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posted by
martyb
on Friday October 13 2017, @04:12PM
from the had-better-stop-driving-when-you-reach-the-ocean dept.
from the had-better-stop-driving-when-you-reach-the-ocean dept.
Three cities in Colorado — a state whose fortunes have been tied to the boom and bust of oil, gas and other commodities — are among the top 10 leading destinations for the nation's best and brightest as old cow and mining towns morph into technology hubs, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Boulder, the small college town located just north of Colorado's capital, is ranked No. 1 nationally in the Bloomberg Brain Concentration Index, which tracks business formation as well as employment and education in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics. Fort Collins and Denver follow at No. 4 and No. 10, respectively.
Are the best and brightest taking up skiing, or seeking higher ground amid rising sea levels?
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The Smartest Americans are Heading West
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 13 2017, @07:10PM (5 children)
The Smoky Mountains are OK as a national park, but it's got nothing on the parks in the West. Glacier, Yellowstone, Badlands, Cascades, Olympic, Redwoods, Yosemite, Death Valley, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Arches, Capitol Reef. All of those have grandeur Smoky Mountains can't touch. You could spend a lifetime hiking those and barely scratch the surface.
The Smokies I suspect attract regional visitors more for Dollywood and the other ancillary attractions like that than for its own sights.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 13 2017, @07:54PM (2 children)
The Smoky Mountains are OK as a national park, but it's got nothing on the parks in the West. Glacier, Yellowstone, Badlands, Cascades, Olympic, Redwoods, Yosemite, Death Valley, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Arches, Capitol Reef.
Sorry, but no. The east coast and west coast simply aren't comparable, it's like comparing apples and oranges. The western parks are great if you want to see amazing rock formations, desert vistas, canyons, geysers, and gigantic coniferous trees. But if you want to see great deciduous hardwood forests, you're not going to find them in the west, they're all in the east. There is a lot more total acreage in the western parks, granted, and probably a lot more overall variety of grandeur (you won't find sequoias anywhere on the east coast, nor anything like the Grand Canyon). But there's a reason the Appalachian Trail is still very popular with hikers.
Compared to other parts of the east coast, the Smokies rank very highly. You're not going to find much grandeur in Alabama or South Carolina, for instance.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 13 2017, @08:05PM (1 child)
Don't get me wrong. The Appalachians are nice. They're close. They're lovely in the fall when the leaves turn. They're comforting in the way a good quilt is on a chilly day. There are even a handful of nice vistas. But they don't say to you, Wow, this is nature!
Nowhere in the Appalachians puts you in your proper place as a human being, which is to say, a very, very small thing after all. None of it is raw, majestic, and wild. You can compare those regions, and the Appalachians come up short.
Now, if you keep following their line north across the border into Canada, and get to Cape Bretton Island and Newfoundland (I have no idea if those are part of the same mountain building event, geologically speaking, but they're also natural areas on the east coast), yeah, they're stunning. Those places have that primal quality that grabs you in the gut. Not in the US, though. Not from Maine to Georgia.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @08:28PM
Nowhere in the Appalachians puts you in your proper place as a human being,
which I think means in awe of the beauty/wonder/coolness of the universe.
One of the neater views I've seen including the parks out west is off the back side of Thunderhead on a sunny winter morning as the melt point on the trees was climbing up the valley.
Simply stunning.
That aside, it may be that the thing that puts one in a proper place is not the show, but the attitude one brings to the show?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 13 2017, @08:32PM (1 child)
I disagree. I've been to almost all of those places (except Olympic). It's a different sort of beauty and way over-visited at a level few of the others have to deal with (Yosemite and Yellowstone are close). It still has stunning vistas and a flora diversity unmatched by any of the parks you mentioned (due in large part to rainfall, the only park to get more rainfall is Olympic and slightly edging out Redwoods). None of the parks you mention have fall colors like the Smokies do. You won't see anything like rhodadendron [wikipedia.org] thickets (heath plant related to azaleas, see [mastgeneralstore.com] second picture for how big they can get) in the West. They are amazing when in bloom.
In addition, it has Cades Cove, a former village that lies in a flat flat area in the park, is a glimpse into hardcore Appalachian living prior to the widespread use of electricity. Unlike most ghost towns, this one was abandoned due to creation of the park rather than because it was no longer economically viable (though that probably would have come in time) and has since been looked after by the National Park Service. So buildings and some former farm/pasture land are well maintained.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @10:16PM
I agree. The biological diversity of the Smokies in unmatched.
Guess Phoenix666 is not much of a biologist. The Smokies in the summer reminds me of the tropics in some ways.