I've done the same thing before with success. Same age, same reason, same strategy.
The recon mission has two phases: remote and in person.
In person:
Avoid all major cities as waypoints, except maybe for fun. All of your good destinations are smaller cities / large towns (50,000 - 100,000 people) or possibly smaller townships (<20,000) that rest in between them, usually not on major highways.
Do a driving tour from planned waypoints, but if an area is appealing, go the long way between points, stopping in at random towns along the way. You may discover places you like that you didn't spot in the remote phase.
Budget an extra day of time for spontaneous destinations and driving lesser known routes.
Book all hotels a few hours before sleep so you don't have to waste time driving to a central point.
HotelTonight is a good app for last minute hotel bookings. The best way to determine if an unknown town is safe to sleep in is the demographics section of its wikipedia entry.
Don't stop too frequently. Carry enough food throughout the day in your car. You will be driving a LOT and it will always feel like there's not enough time.
By visiting many areas and taking notes on them, you'll find that some were too unmemorable, making the decision easier.
Keep moving if you can. Chances are, if you find a general area you like, you'll naturally spend a lot of time there. If you end up really liking a spot (eg. Gulf coast), then you'll probably spend a whole day on just that general location, driving through 20+ towns or 10+ small cities.
Your time out there is more valuable than money. If you can take extra days off for these trips, do it. Minimum 2-3 days per state if you're already set on a particular state.
With more time, you can visit the areas you're not sure about to either create contrast, re-enforce your previous preference, or possibly discover something unexpected.
Look for people in their 30s with kids outside. It's a healthy sign. If there are almost no children around, that area may not have a future.
People jogging, riding bikes, play sports, etc. is a good sign of health and ambition. It's winter, so there's less of it. But look out for it. The attitude of the town could mean the difference between achieving what you want in your career / ife or kind of just doing enough to be acceptable and that's it (Red America tends to do the latter, unforunately).
You'll know whether you like an area or not right away. It's more of a numbers game, so hit as many towns or cities on your tour as you can. Sometimes all it takes to make a decision is driving in the downtown area. If you really one spot, you'll have more time to explore when you find it because the "meh" options were blazed though.
Now is a bad time to do this because it gets dark early, fyi. Daylight is a scarce resource for this kind of recon mission and will limit you more than you anticipate.
Always drive with 50%+ gas. If you go below half a tank, treat that like it's nearly empty. Prices vary wildly from state to state. If it's cheaper in Georgia than Florida, it's worth the time to stop and fill up before entering Florida.
If you end the tour with extra time, then it's better to spend it on revisting areas you will probably settle in instead of going home.
The closest big city is worth at least a quick drive through, as the closest big city will inevitably shape the character of where you settle (eg. upstate NY hates NYC and vice versa, so there is tension and rivarly between them even though the city is far away).
It's generally a waste of time to stop and eat at local restaurants. Just get McDonalds or eat food in your car when you can. Who cares if you don't get the recommended 8-9 hours of sleep. Skip a shower if you need to. Don't bother with exercise routines, business calls, or whatever else. You'll probably pee outside in a bush at some point. You're on a mission and time will fly, especially in winter. So do it once, and do it right.
Remote:
Pick and save as many waypoints as you can into google maps. Overplan this and expect that some cities you'll drive into and immediately feel that it's not the right place for you.
Try to plan both types of days where you either have 5-6 general waypoints with a lot of flexibility or a day where you have 20+ small waypoints that can be blazed through. Budgetting an extra day of time helps in case you want to plan a new day on the fly.
Try to plan waypoints going around the state in a big circle, where the end leads to big highways that are easy to return home on. Make it a very loose map, just so you have some general direction, but budget time such that you can go off this route to investigate an unexpected place further.
Use geography to pick waypoints. Many nice places can only be found by looking at a map, seeing a nice river, open fields, beach, cliff, etc. and visiting it. You won't find these places if you're browsing through statistics.
The racial dot map is your friend.
Election overlay maps are helpful as well.
Areas that look good on paper might be awful when you get there (eg. one place looked great remotely and was top on the list, but visiting it was depressing and I could tell it was just old people living there who were at the end of their days - I left within an hour).
Unforunately, any up and coming area that's youthful, vibrant, and wealthy will almost always be blue. Younger generations tend to go red because the current regime has not been working out for them.
Swing towns that turned red in 2016-present are usually good because the honest truth is that in the 90s-2008 blue America was much healthier, active, and wealthier while red America was mostly unambitious and stagnating.
Avoid all articles. Use sources like Bureau of Labor Statistics, real estate websites, or Glassdoor and dig around yourself. If an area is listed in articles as a good destination in general, it may end up just drawing the wrong people to it. Your role in this is more of an explorer rather than a gold rusher. The harder it is to find, the less midwits there will be. If something is already listed as #1 for a resource, then chances are the resource will already be saturated by the time you get there.
Keep all digital resources on hand in advance. eg. all offline maps downloaded, hotel app downloaded and account made, wikipedia or other sources already bookmarked, separate photo album, etc. Stuff needs to work and be reliable when you get there. You'll likely be sitting in your car for an hour researching an unexpected town that you discovered and liked, and that's a bad time to realize you forgot to refill your mobile data. Little things like that.
