Personally, I'd love to see a galaxy populated by thousands of races, communicating and trading, maybe even competing and fighting. It would certainly satisfy some of my philosophical prejudices, even if it does stretch what we have come to believe about astrobiology. But if it is indeed all empty, just waiting for us, then it sounds like a pretty grim future. After the first 100 stars, I'm afraid they'll all start looking pretty much alike.

Eventually, there would be thousands of human colony worlds, communicating and trading, competing and fighting. Earth might even be forgotten, or abandoned as a polluted environmental hellhole. Or left as a natural park, to remind future generations of where we came from, what our ideal world looks like.

Actually, some mathematical models of human expansion into the Galaxy have been formulated, and even at sub-luminal speeds, the Milky Way could host hundreds, perhaps thousands, of worlds in only a few million years. After all, it only took us about a hundred thousand years to random-walk our way across the planet. Think of the multiplicity of cultures, and perhaps even alternative biological evolutions. All the diversity we could wish for.

More than likely, we wouldn't be looking for earth-like worlds, but stable suns surrounded by asteroids and satellites were we could duplicate some of our own Solar System orbital habitats. We'll probably have much better-developed techniques for living in zero-g vacuum than for adapting to alien worlds and biologies at the bottom of deep gravity wells.

Then again, maybe we will find excuses not to go. I can just imagine some future politician telling some future legislature,

"Why bother going to the stars, we have plenty of problems right here in the Solar System that need to be addressed. And there's plenty of undeveloped real estate right here near Sol for us to move into."