Does anyone live near anywhere interesting?

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What people don't understand is that Massachusetts drivers aren't crazy, they're assertive. I'll never forget the reaction as I was driving my friend's minivan into Boston one time. He was in the back seat, another friend beside me. A light turned green. Passenger beside me gasped in horror. I asked what the problem was. Van owner called out from back seat "Nothing you just got the jump on a cabbie" in one of those "2 lanes merge into 1 on the other side of the intersection" situations Boston loves. Cabbie of course realizing I got the jump on him backed off immediately.

My own favorite anecdote involves my first marriage. First wife was from Pittsburgh, and the in-laws and family connections came in a small horde to Boston. The rehearsal was in Malden, two cities north of Boston; the rehearsal dinner was at my grandmother's home in Quincy, the city that is Boston's immediate southern suburb. And I was in a large van with about a dozen of the Pittsburgh crowd. (Well, I knew where we were going.)

Now western Pennsylvania drivers are painfully polite. They will ALWAYS let you merge. If the sign says "Speed Limit 55" by heaven they will all drive 52 mph. Throwing them into the maelstrom of 1980s Boston rush hour traffic, transiting from north of the city to south of the city (and this is before the Big Dig), isn't like throwing the sheep to the wolves. It's like arming the wolves with machetes and BBQ sauce first. Those poor people were white with terror, as we were slinking on the lower deck of 93, and the driver was the most terrified of all.

So I barked "Pull over!" at the driver, who shakily complied. I said, "Look, give me the wheel. I'll get you all there. But you folks might want to shut your eyes for the next half hour or so."

I've no idea if they did, but I did get them all there in one piece.
 
The small part of the world I live in has just about everything, from 5th century monastic sites pillaged by the Vikings to Norman ruins, invading English Knights, plague islands and smuggling routes.


Its all centred on Strangford Lough – Strangr Fjörðr in Norse or Lough Cuan in Irish. Around the lough are all manner or ruins such as Nendrum monastic site pillaged by Vikings and later owned by John de Courcy. There are the ruins of Inch Abby (King of the North scene from Game of Thrones), the Quoile River (River Run Tully Funeral Scene). It has plenty of unique features and is dotted with islands full of ruins, and even has a marine waterfall. From one hill you can see 10 individual castles or towers including Audley’s Castle (Rob Stark’s camp).


Its most terrifying feature is not its bloody history or strong currents but its large population of geese!
 
Not that much properly near me that I'd call interesting, maybe the Jurassic Coast of Broadchurch fame, or the Cerne Abbas Giant. I can see an Iron Age hill fort from my garden, and strip lychetts. there's a few obligatory barrows, a stone circle, and a Roman ampitheatre, but they're easily missed/ignored and not that interesting.

At a stretch I'm vaguely close to Dartmoor, Exmoor, the New Forest, and Stone Henge for a day visit.

We/I also measure distances by time, some routes take an hour and might be 30 miles, and others 20 miles and 20 minutes in good traffic.

I don't really need to imagine a Pendragon demesne.
 
(grins) The Mystical Barrier for Bostonians is Route 128, the nearer of two circumferential highways around the city ... all of a DOZEN miles from the downtown. The only thing I've ever encountered like is talking to Manhattan residents who never in their lives left the corporate boundaries of New York City.
Hey! I live outside Route 128. We only take the inners hostage, usually we ransom them for Somerville parking permits. It's those barbarians outside Route 495 you need to worry about :smile:. Granted though it can take you a good hour to go that dozen miles from downtown to 128.

As to more of the original thread, there is also a working water grist mill in Sudbury, MA and Nantucket has it's own wonderful whaling museum (going through it could not stop thinking of HPL, can see where he got some ideas), and an old working windmill.
 
