What are some up and coming mountain, desert, and beach towns in the U.S.?

We currently live in Ohio and are planning to move our small family West or somewhere warmer/sunnier in the next 3 years. I’m originally from Southern California and have little desire to return to the traffic and high(er) real estate prices. We’re looking at Boulder/Denver and possibly some beach towns far north of San Francisco. Do you have suggestions for other areas we should consider? Our ideal is to be near a medical center or medical school since my wife is a doctor/researcher, but a 30 minute drive to a large hospital would be okay. There are some nice smaller towns in the foothills of the Sierras in California, but we’d like to be in or withing 10–15 minutes of a larger town with at least 100,000 population or so. Arizona and New Mexico are possibilities but we don’t want to be where there are tem for long periods. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.