Anything unique about your area?
 

Where I was born and raised is about one mile from what is allegedly the last natural/origional terain change from eastern hardwoods to native prarie. People come from all over to go see it.

Not too far from here are The Oregon Caves.A nice hour guided walk through the caves(especially on a too-hot summer day it's nice and cool in there). I've been in bigger limestone cave systems in other states, but it's nice enough to be worth seeing. It's been a "Monument" for decades and has Just become a National Park so that caused a hoopla in our little weekly newspaper.:) Also the coastal redwoods are close,on the highway that goes to the coast. It's always "awesome",even just driving through,but a picnic stop to soak up the majesty makes for a real nice day.

Just down the beach a mastdon is eroding out of a cliff.
It's boring now cause both tusk came down...thirty years apart in time and the same guy found the both times....but it land in his family.

The world record king salmon caught here. Over 97 pounds.

I am surrounded by Iditarod winners.

Anything unique about your area?
 

There is an enormous amount of history in my area. There were several large Indian villages around here before the Europeans showed up. Many roads follow the large Indian trails from that era. De Soto had a very hard trip from south of the Savannah River to my area on foot, crossing the Desert of Ocute to my south, his group nearly starving before they made it here. When they got to the Congaree River, they'd had enough lol!
https://books.google.com/books?id=w0...ed=0CBoQ6AEwBA
The money men from the costal rice culture built homes here for their families to live through the summer months. The ground is high and was wooded with pine forest, making mosquitoes fewer here.

The battle of fort motte took place here during the American Revolution, when Rebbeca Motte told the Continentals that she'd rather them burn her house down than to let the Tories and British occupy it.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Brewton_Motte
And Francis Marion and his men shot flaming arrows onto the roof and won the day.
Sherman can through on his way from Charleston to Columbia and had a few wienie roasts.

I know where a couple of old Indian villages are located, can show you the Rebecca Motte monument hidden deep in the woods, near where there is a cemetery from the colonial-civil war area that has a fence made of small bore cannon barrels. My side of the river is high 100' or so bluffs and the river used to be navigable from Charleston to Columbia by steamboat and barges. Across the river is swamp and flood plane for as far as you can see from the bluffs. The Congaree Swamp National Park is located there.
The devil came through here one night many year ago. He stopped in on some folks down there by the river. He fooled the old man, but he didn't fool the old woman. She read the bible backwards till the old devil stormed out ran down toward the river, and leaped clear across it. He stomped his foot so hard when he jumped that he left his footprint in a rock there near where Rebecca Motte had lived.
One of her neighbors in that area was Lang syne plantation. They had a daughter, Julia Peterkin who won a Pulitzer in the 20s for her novel Scarlet Sister Mary, which was kind of scandalous at the time, for she, a white woman, wrote about the intimate lives of the blacks in the area, drawing on experience and knowledge from her own life, and dealing with the blacks on her daddy's farm. She was good friends with some famous people of the time and Carl Sandburg and Kathryn Hepburn were regular visitors. I had an old man friend of mine who cooked for the big party they had when she won the Pulitzer. He told me he cooked 30 hogs, 240 chickens, huge cauldrons of cooter stem and god knows what all else. He was a black man, and the gentlemanest gentleman I have ever known, always wore a fedora.
She, Julia, has a great, great niece that I always had the hots for. :D
I'll quit boring y'all now, but this was an interesting place to grow up as a boy. It has long and interesting memories

Anything unique about your area?
 

There are lots of tales of spooky happenings in my area, and many people I know have experience strange and spooky occurrences. I adamantly will tell you that I do not believe in ghosts. And, I do not, but I have experienced strange things myself. I will tell you of one.

I was 16 or 17 and a friend and I were helping another friend of ours' brother tear down an old chicken barn for the salvaged lumber. He was getting married and was building a house. It was the miserable hot, dog days of summer. We had salvaged all the lumber, and this day we were just hauling all the trash to the county dump. After lunch I got into a wasp nest and, got stung on the inside of my upper lip. My lip was swollen up so big I could see it. Finally, we were hauling the last dump truck load to the landfill. We were sore, hot, sweaty, dusty and miserable. Near the landfill is an old church that sets way down in a bottom along High Hill Creek. This was a spot legendary for strange happenings. High Hill creek is a beautiful black water creek that is nearing the end of its journey to the river.

