As the primary person giving you grief, I'll respond to this:
1) We're mainly just giving you s**T. If we met in real life, I'd be the nicest guy you met in Colorado
2) I work in corporate relocation and real estate and probably a good quarter of my income comes from Texas. I have no real animosity, it's just my right as a Coloradan to heckle you, and your duty to take it!
We actually keep track of this stuff and although in years past we've had a major imbalance (meaning lots and lots of Texans moving to Colorado), at the moment, it's almost completely balanced. Lately I've been sending a lot of Texans back home, lol. Texas is currently growing at a MUCH higher rate than Colorado, though that wasn't the case 5-8 years ago.
3) "Tourist dollars." Meh. I feel this was a better place to live when the tourism industry was about half or a third what it is now. And the majority of people working in resort areas are not native/permanent residents (or they're very recent transplants). Influx of tourists has made these areas unaffordable to the people who used to call it home. A high percentage of tourist dollars go to corporations with the exception of the occasional mom and pop, but that's not where most people spend their money (think lodging). But I like to travel too, and I'm sure people have similar mixed feelings anywhere that attracts tourism. Not a knock against you or Texas, and nothing unique to Colorado.
3) That said, as someone who's been here my whole life and seen the way things have changed, trails have closed, campsites that used to be available after work on a Friday are now overrun any day of the week and full of human waste and toilet paper, needing to rescue idiots on the trail in rentals (it's always a jeep), heavy traffic on trails and around town, etc., we need an outlet for our frustration. Texas and California are just easy scapegoats.
If you do move here, just don't build a house full of logs. wood paneling and river rock and whatever other random ugly s*** you can dream up and call it "Colorado Style"
.
