Hey there Mark.
Cheers to the ENBoards!
About our geography ... hmmmm ...
For those of you who have never visited the United States of America, I could relate some of the noteworthy geography of our country.
I recently took a long trip through the US, and I saw much of it, and in general I did not see what I expected to see. Maps and Atlases are very deceptive.
We all know about Interstates, or Freeways, or Limited Access Roads.
In lower Michigan, these wind through flat or slightly hilly country which is a mixture of lush farmland or woodland (usually deciduous woodland, but occasionally coniferous.)
There is a great big city that occupies all of southeastern lower Michigan, with 100 different names (the whole conglomerate is called the Detroit Metropolitan Area, but I doubt people in Ann Arbor, Clarkston, Monroe, Romeo, or New Baltimore areas would tell you they live in the Detroit Area.)
The great big city is getting bigger every year, as suburbs sprout up. The older suburbs are filled with trees, and the newer ones are filled with fancy rooftops.
Our older towns are distinguished by the two and three story buildings in their downtown areas, and these upper floors are used as lofts still to this day, while the shop is on the first floor.
The suburbs are distinguished by strip malls. Enormous strip malls. Little strip malls. Middling strip malls. And Power Malls (strip malls more than a quarter of a mile long.)
So, what is it like elsewhere?
From what I saw ...
Western Ohio is flat. The beautiful city of Columbus is flanked by an endless semi-prairie of farms, in which the only woods are along rivers, or along the edges of farms, or in lots where the land is not in use.
In this vast agricultural expanse sits the cities of Bowling Green and Lima with their industry, and to the northwest Toledo with it's port on Lake Erie.
In the far north, along Lake Erie, is Sandusky, with the famed (justifiably so) Cedar Point Amusement Park, which boasts the Millenium 2000, a roller coaster that is 315 feet high and reaches a speed of 92 miles per hour and STAYS at around 90 miles per hour through the whole ride. (being on this roller coaster, is like being on a rocket for 2 full minutes.)
They are now building a roller coaster at Cedar Point that is rumored to be 450 feet high, and reach 120 miles per hour, to be completed next June. Time will tell if the rumors are right ...
Indiana is full of corn.
Indiana, seems to be an endless sea of corn, except where rivers and banks of trees (and occasional woodland preserves) interrupt the fields.
Great buildings stand to house the corn, but when one considers the size of the cornfields, one wonders how anything could house it all.
In the midst of it all sits Indianapolis, with it's great ring freeway, a bustling place filled with stately homes, booming suburbs, small and large industry, and traffic jams.
Illinois?
One should remember that Illinois is very long, from north to south.
It is so long, that Cairo in the far south is closer to Mississippi than it is to Chicago, and Chicago is far from the state line with Wisconsin.
Chicago I do not need to describe. Anyone who has gone to Gen Con knows Chicago. It is BIG. It is a sea of buildings. It is buildings that pierce the sky. It is a 100 mile long traffic zone that is far more challenging to the nervous system than any mere encounter (in the game) with a lich, dragon, or demonic Outsider.
Southern Illinois is flat. It is cornfields. Even more than Indiana is cornfields. It's rich soil and temperate clime make for excellent agriculture. Did I mention that it is also oil rich, and at one time it was heavily mined for coal?
From Dayton, Ohio, on southward, it is hilly and the land is heavily wooded (deciduous woodlands.)
In the midst of this hilly land flows the wide Ohio River, and on both sides of it spreads the vast metropolitan Cincinnati area.
There is a tremendous amount of heavy industry in Cincinnati, and enormous radio towers jut from the highest hills (anyone remember the show WJRK In Cincinnati?)
The housing in Cincinnati is all two and three story tall, German-like.
The suburbs of Cincinnati spread out in ever thinning density all the way to Dayton in the north, encompassing Hamilton, and deep into Kentucky in the south (this is known as the Convington area.)
Kentucky is hilly. All of Kentucky, is hilly. It is only a matter of how hilly.
Western and central Kentucky are hilly, and the freeway goes through great cuts in the hills, or along high dikes built across the valleys.