After dumping the last load, we decided to cool off and wash in that creek. We stopped there and soon found ourselves washed clean and sitting I n the waist deep water, with just our heads above the surface. We all commented on how great it all was to be sitting there in that cool, clean water, after a hard day of dirty work.

I said, "the only thing that would make me feel better would be if I had a cold miller beer right now". You can doubt me, but this is true. No sooner had the words left my mouth did I see a funny looking bubble float right up to me. It was the bottom of a clear bottle. I reached out, grasped the bottom in my fingers and turned it, dripping, up into the clear light of day. It had green algie growing on it, but it was a bottle of miller beer. The two other guys were dumbstruck. I lifted the cap with my pocket knife, and it went, "chssss". What could I do? I turned it up. :D one of the fellows said I can't believe you drank that. I said, "I can't believe I had one wish and only asked for a beer!".

It was a good beer, though. :D

ETA
As you can imagine, I have often thought on that occurrence. That beer didn't just magically appear. It had been floating down that creek long enough to loose all the labels and grow alga. It moseyed along and just happened to meet up with me, just when I asked for it, by name. That is stranger than magic.

Well, Lake Michigan is pretty nice.

geo

East and West Grand Traverse Bays are some of the nicest parts of Lake Michigan here.

Lakes....many lakes....and much forest.
My uniqueness is that south and going west is
pretty good agriculture land....mainly hay and
grain fields, cow calf farmers. North and east is
High density forest and vast areas of freshwater
Lakes of all sizes and various fish and wildlife species.
I live on the cusp of all this, so can look south to distant
neighbours farming their cleared land. To the north I see
Forest the road ending at a chain of boreal lakes.
Beaver ponds behind and just about everywhere insures
prime wetland habitat and transitional bird populations.

Lake Michigan is awesome,,my county is considered the Asparagus Capitol of America,,really,,google it,,plus we have the Silver Lake sand dunes and great fishing everywhere.

http://www.nationalasparagusfestival.org/

http://www.michigan.org/hot-spots/si...ke-sand-dunes/

We are half way between Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone Park. Lots of history from the Indian wars around this area, including the "Bloody Bozeman" trail north to Montana.

Niagara Falls in near, it is neat to go an look at all the chemical plants, When I was a kid they were still in full operation and the stench would fill the air when you passed by. Even today we can still go see the chemical dumps, they still provide cancer causing agents years after the plants are gone. :) On a serious note , aside from the Falls, we have Fort Niagara, and in town we have the Erie canal locks. It is neat to watch ships sale up hill. On the west side of our land there used to be an Indian village. The field is full of chipped flint. On the south side of the land used to be log cabins, when we dug out an apple tree stump we found the base of the fire place and a lot of broken china. Millions of years ago we were underwater in a shallow sea, and the land we live on was sand dumped by a passing glacier.

This happend just walking distance from me.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragould_meteorite
and this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowley%27s_Ridge
Most of the land around here is delta which is flood prone .The only place that don't flood is the ridge.I have seen hundred mile detorres from flooding .I live on the civil war road.

We are surrounded by the Cascade Mountains. They are a destination for hiking and picture taking. The mountain I see everyday (Whitehorse Mountain) from my front window is one of the most photographed in WA state.

Here is a link to info about all the surrounding mountains. It contains some really pretty and representative pictures.

http://www.darringtonwatourism.com/d...ding-mountains

And here is Whitehorse mountain from my front porch. Can you see the horse head?


http://ourloghouse.com/images/normal/img_3141.jpg

My area has rusting and corroded remains of about a dozen prohibition era moonshine stills still visible if you know which hollers and islands to go hiking through.

You forgot the former Erie county fair the largest fair or expo in the America.
The Amish village, anchor bar, beef on wick

Please explain.

We have Lake Superior.

Also, we have some neat sand barrens with rolling hills and lots of wild blueberries about 10 miles away.

kimewick rolls with rye seed...kosher salt
Hot shaved roast beef piled high mayo but true lover reach for the horseradish. The meat is cool rare and dunked in a cauldron of hot al jue cause which heats and Searing the flavor. I remember explaining wings when I left there.

Ste. Genevieve Missouri, the oldest settlement west of the Mississippi!

Also it's Missouri. Best weather in the country. :walk:

I'm in Virginia. I got luray caverns and several other caverns within a few minutes. My village I live in supplied all the pig iron to the south during the Civil War. Then the yanks found our little mountain village and burned out the pig iron mills which lead to the battle of Cedar Creek. We have lots of civil war history as well as lots of major players like stonewall Jackson called this place home. I love metal detecting here. Lots of goodies to be found.