There's far older things near us like the 5,000-6,000 year old Loughcrew tomb, but my favourite is Bective Abbey/Mainistir Bheigthí. A medieval abbey sitting in the middle of a field with no formal oversight that kids often go to run around and play in. We used to play Cadfael style medieval mysteries there when we were young.
Bective_Abbey_Side.JPG
Bective Abbey 3.jpg
 
There's far older things near us like the 5,000-6,000 year old Loughcrew tomb, but my favourite is Bective Abbey/Mainistir Bheigthí. A medieval abbey sitting in the middle of a field with no formal oversight that kids often go to run around and play in. We used to play Cadfael style medieval mysteries there when we were young.
Showed this to my wife, she replied that she'd love to sit within it with a book, wine, cheese and crackers. Hehe.
 
The difference between American and the Brits is that the Brits think 100 miles is a long distance and the Americans think 100 years is a long time.
That phrase works just as well when you replace 'the Americans' with 'the Australians' :thumbsup:

Australia was only populated by Westerners after a few colonists in the New World wouldn't let the Brits send over their convicts anymore, heh heh.
Apparently that little tiff was initially caused by some people who got upset over a few wharfies throwing a couple of tea bags in Boston harbour, or something like that :grin:



(ADDIT: Heh heh, if it's over 100yrs ago, surely that counts as historical rather than political... )
:grin:
 
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Of all the things I've been accused of looking like, a Koala is quite a long way down the list. On the other hand, my mental image of Séadna Séadna is a kindly parish priest in a sitcom set in the Irish countryside, perhaps using his spare time to solve mysteries in a small, idyllic rural village with an inexplicably high murder rate.

There's far older things near us like the 5,000-6,000 year old Loughcrew tomb, but my favourite is Bective Abbey/Mainistir Bheigthí. A medieval abbey sitting in the middle of a field with no formal oversight that kids often go to run around and play in. We used to play Cadfael style medieval mysteries there when we were young.
See! I knew it!
 
1 hour away - nuclear reactor from ww2 for making plutonium
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30 minutes away - two of the 8 dams on the columbia
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3 hours away - mt rainier national park (it’s a volcano)
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5 hours away, north cascade national park
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15 minutes to 2 hours - where your hops for your beer came from
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5 minutes to 2 hours - 2nd largest wine growing region in the us
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It has its downsides, but there is a lot of interesting stuff around.
 
Having lived where those particular hops are grown. Let me tell ya, they're some pungent stuff. Used to ride my mountain bike along the river there where the storage warehouses were. :closed::grin::drink:
 
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Having lived where those particular hops are grown. Let me tell ya, they're some pungent stuff. Used ride my mountain bike along the river there where the storage warehouses were. :closed::grin::drink:
Yakima? Tricities? Sunnyside?
 
Yakima? Tricities? Sunnyside?
Selah, through the gap leading into Yakima. It's where I lived last before the move down to the Nashville area. The warehouses were near the river in Yakima.
 
Selah, through the gap leading into Yakima. It's where I lived last before the move down to the Nashville area. The warehouses were near the river in Yakima.
I know right where Selah is. Family lives in Yakima and we drive by there all the time. They closed down the aplet and cotlet place this last year. Folks retired.
 
I know right where Selah is. Family lives in Yakima and we drive by there all the time. They closed down the aplet and cotlet place this last year. Folks retired.
Oh wow, I'll have to tell my wife. We loved to stop in and snag their stuff. Yeah lived there from 2002 to 2014.
 
…with giant albino spiders living in the swamps beneath Roanoke.

That's actually true, except for the swamp part.

They live in and near the waterways of Carvins Cove and the Roanoke River, and they're not albino. And yes, they're an invasive species.
 
Ah my dear friend come to Europe. Some of my wife's uncles don't like a nearby family for something that happened 400 years ago.
Pfft, I know quite a few people who don't like one of our neighbouring countries because of something that happened about a millennium ago:thumbsup:!

(Granted, it was quite the atrocity even by the standards of the time).
 
I know right where Selah is. Family lives in Yakima and we drive by there all the time. They closed down the aplet and cotlet place this last year. Folks retired.
Last time I heard, Liberty Orchards had been purchased, and the new owners were planning on keeping operations going as before. Did this change again?
 
Last time I heard, Liberty Orchards had been purchased, and the new owners were planning on keeping operations going as before. Did this change again?
i had not heard that. and it was pretty close too.
 
Roanoke, Virginia is a decrepit goth hellscape and would be good for any urban horror games

Huh. Okay, me staying in Roanoke for a weekend was memorable, but I seem to have missed the goths and the zombies. (Granted, this was 25 years ago or thereabouts.)

What DID happen was that about two feet of snow fell while I was driving down from Massachusetts. Now two feet of snow here, that's a whalloping, no error, and everything would be closed, and we'd be a day or so digging out.

In southwestern Virginia, two feet of snow falling overnight is freaking fimbulwinter. The state snowplow drivers were too scared to even TRY to plow the Interstate. And the next morning, the locals were staggering around with dazed, glazed expressions, like it was the end of the world.
 
i had not heard that. and it was pretty close too.
Like less than two weeks before the planned shutdown in June was when I heard this. (Googling occurs...) KDV USA bought them, announcement on June 24. Originally they were going to shut down on June 1st, but negotiations opened in May, so they never shut down. I remember doing the happy dance at the time.
 
Like less than two weeks before the planned shutdown in June was when I heard this. (Googling occurs...) KDV USA bought them, announcement on June 24. Originally they were going to shut down on June 1st, but negotiations opened in May, so they never shut down. I remember doing the happy dance at the time.
That’s fantastic!
 
Huh. Okay, me staying in Roanoke for a weekend was memorable, but I seem to have missed the goths and the zombies. (Granted, this was 25 years ago or thereabouts.)

What DID happen was that about two feet of snow fell while I was driving down from Massachusetts. Now two feet of snow here, that's a whalloping, no error, and everything would be closed, and we'd be a day or so digging out.

In southwestern Virginia, two feet of snow falling overnight is freaking fimbulwinter. The state snowplow drivers were too scared to even TRY to plow the Interstate. And the next morning, the locals were staggering around with dazed, glazed expressions, like it was the end of the world.
Well, it's obvious Bob. You brought the goths and zombies. :evil:
 
I live in Orange County and am hard pressed to find things older than 1975 or so.
Bah! The statue of the surfer at Huntington Beach is ancient, like me! 1965! So there! (snicker) Ancient I tell you! Also of historical note, it's not too from where I had one of my first sexual encounters as a young man. Wrapped up in some towels and blankets with a lass named Diane as the sun was going down over the water...

Ruined by some idiot passing out religious comics. (those Jack Chick comics as I recall) Talk about a guy who came very close to having a Herbie Fletcher twin fin surfboard through the forehead. (mutter) He was lucky I was too wrapped up in towels, blankets and embarrassment.
 
I had actually forgotten that I live far closer to Fore, the sight of a collection of reasonably intact ruins of monasteries ranging from eight hundred to fourteen hundred years old. A big part of it was set up by Benedictine monks that came with the Norman conquest.

Local folklore attributes numerous wondrous properties to the area, such as water that will not boil and flows uphill, a tree that will not burn, and one of the buildings supposedly has a lintel stone that was raised by the prayers of the local saint.

It's all built in a valley situated between two hills, one of which (which also has a few of the buildings placed on it) is called Carrick Balor (a name that may be familiar to people who know Exalted).
 
That part given a bit of an extra edge by reading about how it's speculated that the inhabitants of Ireland responsible for it have no living descendants at all, and perhaps not even any surviving vestiges of their culture. Passage tombs like Newgrange and the artifacts found within are all that's left of them.
If you're interested the words Portán and Teamhair might (very much a might) be from their language, but that's about it. They were borrowed into Gaelic from some unknown language, so their language is a possibility.
 
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