Just wait until you see the Milky Way stretching across the night sky. Or get a call from friends to take the Jeeps up the mountain. Or jump into a cool river on a hot day, and float a few kilometres downstream without encountering anyone who cares about the cooler of beers floating along with you.
Everyone has their tradeoffs and priorities. Decades ago, it was common for new finance grads to get a tiny, poorly lit, crappy apartment in Manhattan because they couldn't imagine living in Queens much less New Jersey--or even somewhere other than the New York area entirely.
Today that's probably still true but add the walkable core areas of a variety of other US mostly coastal cities. The Bay area is something of an exception but housing prices go down a lot as you get an hour away from most of those cities (which isn't exactly the middle of nowhere).