Eastern Kentucky is more hilly yet.
In the center of it all is a plateau that is relatively flat, and this is the Bluegrass Country, and in the center of Bluegrass Country is Lexington.
Fertile horse farms spread as far as the eye can see, people are friendly and speak with an accent far different from that of Cincinnati, and all the roads are in perfect condition (it snows, but I do not think they ever salt the roads.)
Country and western music is what is heard in restaurants and gas stations (in the north, rock music, rap music, and oldies are most commonly heard.)
The trees are lush and tall, and beyond the Bluegrass Country woodlands merge into forests, and one could mistake the whole state as being one great, magnificent forest (they are good about planting woods along the freeways, for appearance, to reduce noise, and to reduce pollution.)
In the western reaches of this land, the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers close on each other, as they flow down to the Mississippi, and here they have created two long lakes (they stretch from south of the Ohio River clear down into Tenessee, I believe.)
Between these lakes, south of Paducah, Kentucky, is one of the nations most popular parks, and here people come to camp, hike, fish, or to engage in watersports or every kind of outdoor recreation.
Summer means towering clouds, temperatures in the 90s (mid 30s Celsius), and the everpresent humidity that makes it feel warm throughout the night. And summer starts in May, and runs through early October, so there is no shortage of sunshine, blue skies, and friendly winds (and the occasional enormous thunderstorms.)
St Louis is big. Make no mistake. It's metropolitan area stretches 40 miles west of downtown, where the great Arch is. It stretches back along I-70 past the Missouri River (what's left of the Missouri, that is, since the drought has greatly reduced it's size.)
West of St Louis are the woodlands and croplands of Missouri, and for the most part Missouri is hilly. Not as hilly as Kentucky, perhaps, but much more so than western Ohio or northern Indiana or southern Michigan.
Missouri is a quiet, astetically beautiful place.
One sees stately homes amidst the quiet woods, while churches sit proud and tall on the hills, and the quiet fields of the Heartland stretch away on both sides of the freeway into the distance.
As one heads into western Missouri, one notices an aridness to the woods and meadows. The trees are less tall and less lush, and there is more soil showing through the fields.
This aridness is true west of a line from central Missouri southwest to the Texas/Arkansas state line.
Kansas is like it is portrayed in the Wizard of Oz.
That is, it is UTTERLY devoid of trees or shrubs, and stretches away to the horizon like this, filled with nothing but grasslands.
However ... Kansas is not like this, too.
The empty grasslands are as hilly as Missouri.
And little of the Kansas I saw, was empty grassland.
Most of the Kansas I saw, was covered with woodland. Not, perhaps, the lush woodland of Kentucky, but woodland nevertheless - woodland surviving in spite of the drought that saw many local rivers completely dried up.
The trees are bent and gnarled in many places, for ferocious windstorms are common, and thunderstorms with hurricane force winds and large hail, and the occasional tornado.
The soil of Kansas is rich and brown, it's farms are immense, great railroads crisscross the state, and here and there are cattle pens with special accesses to the normally limited access freeways.
Kansas City is yet another great traffic jam, with more industry, more booming suburbs, and a very friendly people.
Ever hear of the Piney Woods of Arkansas?
You heard right, if so.
Arkansas is filled with woodlands, both coniferous and deciduous, from one end to the other.
Little Rock, in the middle of the state, is filled with hills and conifers, freeways that run around and through the city, and railroads that they somehow managed to build through the hills.
It is a large city, with a notable skyline, considerable suburbs of it's own, and a sizeable amount of industry. And yes, it's people are friendly too.
It is difficult to begin or end when it comes to New Mexico.
As one heads into New Mexico, the High Plains are interrupted by vast buttes (great low expanses of rock that jut out over the plains, ending in sheer cliffs.)
The buttes grow higher as one heads west, and the land is devoid of trees, the soil arid and evident through the sparse ground foliage.
Then the hills rise up, and the road winds through them, until one sees forest cloaked mountainous heights ahead.
Passing through these in a deep cut, one descends rapidly into the city of Alberquerque (my apologies for the misspelling - let someone from New Mexico correct me on this!)
