White House
Karl Northman - 08:38 pm Pacific Time - Sep 14, 2006 - #5728 of 6370
The REAL place to be is here, in Minnesota, in God's Country.
Now, admittedly, there are debates as to where in Minnesota God's Country is. My wife has this foolish notion (probably from having been brought up Methodist) that it's around Hibbing, which anyone could tell you is Carnegie's Country instead. God's Country is in fact Tumuli Township, Ottertail County. Although there's a (weak) argument to be made for Dane Prairie Township, or Maplewood Township.
And in the NE corner of the quarter-section that has Dalton, Minn., in the SW corner, there is, on a hill, a giant granite boulder -- maybe 3.5 feet high, 4 feet wide, and 7 feet long -- and on the top of it, just where you'd want it, is a big chipped-out spot that makes a perfect butt-sized hollow to sit in. So you can sit in the god-made seat of granite and survey the world around you -- town half a mile away, four farms, a couple woodlots, the shelter breaks, the prairie-pothole swamp 1/4 mile to the east on the Lunning's place, where you go to hunt ducks.
And this rock is the place that God created and put there with a glacier simply so that you could look out and see the most beautiful landscape in Minnesota.
NWHiker - 11:00 pm Pacific Time - Sep 14, 2006 - #5745 of 6370
I think we're going to have a nice bright Seattle October, like we often do. November will be miserable, probably, but December brings the holidays and the solstice. January will suck ... but in February, there will be snowdrops and crocuses and towards the end, maybe even some dafs. The days get longer quickly and then March will be here and it's the beginning of the glorious days of Northwest spring.
Plant some crocus, if you haven't already! They always bring smiles and much excitement to all of us here. They'll be up before you know it. And some iris (not the bearded ones, the other smaller ones, but not the tiny reticulata). The stupid iris always come up in the freaking fall. They don't bloom till spring, but every year they come up in November and we spend the rest of the winter worried that they're going to get frozen to death, but they always seem to bloom, even in my slightly colder than yours micro-climate!
LetterMan - 10:12 pm Pacific Time - Sep 14, 2006 - #5739 of 6370
Harrumph!
Despite all the glowing words of praise spoken upthread from various denizens of various parts of the United States who are all confidently assuring that their particular piece of the country is really, truly and actually "God's Country," I am here to tell you all that you are wrong, wrong and wrong again.
Everyone knows that Alaska, specifically the interior of this state, is truly God's Country.
One can set for a spell on a bench at the university campus or drive out to Hagelbarger Lookout on the Steese Highway (or any of the other hills around town) and take in the expansive and majestic view of the Alaska Range on the southern horizon and the endless expanse of the Tanana Flats in between the mountains and the Tanana River.
In fact, Moore Hall (a dormitory on upper campus) has a view from its upper floors of the mountains and the river that was once voted by the readers of Outside Magazine as the "Best Outdoor View" of any college campus in the country.
So there.
(And yes, we have very, very large mosquitoes too, larger even than those in Karl's neck of the woods.)
Although, we also have a very large collection of wingnuts, Bible-thumpers, Liberatarians, actual, true Gun Nuts (yes, there really are people like that around here, let's just say I try to avoid them as much as possible), and assorted other weird people, all of whom make life very, er, interesting around here.
We also have lots of moose. And bears. And a few wolves here and there.
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