Rather than flock south for the winter, U.S. retirees are relocating to winter wonderlands

The idea of people who uproot and move when they retire conjures up images of warm, sunny Florida or Arizona. But some of the older members of the baby boom generation, the 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, are looking elsewhere, and a number of towns in cooler climates from Maine to Washington have become popular retirement destinations.

Camden is has a downtown area, harbor, and a ski mountain. Photo by Poptech.

She and her husband like that they can walk to downtown in Camden, Maine; that performance centers and museums are nearby; and that people are active around here - be it walking, biking, kayaking, boating, hiking or volunteering their time for community groups.

For many retirees nowadays, the idea of a "golf kind of idle recreation" retirement associated with Florida isn't appealing, he said.