I been around a while.... (the beautiful places thread)

^Me too. I’m so glad I live after commercial airline travel was developed. I wish I was able to utilize it more often, but even the possibity of travel is exciting. I feel sorry for people who never leave their hometowns or states.

I like this thread. I’m in the middle of organizing my media storage system so once I get that settled I’ll be sure to post some!

Actually I am not a huge photograph taker, so I might just post other people’s pics of places I’ve been :laughing:

Thanks. That Machu Pichu trip was inside of a nearly 3 year old odyssey of travelling and living in South and Central America. From Panama we took a 20 ft Panga into Colombia and backpacked/bussed/boated for 4 months tracing a fishhook through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and eventually Uraguay. We realized Erica was preggers in Montevideo and went back to Buenos Aries to regroup for another month before heading back to Boquete, Panama (where we were living). It’s really easy to travel when you are renting a house on a Volcano for $150/month. :laughing:
The other pic is from my top-secret location where if I ever had to disapear, it might be a good place to try to find me.

That’s what I’m about to do. :smiley: I didn’t have my own camera when I was younger, but we went to some very awesome places. Also, while I was at boarding school in Mass., we went on a lot of awesome trips. That’s why New England is great: you can go on an awesome trip, and it’s only a two hour drive!

Mad River Valley, Vermont

Church in Waitsfield, VT. Very beautiful old town.

Not sure of the location. Field in the MRV. The whole area is very rural.

Mount Mansfield, Vermont

I have been to Mount Mansfield twice. Trey’s old house and The Barn both have views of this mountain. It is definitely the most famous peak in the Green Mountains.

The White Mountains, New Hampshire

Lonesome Lake. Aptly named, if you ask me. It’s a very serene place.

Mount Lafayette from the Franconia Notch Trail.

And of course, Mount Washington, the jewel of the White Mountains. A very beautiful, but also very intense and potentially dangerous, mountain that is one of the highest peaks east of the Mississippi at 6,288’, and the highest peak in New England.The strongest wind gust ever measured on Earth was recorded on this peak, a gale of 231 mph. Pretty awesome.

The Adirondack Mountains, upstate New York

Boothbay Harbor, Maine

Cuckolds Lighthouse in Boothbay Harbor.

Québec City, Québec, Canada - Very cool fact: Québec City is the only fortified city in North America that is north of Mexico whose walls are still intact. The city has grown since then, so not all of Québec City is within the walls; the walled-in part is called Old Town (Vieux-Québec).

Going on the trip to Québec is what really started my obsession with cold and snow, and it made me want to live there. Of course, I came to find out that Canadian citizenship is basically unobtainable, but that’s another story.

Le Chateau Frontenac, which sits up above the rest of Québec City. Totally amazing place. I got to do a little tour, and needless to say I was blown away by the beauty of the architecture.

View of the streets of Old Town, Québec City. I forget where that little gondola thing takes you… maybe to the Chateau Frontenac actually. All the streets are still paved with stone, and there are tons of incredible shops selling everything from super-premium coffee to Canadian maple syrup/sugar goods. Amazing restaurants too. I ate the best duck I’ve ever had in Québec.

One of the gates leading into the walled Vieux-Québec/Old Town.

Québec Parliament building.

So yeah, that was definitely one of the best trips I’ve ever been on. We also went to Montréal for several days. Montréal is very cool, but it’s more of a big city thing. Not really my speed. I was a much bigger fan of Québec City. I would LOVE to live there.

And that’s about all I’ve got. I’m only 22, I haven’t really been to that many places! Well, at least not that many places that are worth posting pictures of. But the ones I have been to are quite amazing, and I must say, the place I live now is pretty awesome too. It’s almost like it’s a vacation every day! But I definitely love to travel, and I’m gonna try to work that into my budget when I get older (gotta plan around Phish tour, ya know).

GORGEOUS!

Great stuff, Edward! You have me really kicking myself for not making it up to Quebec City last summer when we were in Montreal. Of course, we went to SPAC instead… :mrgreen:

We did do some camping in Old Forge on that trip. It was very nice.

Here’s more New England, Edward . . . .I actually took these :wink:

New Hampshire:

Vermont:

Maine:

^New England really is a beautiful place. That New Hampshire pic is fantastic. I don’t think mine are that great, but I’ll have to see if I’ve got a few good ones.

But, in the meantime… the Santa Monica Mountains…














That last pic is Blue Gorge, which is a pretty strenuous place to get to, but so worth it because the rock formations there are over 150 million years old and thought to be among the oldest in the area. :sunglasses:

Very beautiful pictures, Dooj! Those mountains look surprisingly similar to the Blue Ridge, except they are slightly rockier and craggier. Still, they’re covered in trees, and the peaks aren’t snow covered or above the treeline. That’s a really cool mountain range; very different from most of the stuff you see out West. I would LOVE to go hiking out there; seems like a nice place.

