With his retirement looming, lawyer Tim Salter, 64, and his wife of two years, Nori McCargo, 59, wanted to escape the hustle and bustle of San Diego and indulge their passion for the outdoors. “We love to camp,” says McCargo. They also wanted a house and property big enough to accommodate visitors (including ailing family members and their three adult children from previous marriages) their three dogs, her part-time business training other folks’ dogs, and possibly a new side venture raising alpacas.

In April, the couple closed on a 6,000-square-foot, six-bedroom, six-bath hacienda just outside San Luis Obispo, a scenic college town of 51,000 in the heart of the California Central Coast, roughly midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The median home price there is $1 million, but their new three-acre property cost a multiple of that. It’s 50% bigger than their old San Diego home. “We broke the rule about not upsizing in retirement,” Salter muses.

San Luis Obispo (pronounced san lewis uh-BISS-poe, but the locals just use the initials SLO) is a first-time honoree on Forbes’ annual list of 25 best places to enjoy your retirement—our choice for the top spots to pursue your retirement passions, especially if money isn’t a big worry. Don’t get us wrong. Eight of our 25 picks have home prices under or at the national median of $422,000. But in contrast to our annual 25 Best Places To Retire list, which identifies spots offering great retirement living at a reasonable cost, this list highlights great spots to pursue one or more of six retirement passions: arts/culture, fine dining, lifelong learning, outdoor activities on water, outdoor activities on land, and in a category of its own, golf.

Most of the 25 choices listed below are good for more than one passion, while Austin and Boston hit all six. A few sites are there for only one pursuit: Flagstaff, Arizona for outdoor land activities; Pensacola, Florida, for outdoor water activities; and Pinehurst, North Carolina, for golf. We list SLO for two: outdoor land activities and outdoor water activities.

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While we don’t exclude places with high housing costs, we do take note of them. San Luis Obispo is the priciest of our picks, followed by Boulder, Colorado (median home price: $957,000), New York City ($907,000) and Boston ($836,000). At the other extreme, the arts/culture and lifelong-learning haven of Iowa City, Iowa, clocks in at just $306,000, while Pittsfield, Massachusetts, with its huge culture scene and outdoor land activities, registers at $313,000, and Pensacola at an even lower $267,000.

In addition to leisure activities, we consider other quality-of-retirement-life measures. They include availability of primary care doctors, violent crime rates, air quality (very good in SLO) and a place’s walkability and bikeability. We also eliminate from consideration places with a very high susceptibility to natural hazard and climate change risk as calculated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Risk Index.

Ten miles off the Pacific Ocean beach, SLO sits on heavily trafficked U.S. 101 rather than an interstate. It is a gorgeous but often tedious ride from most anywhere; even the four daily Amtrak trains to Los Angeles take 5½ hours to chug just 190 miles. But this college town (home to California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, one of the nation’s top 25 public universities) has a convenience that affluent retirees like Salter and McCargo value: San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport, barely three miles from town, is now served by three major airlines providing nonstop service to spots up and down the West Coast and as far east as Dallas and Denver, and with connections to everywhere. McCargo is counting on that to attract visits from her two grown children living on the East Coast and to get to her own games as a member of the national women’s-over-50 field hockey team.

“The airline service expansion has had a huge impact in people moving here,’’ says Lindsay Harn, the Christie’s International Real Estate Sereno buyers’ agent who helped the couple find their home. She estimates that upwards of 80% of the buyers of higher priced properties around SLO are moving in (or in contemplation of) retirement.

Our 25 picks, listed in alphabetical order below, are spread across 18 states and all four continental time zones. You can read more about our methodology, how you can use it yourself, and about retirees moving to Pittsfield for its arts offerings, here.

Arts/culture 🎨 | Fine dining 🍴 | Lifelong learning 🎓 | Outdoor water activities ⛵ | Outdoor land activities 🍁 | Golf ⛳

Ann Arbor, Michigan 🎨 🍴 🎓 ⛳

Passions: Great for arts/culture, fine dining, lifelong learning, golf

Median Home Price: $536,000, 27% above national median

Cost of Living: 6% above national average

Home of the highly ranked University of Michigan, this bustling college town 30 miles west of Detroit has an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute with 350 course offerings, a strong arts and culture scene, fine dining and yes, Michigan Wolverines athletic events. There are also dozens of golf courses within 25 miles. Ann Arbor supports a healthy, active lifestyle; it has a very good ratio of primary care physicians per capita, good air quality and is very walkable and bikeable. The violent crime rate is below the national average. The FEMA National Risk Index for natural hazards and climate change dangers is moderate, a good rating. Elevation is 850 feet. The state income tax rate is a flat 4.25%, but it excludes Social Security benefits and some pension income and there’s no state estate or inheritance tax. One downside: Winters are cold.

Passions: Great for arts/culture, fine dining, lifelong learning and outdoor land activities

Median Home Price: $541,000, 28% above national median

Cost of Living: 6% above national average

Some 300 miles south of Portland, lush Ashland has galleries, a big restaurant scene and the famous 91-year-old, eight-month-a-year Oregon Shakespeare Festival (offering a lot more than the Bard). Southern Oregon University hosts an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and allows free auditing of regular college classes. At an elevation of 1,950 feet, the highly walkable downtown sits in an agreeable climate with little snow, good air quality, a low violent crime rate and a high number of doctors per capita. Nature trails abound just outside town. Ashland has a moderate natural hazard risk rating from FEMA, but wildfires can be a problem. Oregon has no sales tax but a stiff income tax rate that hits 8.75% at just $22,800 of taxable income for joint filers (with Social Security benefits excluded). It tops out at 9.9% for taxable income above $250,000. There is also a state estate tax that exempts just $1 million in wealth, the lowest exemption in the nation.

Passions: Great for arts/culture, fine dining, lifelong learning and outdoor land activities

Median Home Price: $345,000, 18% below national median

Cost of Living: 12% below national average

Sitting 70 miles east of Atlanta, Athens’ college-town persona presents an array of retirement opportunities for arts/culture, fine........

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