Travel locally, where you are
ssp.sh
ssp.sh
Honestly, most of the US is like this. It's huge and very, very sparse.
Flat for example. The southern portion of the Midwest can be quite hilly (the northern portion not as much, due to glaciers).
But even there, the definition of "flat" gets confused with "not mountainous". If the topography varies a lot, but there aren't mountains, is it flat? (Max/min vs variance)
I've been in many a road trip up, down, and across the Great Plains of the US, where I spend a full day driving only to arrive in a town and geography that looks the exact same as the one I woke up in that morning. Only the signs are different.
I found a strawberry festival and ate enough strawberry things to make myself sick. I found an artists commune and stayed with those weird old hippies for two days..I found a diner with a waitress who was in her 90's and had worked the same job for like 70 years.
We happily spend our vacations just driving around in the middle of the country with no plan.
Drive side roads.
Completely unexpected.
The outdoor attractions out west are world class compared to the attractions closer to where I grew up. Still, there are plenty of places I enjoy when I get back to Michigan to see family and friends. Even the Plains states have some great outdoorsy places, you might have to work a little harder to find them.
But I think the challenge here is that we can have great places if we do the following:
1. Focus on transportation and ways of living that focus on walking or taking a tram.
2. Create and support medium-density, mixed-use neighborhoods
3. Require good, sound architectural principles. When you think of Paris and those narrow streets or the apartment complexes in the best neighborhoods, we need those. None of this modernist bullshit or 5-over-1s made with recycled concrete. Use bricks, stone, and more. Incorporate design elements requiring skilled craftsmen, and pay for it.
Those 3 alone should get you most of the way there.
My final comment would be, when you're thinking about spending $5,000 - $10,000 or whatever on a big international trip to go look at some nice stuff in some other country, consider spending that money instead on your own home, or garden, or donate to organizations that maintain those things for you. It also doesn't have to be all or none, you can still travel, and still invest locally. Make where you live the kind of place you would have wanted to travel to. Gardens in Great Britain, for example, can happen where you live too you just need to spend the money and build and maintain those things... like they do.
The transit and transportation stuff is much more difficult to fix. Most Americans want a Jeep and suburban house and to wait in line and beep their horn at the Costco gas station and that's a tough hill to climb, but the 3 items I highlighted above are guaranteed to increase quality of life and lower costs long-term.
I bet there is a river somewhere near you. Explored all of it? What about a hill? Is there a road you've never driven down? It might have some stuff down it you've not seen before. Have you explored all the flora and fauna around you? Obviously you need to stay off private land, but I would be amazed if there is absolutely zero variation in any topology, geology, animal/plant life, or other factor within a 100 mile radius of you.
If that is the case, can you tell us where that is? I want to visit exactly once and never go there again. It sounds both magical and terrifying in one instance, and reminds me of a friend who drove down Route 66 and found the expansive empty plains "the most claustrophobic thing I've ever experienced in my life".
they say that airtravel killed the catskills resorts (ala dirty dancing) because why spend a few hours in teh car when you could go someplace so much more exotic with a few hours on the plane? and now there's a second-wave killing it with social media travel photos. everybody feels like they need to travel to the same handful of farflung locales that have been deemed 'the best'. basically, people with the means to travel have decided that regional travel isn't cool enough to impress their friends, so they let it die.
i think that's a terrible mistake for everybody. people dont have a fun, affordable place to go on a little weekend jaunt. towns that could scrape by on their natrual beauty have been left to decay (and once there's no way to monetize the natural beauty, local development sees no reason to preserve it).
Overreliance on echo-chambering platforms like Reddit/IG/Google Maps limits one's ability to explore. There's still lots to discover. And re-discover as you grow up.
In a large city, you can often just walk in one direction, (or take transport in one direction), find yourself in a new neighbourhood and discover loads of interesting things (culture, food, shops, parks, ...).
In London there are hundreds of walks/hikes around and beyond the green belt, all within an hour train from central London.
I do agree that there are some places where this is more challenging.
> here in SwitzerlandNot to say the message of the article is completely without merit - there are things to see and do almost everywhere. But if I just get in the car and start driving I will 95% of the time find only strip malls and cornfields. Perhaps a suburban park with some trees.
Pick any mountainous, desert, or coastal part of the world and you are guaranteed scenery for ~95% of the drive.
Pick any historic part of the world and you are guaranteed nice-looking buildings anywhere you walk.
A sizeable fraction of the world fits into either of the above. Yeah, if you live in cornfields and strip malls, you aren't going to find much interesting. But in fact, most of the world isn't like that. Arguably the cornfields and strip malls are the minority.
Throw a dart anywhere on Kyrgyzstan, Japan, Indonesia, Norway, China, India, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Argentina, Namibia, the southwestern US, northwestern US, or Mexico. You'll find lots of interesting things wherever your dart landed. These aren't very cherry-picked countries, I just named a few off the top of my head that come to mind where the "dart anyhere is interesting" is true. My point is that the world is full of "Switzerlands".
I'm not so confident that would be true all over the world. Some places I've spent 3-4 weeks in the nature I got bored from the lack of diversity. Can only stare into dirt and sand for so long.
Last week I hiked the Paparoa trail (West coast NZ) for 4 days through old mining trails with one of my friends who was a local historian and gold prospector, the whole experience was fascinating, and great inspiration for my next novel.
But even without this, traveling in the country side, getting to learn the history of those places, with the "small history", not the big battles, but the local inventions, the local specialties, etc, is so enriching and rewarding
In the 1990s and early millennium, opposing globalization (especially Anglo-American influence) and advocating for local culture was a common position on the European Left. Today that has disappeared almost completely, so much that people are likely to perceive it as a stance of the far-right.
Peoples being encouraged to maintain their own language in a purist state and develop culture from their own internal resources, was a notable feature of first-generation Communism in the USSR (before it reverted to Russian supremacism under Stalin) and in the PRC (before it evolved into Han nationalism).
The switch in which side opposes globalisation is an interesting one. That said the same seems to be true in the US and other countries too. IMO the left's abandonment of its opposition to globalisation is a factor in the rise of the far right.
But visiting local destinations is also such a joy. I'm a mile from one of the best BBQ joints in Michigan, in a "blink and you miss it" village. I try and make sure I don't take it for granted.
Hasn't been heard before? Major newspapers use the phrase "staycation" nearly every year when talking about travel habits. It's in about as much regular use as "vacation" is.