I live in the NJ Pinelands. Very unique terroir, makes for challenging growing... I find this area amazing because even though I live in the most densely populated state in our nation, I am secluded in the woods- yet, I am 22 minutes to the Atlantic Ocean, 90 minutes door to door to my NYC office, 55 minutes to Philadelphia....my little piece of heaven in an otherwise chaotic world.....works for me...!

Galena is the County Seat of Stone County, and the site of the last public hanging in the US. In 1937 they hanged a murderer on the town square. From what I've read, they should have hanged him twice. It was very well attended.

1) world's tallest trees
2) three tectonic plates meet just off shore
3) Patrick's Point State Park where you can watch from shore grey whales swim by
4) Ulysses S Grant was assigned to Ft. Humboldt in 1854, which is an urban State Park
5) Humboldt Co has 6 large rivers and a myriad of smaller ones with salmon and steelhead runs
6) you can start at the beach then a couple hours drive to 7000 feet mountain
7) Humboldt Bay is the largest bay between San Franciso and Puget Sound
etc

We are in what is called the 'Dark Corner' of SC, one of the last hold-outs for moonshine activity. We've found evidence of activity on our property at some point.

We're also near Campbell's Bridge, the only covered bridge in SC.

The rolls are hard roll dough egg washed and either sprinkled or dipped before rising in a mixture of large grain salt (kosher) and caraway seeds. Once baked you slit the rolls and put hot sliced roast beef which has sat in beef juice inside the roll with horse radish (preferred) or mayo or plain. The salt and caraway add a nice flavor. The only drawback is the salt causes the rolls to go stale quicker. So they need to be used up in a couple of days.

Cool thread...I was just thinking how much I miss the pine forests of Montana LOL. My area of Arizona is blessed to have the San Pedro River and its valley. I believe it to be the only river in southern AZ that still flows year round. It is a wonderful area for watching wild life. Also near by is the Willcox Playa which I am not real familiar with though I did go check it out and saw thousands of sand hill cranes and Canadian geese resting up for their trip north. Closer to home we have Kartchner Caverns which I have not yet been to but I believe they are wet caverns so it would be interesting.

Our area has a long history in the mining industry, infact our property shows many signs of it with the sink holes so of which are quite large. We are located on the Cumberland Plateau and our property is on Bon Air Mountian. To give you some background here it is.
"The Bon Air Mountain Historical Society is located in the Museum on highway 70, between Sparta and Crossville. The museum was a section house for the railroad workers during the early 1900′s. The railroad run from Sparta to Clifty to haul the coal from Bon Air, Ravenscroft, Clifty and Eastland mines."

This is a great area with many folks who have lived there entire lives within a 10 mile radius.

Im not far from the terminal moraine of central IL I think its called the Shelby moraine cause it goes thru two shelbyvilles.
The Kaskaskia River is near , the route of early explorers and the site of the longest narrowest covered bridge in IL.
The route of the first land grant railroad went thru Pana site of the Pana race wars. Vanadlia Il the first capital of Il built in IL is near.
And most important o IL and the world the Draining of the great IL prairie swamps started near here.

Our land is on the peak of the divide where the water shed flows east down to the Connecticut River and then to the see in Connecticut.

Just west of our border all the water flows west to Lake Champlain and New York and then to the see in the Long Island Sound.

We can stand on our tallest mountain and look north west to just about see Burlington, Vermont about an hour away and to the south east we see deep into New Hampshire.

There was an entire village on our land back in the 1800's. Our house was built in 1777 and then rebuilt in 1825. It's one of the oldest structures around and was the first one in our valley. Before we came here part of it was a horse barn. Before that the whole thing was a sheep shed for a few decades. Sheep used to sleep in the bedroom and kitchen. Now our house is the last house from that era - all the rest are stone ringed cellar holes or just piles of rocks.

Sometimes it snows here in July. Not funny, Mother Nature! (She's quite the joker.)

-Walter

about 20 miles from the oregon trail, and around 35 from chimney rock. just far enough from I-80 that it isn't the "flat nebraska" everybody on the interstate thinks, lots of bluffs, ravines and rolling hills

plus its roughly halfway between estes park and the black hills.

