In my travels around the states, I've mostly avoided major cities.
I'm with you littlek, love those back roads and small towns. But when I do a big city I try to rise early, 6:00 a.m. and get out and walk around to see who really lives there and explore on my own. Then I hit the musuems.
The farthest that I have been out west is Oklahoma. I would really like to go to the far western states, and get to see some real mountains. As much as I like Florida, the flat geography does become b-o-r-i-n-g after awhile!
You would love the mountains Phoenix, Florida is so, wel so flat - even more flat than Texas. I was really shocked the first time I saw Florida. I love both of my trips to Florida. My favortie thing was the Everglades National Park and all of the beaches.
Joanne
My friends husband was driving and the bonehead took one of the first exits he saw after we entered NY. Believe me, if I was driving we would have made it to our destiny, lol.
There are some great things about the Bronx however, I have linked one below. One of may favorite places in NYC. The drive is a bit scary through some bombed out neigborhoods but the trip is worth it. I always go there every trip to NYC.
The Cloisters - Heaven in the Bronx
Everybody talks about the Rockies when they talk about mountains...When my husband, who lived in Colorado for quite a while, took me on a "tour" of the state, we drove through the Rockies. When we were in them, I asked him when we would be getting to the Rockies. I guess I wasn't very impressed, because to me they looked more like the foothills that we have in western Washington State. To me, when I think of mountains, I think of what I see when I look towards, and drive around the area of Mt. Rainier...That's a mountain!
The Teton's were pretty, but we have similar mountains not too far out of Seattle that look similar.
That's true Matrix500 when you are in the valleys at 10,000 or 12,000 feet the peaks of Colorado's rockies do not seem so high after all. Before the Esenhower tunnel was built and before I-70 was completed you would have known you where high up as Loveland Pass the only previous passage was at 11,992 ft above sea level.
Loveland, Colorado
Hi, Joanne...
I've been to Loveland Pass. Nice, but it still didn't impress me the way the mountains in Washington do...our mountains here start from the ground floor and go up.
Joanne
Nice place. When we went it was 2am which is probably what made it so scary.
Marix500 two things, I have not seen your mountains first hand and your mountains are volcanic as opposed to the Rockies which are created by granite being shoved up out of the ground.
Gezzy you are not saying you were in the Bronx and 2:00 a.m. are you? If you are that was really scary, more than scary!
Joanne
It sure was 2am and you could say that I was beyond scared. Was not a good experience at all for my first and only time to NY.
When we moved from Chicago to LA in the fifties, we towed a car behind our pontiac. Up the Rockies. Over Berthound (sp?) pass. Very high. The lead pontiac was never the same.
I've lived as a child in NYC and a suburb of Chicago and for a summer in northern Virginia, and my mother was from Watertown, Massachusetts. Plus we lived a little bit in Dayton, Ohio. We drove back and forth to LA from the east several times, and took the trains and planes. I was a travelling kid, and still am. I was born in Los Angeles and dearly love California, where I still live.
Have recently visited Washington State, and like it a lot, although I was only really in Spokane and Seattle and flew over the inbetweens. Want to see more of it, as well as of Oregon.
Where I haven't really been is south...although I have driven through Missouri and parts of Virginia. Have seen the southwest, but not by living there. Love Mexico, but that isn't part of the question, eh?
I like both cities and country. Not wild about vast suburbs, even though or because I know them well (guess who designed the lawns...).
Since the Freedom of Information Act has unlocked many secrets, I can now tell the real story behind the fall of the Soviet Union.