This is a desert city, and it runs all the way from the cut in the mountains (indeed, these are the southernmost heights of the front range of the Rockies) down to the river, and then back up out of the river valley into a great, high, flat plateau to the west.
From the heights west of the city, you can see all of it (it would be like standing and being able to see all of Chicago, or New York, spread out in a vast paranorama below you.) You are so high above the city that at night it is like looking down at it from an airplane, and woe to those with Height Phobia who wish to drive down from the west into the city.
West of this point, the land is - technically - desert, and you are considered to be in the Desert Southwest.
Ironically, the desert ... isn't. It is arid and there are no trees, but there are many shrubs. A person could easily hide in all that shrubbery and you could not see him from even close up. The desert floor is green with shrubbery.
What is absent is grass, although occasionally a strange, brightly green grasslike cover will be seen.
A single, unending, massive butte runs along the north side of I-40 all the way from Alberquerque to Gallop, in northwest New Mexico. It runs like this for well over 100 miles. It breaks, only to restart. It is higher, then lower. It's barren surface is sometimes red, sometimes black, and sometimes simply stone colored.
You will see something in New Mexico (and Arizona) that is not found elsewhere - bicycles and pedestrians on the freeway. For it is legal. Indeed, there are signs saying bicylists are limited to riding on the right-hand side of the white line on the edge of the road.
Now, personally, if I were a bicylist, I would take the famed Route 66 (a surface road than runs along with the freeway, and continues all the way to California) than risk riding on the freeway, but each to their own.
Sunsets are different out here. In the east, sunsets are yellow and orange. Here, they are red. They are beautiful, and the light lingers long after the sun has gone down. The stars glitter down upon very cold nights.
For all the road, from practically the Texas/New Mexico state line westward to Flagstaff, is over 5000 feet high, excepting only the river valley of Alberquerque. There is far less atmosphere, and the clouds seem close to the ground out here. The sun is furious (even in October) and the starlight is uninterrupted by any light from any city. Orion with his belt shimmers down at you from the heavens, even through tinted glass.
Arizona, the great desert state.
Think again.
It contains vast forests. In fact, you run into as much forest here as you would in the deeps of Kentucky.
These are coniferous forests, part of many great state and federal parks, and they run uninterrupted from scores of miles.
The magnificent hills (the butte ends before the New Mexico/Arizona line, and the hills begin) are crowned with trees, and eventually they turn into mountains crowned with snow, towering above Flagstaff.
One takes the road north off the freeway, and the trees give way to shrubs again, and for 40 miles the land seems nondescript locally once more.
Then the trees close about again, you pass through a park entrance, and you come to an abrupt and total stop.
There is a minor break in the Earth blocking your way.
This minor break is so deep you are looking straight down for over a mile, standing at the edge of it.
This minor break is so far across that nothing on the far side can be made out.
This minor break stretches to the right and left as far as you can see, and beyond, and no bridge spans it, no building is evident, no trace of man mars it's endless cliffs, spires, and myriad fantastic and surreal shapes.
It is FAR bigger than it looks in any movie or photograph. It is not real but is rather quite unreal, for the Colorado has eroded the land in fantastic and unreal ways. The strata of 500 million years of rock looks back at you. The river is more than a mile below you. The climate is subarctic up here, and subtropical down there.
A misty cloudiness seems to obscure the canyon, and to the right and left it disappears into a blue haze. Looking out in dim light, it is like standing on the edge of the world, and looking off.
This, of course, is the Grand Canyon.
The freeway from Flagstaff to Phoenix is not for the faint of heart.
For in a short stretch of 140 miles, the road drops from 7300 feet in altitude to under 3000 feet in a great valley, then climbs again over 5000 through another mountain range, then all the way down into Happy Valley, under 2000 feet, in which Phoenix sits.
The road twists and turns, with very steep gradients. Trucks crawl up these hills, and occasionally the trucks stop crawling and stop (in which case they are going nowhere.) Going down, there is a runaway stop for trucks ... but there is no runaway stop for CARS, and suicidal drivers race down the hills and curves at 90 miles per hour.
