in the winter. You do get lots of micro breaks with 5-45 mins of blue skies between clouds. Some people think they will hate it but get used to it. Others never get used to it, but it's not quite as dark here in winters as it is up in Seattle/Bellingham 5-7 hours north. If your wife needs warm weather or sun in the winter, ironically you can drive to the coast which often has better weather in the winter than the valley does. Or you drive to Bend for sun (but temps on par or slightly warmer than Salt Lake Valley in the winter), or you drive 4 hours south to the Rogue Valley (Grants Pass / Ashland) which is actually much sunnier than most of Northern California, I'm talking almost 300 days a year of sun. I will say that the clouds and rain are MUCH nicer than the nasty winter inversion smog where you currently live - your wife might adjust better than you think based on that alone.
Corvallis summers are really nice, a thousand times better than SLC, high 80's most days, cools down to 55F at night, sunset at 9:30 PM during the summer, and recreation galore (but bug spray mandatory in the woods, lakes and creeks in June/July).
You might be surprised to see that Corvallis is MORE white than Sandy. Uh huh. Oregon doesn't have the growing latino community of SLC, and we have less imports from all over the world. Obviously LDS is not big here (bigger presence in the Eastern OR counties I think), there are a lot of faiths here but religion is just less prominent here overall. Oregonians are just as polite as Utah Mormons but without the conservative values and much more accepting of alternate value systems.