We were attending a cocktail party in Los Angeles. Just standing around drinking and holding the usual sort of conversation one might have at any casual social affair. The subject we were discussing was the Cold War, and how we were all tired of living with the "balance of terror". Would our children, and our grandchildren have to spend their entire lives as we did under the threat of nuclear annihilation? I had just finished a seminar in which we students were encouraged to "think outside the box". Drawing on that, I casually suggested that the Cold War might be ended if we just gave the Soviets what they wanted. They wanted to take over the United States, all right then. We could give them everything east of the Mississippi. Being a South westerner, I was willing to make the sacrifice. After all, back there the landscape is cluttered up with trees so that one can't even see the horizon, and they call little dirt-hills mountains. The cities are smelly affairs and the people talk funny. Hell, they don't even have decent chili, and life without chili is only a poor excuse for existence.
Everyone had a good laugh, after all we all knew that the suggestion was only meant to be a humorous aside. What we didn't realize was that the Soviet Consul was also at the party and overheard my remarks. Not long after, the Soviet Consul returned to the Kremlin and was sharing the joke with his peers. They all knew a joke when they heard one, and they got some laughs out of it. We had several agents within the Kremlin at the time, so we have a pretty good idea of what happened next.
The clerical and secretarial staff overheard the talk that the United States was going to force the Soviet Union to take over everything east of the Mississippi. Nothing is ever secret from the staff, and though they may think they run things, they often misunderstand and fail to appreciate all the subtleties as well as their bosses. The soviet clerical people actually failed to understand that the whole thing was a joke. They began to talk, and soon all of Moscow was quietly aware of the story. The CIA might have done something to quiet the talk, but they chose silence instead. As civil servants moved around, the story spread until all of the Soviet Empire was in on the "secret".
It was at that point that the Soviet People rebelled, rose and threw off the chains of tyranny rather than be forced into assuming sovereignty over New England and the Deep South. The rest, as they say is history.
Within the little circle of friends in Los Angeles who knew what had started the chain of events I became something of a pariah. As the Cold War wound down, the Military-Industrial Complex began to spend less on weapons systems and many of our friends were thrown out of work. The economic slow down eventually resulted in the major recession that characterized the early ?'90s. Some of our old friends will not to this day let me begin to tell a story.
You are crackling me up Ash Man, you must be a red diaper baby for sure - do not tell any one but I am too. Now that the secret is out that we of the west can live without the east and southeast what next I guess they will bring up California falling into the ocean or something like that. I must admit when ever I cross that old bridge out of Memphis heading west I can feel there is something different in the air, something sweet.
Gezzy I was lost in the Bronx early one Sunday morning close to Yankee Stadium and the VA hospital. We were on our way to a friend's country house in CT, it was maybe 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. there were disheveled ladies of the night were still out trying to shake off the previous night and others who nodding that heroin nod. Finally we saw a precinct station with a bus parked out front and the driver inside. We stopped to ask directions and the cop got out with his holster in snapped and carrying a rifle. We felt so white and so out of town. It must not matter what time of day or night or day that you are there it is very scary.
The Outer Banks, NC is wonderful is you like the constant wind. It is truly a tiny strip of land way out in the Atlantic. You can see the soundside from the oceanside in certain towns.
We don't like touristy beaches (go figure, WE"RE tourists.) Many of the towns are devoid of anything that makes you feel you are in a tourist mecca. The water is so clean, the lighthouses and American history are all over.
You get there by ferry, and you can take a day trip to Ocracoke, a very small, quaint island.
Been there twice. We extended our last vacation for two weeks, and it was bliss. The old man is trying to talk me into retiring there. Done some preliminary research of NC, and it has a lot to offer.
Planning a trip in March to New Orleans.
Anyone know of anything we shouldn't miss. Not much into nightlife anymore, but hear they have a killer cemetary. (Love to read gravestones.) Know anything?
P.S. Maine aficianados.
We wanted to see the North and after some research, I'm interested in Bar Harbor.
Got any info/insights?
Bar Harbor is absolutely beautiful Lash Goth. I've been there a few times and if I didn't move to Canada a few years back I would have gone several more times. The views are breath taking. I would highly recommend going. You won't regret it, I promise :-D
Joanne
That must have been scary!