Unwise, since in many cases there is a drop of over 1000 feet beyond the guardrail. Or solid cliffs of hard rock without the slightest indent or accommodation for frail automobiles.
Tall ponderous pines tower out of the general forest, and for 40 miles south of Flagstaff the great forests of Arizona march on (where deciduous trees grow, they stand out spectacularly in October, for they are at leafpeak.)
Then the forests give way to scrub forests, then scattered trees grow and the ground is covered with that strange, brilliant green, grass-like cover.
Finally, the trees give out, and one comes into the first valley, where the desert floor is green with shrubbery, then back up into mountains and scrub forests.
Then one makes the last approach to Phoenix, and the first cactus appear, amidst the endless sea of green desert growth. As one goes lower and lower, the lesser hills are bare, and stand stark against the sunset, or blue and hazy in the daylight, or black and ominous in the night.
Finally, the lights of Phoenix are evident, one begins passing the outskirts of the metropolitan area, and the first palm trees appear, for here a subtropical climate prevails, and frosts are light and infrequent.
The Phoenix sun of October is the equivalent of the midday sun on the hottest, clearest days of June in Michigan. Temperatures are in the 90s, in the shade, and the pavement is hot enough to burn your feet. The people here speak of the plesantly cool conditions of autumn, moving about and frolicking in this oven as if it were a moist, cool (60s Fahrenheit, or around 15 to 20 Celsius) spring day in Michigan.
They would. For these people, it IS the equivalent of a cool spring day. Back in early September, highs were over 110 and lows were in the upper 80s to lower 90s. And, of course, there was the small matter of the summer sun of Phoenix, which I have never felt (sunburn, for a fairskinned person, occurs in under 3 minutes.)
At night, the temperature drops all the way down into the upper 60s. Pleasant enough for a Michigander, freezing for the people of Phoenix.
It should be understood by our European and Australasian friends that America has two distinct climatic regions.
One, which encompasses most of our North American Continent, is cooled by a steady procession of arctic cold waves (which in the summertime are not cold, but cool.) It is like an air-conditioning system were turned on (or a big deep freezer, in the winter.) These fronts help generate our famous tornadoes, thunderstorms, and the occasional colossal snowstorm that shuts the East Coast down (and the occasional frost that is the bane of Florida citrus growers.)
However, the Front Range of the Rockies insulates the western United States and far western Canada, along with western Mexico, from this effect. And the further west and south you go, the better the insulation.
Thus, temperature in the western United States is dominated by altitude, not latitude, and Phoenix is VERY heavily insulated indeed from any arctic cold. While Cut Bank, Montana, directly north of Phoenix in the High Plains, might be 40 below zero, Phoenix is at 80 degrees.
Cold Waves that freeze the Mississippi River and bury the east in snow do not touch Phoenix.
When the dense, dry, cold air is somehow forced over the high mountains, it chinooks down the west slopes, compressing and warming as it comes - so if the arctic air somehow does reach Phoenix, it is as a hot chinook, bone dry, a bane for it causes brush fires - both there and everywhere else in the southwest.
In all of the United States mentioned, only Michigan and Ohio seem to have dense rural populations.
Kentucky seems to be far more sparsely populated, although banks of woodland can prove deceptive.
Missouri is obviously more thinly populated, and if there is a heavy rural population in Arkansas, it is hidden behind impregnable forests of conifers, the ground dark under their limbs even at midday.
There are few people living in rural Kansas, Oklahoma, or Texas, and here one can SEE the lack of people, for one can see a long way from the vantage of a hill, or across the prairie of the Pandhandle of Texas, or across the grasslands of Kansas.
One could briefly wonder if anyone lives in New Mexico, for it is very empty there, and one can look across 20 miles of land and see few structures, until one reaches the front range. Beyond that point, the American Indians live in great numbers, on the high plateau of New Mexico, and amidst the green hills of Arizona.
In Arizona, some areas are heavily populated. Others are empty. Ironically, the forested land is the quiestest land, and the desert bustles with people.