So I have a question: since it’s so close to the LA mess-tro area, is it difficult to find solitude and quiet out there, or is it fairly easy to do if you hike for a little while? I have been rather surprised how difficult it can be to find solitude here in WNC without going way off the beaten path or to places that only those of us who live here know about. I wouldn’t have expected that, but it does make sense considering we have a small area with a lot of people who want to see it. That’s why the best time to go hiking is in the winter; most people are staying home. :thumbup:

^Well, it depends. Most L.A. people’s idea of a hike is putting on spandex shorts and walking up a fire road with their dog for 20 minutes. So, if you’re starting off someplace that has a wider trail and good parking, yeah, it can get kind of crowded. However, there are miles and miles and miles (and miles) of trails in these mountains and a lot of them are skinny, overgrown and hard to navigate. So, as long as you head off the beaten path a bit, you are in a good position to find real solitude. And, often that’s only a few minutes from the nearest road. That 9th pic for instance (the one of the creek), is about 15 minutes from my house. It’s located within a pretty popular park just off Sunset Blvd. But, the trail down to the creek is a little tough, overgrown, rocky, has some poison oak and isn’t always completely clear as to which way to go. So, you don’t find a whole lot of people down there. It was actually a colony for WWII spies at one time. :sunglasses: Once you’re down there, you can go way, way up the creek without seeing anyone.

But, some of those other ones are 10 or 11 miles from the nearest trail heads. You can pretty much bet on solitude at that point.

Cari, where in Maine is this? It reminds me of Bar Harbor, which I’ve been to. I’ve also been to Acadia National Park.

Salzburg:




Ski’d here in Saalbach:

Munich:

Yosemite:

Continental divide (CO):

:laughing: Burger on the beach in Cayman:

That’s up Route 1, Dan . . .near Portland, right on the coast. Maine is effing beautiful, especially Acadia. but I wouldn’t want to live there. There’s a guy I work with that’s from Central Maine near Bangor, and, well . . .Maine is an odd place . . .

Great pics, Doug!! :clap:

Salzburg looks like an incredible place… gotta add that to the list.

What do you find odd about Maine? I think it’s a fantastic place, and it’s on my short list of places to move to. Maine, NH, VT, U.P. of Michigan, and Alaska is my short list, actually. Are you saying it’s odd just because the dude you know from Bangor is odd? I’ve actually known two different people from Bangor, and I have visited the town, and they are nice people from a nice place. I dunno, just wondering what it is that would make you say you wouldn’t wanna live there. If you think Maine is odd, well, Vermont is gonna be one hell of a shock for ya. :slight_smile:

US 6, Loveland Pass!!! (With A-basin in the background) :slight_smile: Sweet! My husband snowboards here all the time.

I didn’t mean it quite like that . . .

Maine IS a fantastic place, even though John Bergman (my co-corker) is a weird motherfucker :laughing:

What I kinda meant by Maine being odd is that it really has the potential to be its own country. The New England states (CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, ME . .Just in case you didn’t know) could really stand alone. They tried that back in the 1700s but we all know what happened. Experiencing New England is like being nowhere you’ve ever been before, and I say that in the most positive way I can. People are SUPER nice, except for in the Metro Boston area of course :wave: and for the most part pretty isolated, especially like the White Mnt. areas in New Hampshire, Windham Co. in Southern VT, and in Central Maine like the Bangor area. I find Maine to be especially isolated. There’s a larger population of birds in the state than there are people!

But, Ed, you already knew this . . .

Maine is so isolated up there, and HUGE. It’s also very inconvenient, at least VT and NH have a couple major highways running through them . . .Correct me if I’m wrong, but Maine only has ONE! Don’t get me wrong . . .Iove the idea of SOME isolation, a mountain home covered in powder for several months of the year, gorgeous scenery, skiing . . .Trust me, I could go on, but I just could not see myself living as far up as Maine. Not everyone is a Mainer. I’ve learned that it takes a special individual to be a Mainer, and I am just not one of those people. I’ll eat their Lobster and live in the mountains a few hours South :thumbup:

Yep, one interstate, I-95. That’s precisely why Maine is the shit: it’s not all full of people. When a place is full of people, the people usually fuck it up pretty bad. For an example, see NYC metro area. I keed, I keed… sorta. But yeah, the isolation and the beauty and the lack of people are all reasons why Maine is one of the very few places I am considering living. And actually, even if I move to Maine, I will never be a Mainer. Just like you won’t ever be a Vermonter. You have to be born there to apply that term to yourself. That’s just part of the exclusivity of it, but I love little quirks like that. When you go to places in VT outside of Brat or Burlington, be prepared to be called “flatlander” a lot. They LOVE that term; shit, they’re the only people I’ve ever heard who use it. It pretty much means “person who is not from Vermont”. :laughing: Hell, you could be from Summit County Colorado and they would still call you “flatlander”.

Another thing that’s great about Maine: the people there have their own way of thinking and their own way of doing things. And it’s very practical, and a bit quirky, and I fucking love it. Maine is the only place in the lower 48 that is almost as pristine as Alaska. But yeah, inland Maine would be the shit. Bethel, Andover, Rangeley, Stratton, they’re all unbelievably beautiful, and the wilderness is so pristine and undisturbed by humans. I honestly believe that it puts the West to shame. But you gotta understand, I’m talking about everywhere in Maine north of Portland. The area around Portland and south of it reminds me a lot of Mass. Not a bad thing, but also not "the real Maine. Aroostook County (also called “The County”) is one of the coolest places on Earth. That’s where Limestone is, actually.

Oh yeah . . .Flatlander (See also: Masshole). I hear this term on a regular basis. It’s Mr. Garcia’s FAVORITE word when he’s driving through Wolfboro on his way to school in the springtime and gets pissed of at all the Massachusetts tourists :laughing:

Hey we use Masshole in RI too! I had no idea it was that widespread a term. Must be a grain of truth in there? :silent: