My friend split more than a dozen and a half years ago and headed for the Northwest. His career would have advanced just as quickly in Iowa, perhaps even more quickly, but he left Iowa with only those necessary belongings that would fit in a Ford Pinto, a letter of recommendation and a desire to live where the landscape wasn’t so flat and the seasons weren’t so extreme. He lived and worked in his profession on the Washington coast, tried a stint as a jailer for Pacific County and later got a job in commercial real estate sales, then wound up doing what he was trained to do in Seattle.

I visited him over the long Thanksgiving weekend, and it’s easy to see why he stays. The Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges are breathtaking, especially at this time of year when their peaks are covered in snow, and the Pacific Ocean is a powerful, mesmerizing force. Whether the Loess Hills, bluffs and scenic byways, the Iowa Great Lakes, the wide Missouri and the even wider Mississippi measure up is in the eye of the beholder.

We spent most of our time in Ocean Shores, where condominiums and guest inns line the beachfront and sell ocean views for $150 a night for a three-night minimum. There’s not much to do in Ocean Shores and other towns that seem to exist for the sole purpose of separating tourists from their vacation funds. So we played like tourists, money in our pockets.

We explored some of the shops and found nothing spectacular to buy, save a few overpriced kites. We bowled during a two-hour session called “rock-a-bowling,” with black lights and disco balls. We stopped by a casino operated by Native Americans, placed our obligatory $5 bets and, for a while, we may as well have been back in Iowa. The casino had the same telltale act – a washed-up singer who made it through a music fad, but is now consigned to the casino circuit. The casino was quieter than the ones I’ve briefly visited in Iowa. Its slot machines pay out using paper tickets, not coins, but the absence of that nerve-wracking ca-ching, ca-chang didn’t erase the looks of desperation on so many of the players’ faces. The better time, of course, was found in cost-free activities, such as walking along the coast and exploring the sandstone hills.

Back in Seattle for a few hours before returning to the Midwest, I discovered the allure of the Northwest for my friend. It’s not the long-standing Public Market city officials tried for years to dismantle before realizing what a gem they have anchoring the harbor of Puget Sound. It isn’t Starbucks, which my friend boycotts in favor of independent coffee shops, whose lattes and mochas are just as satisfying as those made by the well-known national chain. It isn’t the downtown shopping mall that proves new construction isn’t necessary to make an area a retail mecca (though, arguably, thedevelopment of tall buildings and sky bridges is blocking some of the city’s best views of the Sound). It isn’t the spirit of Seattle, which endured hard times from earthquakes, the technology bust and retreat by the airline industry, but is bouncing back.

It’s the openness of the place. My friend is gay and the Northwest – the cities in the region, if not the small towns – offers the shelter of tolerance. My friend was thinking about Iowa, talking about coming back here to retire if he could bend his mind around the state’s comparatively uninspiring landscape. He thought about the intolerance and shivered, not so much from the cold wind coming off the sea, but the mountains he might have to climb if he returned.

Iowa can’t change its geography, ostensibly the reason my friend left the state in the mid-1980s, but Iowans can change their attitude about people they perceive as different.