I'll start out with a pic to illustrate what is so unique about my area:

http://sequim-real-estate-blog.com/i...RainShadow.jpg

We live in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains. To our North is the Strait of Juan De Fuca. To our South are the Olympic Mountains. While the Sequim waterfront gets an annual rainfall of 16", we get 25". That said, this the Rainshadow Effect. Sequim is often referred to as the "Blue Hole." Each mile West of Sequim gains another 1" of annual rainfall (the same must be true for the distance South). As the crow flies, our property is 9 miles South (1126' elevation).

It is amazing living in an area where we have access to the saltwater, rivers, lakes, and mountains. The extremes are interesting and the vegetative evidence is significant. The Olympic Rainforest isn't that far away, yet has an annual rainfall of 200" That jump is much more significant than 1" per mile...

Other points of interest would include the Olympic Discovery Trail, which starts in Port Angeles and ends in Port Townsend, meandering through Sequim on the way! The John Wayne Marina is about 8 minutes away, while the closest entry to the Olympic Discovery Trail is only 6 minutes. Due to our mild weather, we don't need air conditioning. While we have an actual Winter, we don't get that much snow. This results in a lower average utility cost. USDA Zone 7B and our gardening season is 234 days. For success with heat loving veggies, they should be facing due S, be in unobstructed sunlight, and it doesn't hurt to add a plastic tent.

We can fishing, crabbing, shrimping, dig clams, harvest oysters, hunt, forage for wild mushrooms (plethora in the Olympics...also I have identified 4 edible varieties on our own property). For outdoor fun? There is hiking (back-packing too), bicycling, motorcycling, kayaking, and the list goes on.

What else sets Sequim apart? The median age is 59 and there are more groups, clubs, and foundations here than I have ever seen anywhere else. Here it seems that most people are happier, more polite, and willing to lend a hand to others in need.

For those who like to gamble? The 7 Cedars Casino is just East of Sequim (we are there in 6 minutes).

From Port Angeles, only about 30 minutes W, is the ferry to Victoria! The cost for walk-on passengers is only $30 each.

Hmm I live in what was the last company owned town in Oregon. They started selling the town off in 1996. There were billboards along I-5 advertising a town for sale. Crater Lake National Park, one of the 7 natural wonders is less than an hour from me.

I live 2 miles from the conjunction of the 2 largest rivers in North America, at which is a 5,000 acre park which has been designated an Important Bird Area. Oh yeah some guys named Lewis and Clark came on through here awhile back.

I visited the joining of the waters last summer, probably went right by Farmerted. Lots of corn and soybeans growing there. Earlier in the year the area had been flooded. The Missouri had lots of driftwood in it, the Mississippi not so much. Interesting area.

COWS

Yeah we live up on the bluff on a private road with 9, 3-6 acre farms, all surrounded by a town of 19,000, and overall 3 million.

20 minutes to the Arch/ Busch stadium and straight up country in my back yard.

Lake Placid in south Central Florida is on the Lake Wales Ridge, it's the spine of Florida. Millions of years ago when the glaciers were melted and sea levels were much higher,Paleo Indians camped along the Ridge. They were huge beautiful rolling sanddunes protecting a parched and sere interior from the ocean. The hills in this part of Florida are unbelievable to Flatlanders. We also have many springs, many ;lakes, interesting wildlife including FL black bear, panther, wildcat, coyote, fox, and small black wild cats from Mexico, native and wintering Sandhills and a Whooping crane or two, indigo snakes, king snakes, rat snakes, crested caracaras, kingfishers, pileated woodpeckers, Florida scrub jays, bald eagles, ospreys, burrowing owls, barred owls and screech owls, and a flock of South American Flamingo is wintering near Okeechobee. Our First Nations (Miccosukki, Seminole) never surrendered. We also have gators and the rare Florida Saltwater Crocodiles. Our climate has warmed from zone 9 at the lake to zone 10, and in the city to zone 11. Most of our gardening is accomplished in the fall and winter, as there is too much heat and humidity in the summer- okra and eegplant routinely stop fruiting in the middle of summer because the heat kills the pollen.
Lake Placid was named by George Dewey of Dewey Decimal System fame, intending for it to be a sister city to Lake Placid, NY. Really never happened.
And oh yes, Lake Placid is the caladium Capital of the world.

Well the wildflowers have not peaked yet, but I hope this pic will do it justice.
Our pasture. Mason county, Texas
Known as the hill country.
The blue bonnets are from this year. The indian blankets take over next pic from last may

Very nice pic, do the cows eat the bluebonnet foliage?

COWS

Umm, I thought Bluebonnet was Lupine and poisonous to grazers?

They dont eat it . I started mowing it down yesterday.