I love the United States of America. I love her for one simple reason; America is my home. I was born and reared here, as were my parents, my grand parents, and several generations before.
As is true with the vast majority of people who call this American melting pot home, my ancestors came from many places: Ireland, Germany, Spain, France, England and perhaps other countries unknown. And at least some of my forebears were native Cherokee Indians. I think of myself as an All-American hybrid.
After being on VT for more than two years now, I have decided to build a general set of pages about this great land. My decision was inspired, at least in part, by a chance meeting with a businessman from Malaysia who happened to sit beside me on a flight between Honolulu and Hong Kong. He was returning home from six weeks in America and I asked him, "How much of our country did you see?"
"Oh," he replied with a confident air, "I saw all of it!"
That was amazing. I have lived in the United States not for 6 weeks but for 60 years, have traveled much, and do not consider that I have seen nearly all of this vast and varied land. I questioned the Malaysian brother, "All of it? Exactly what do you consider all of America to be?"
"I spent a week each in New York, Miami, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Seattle," he smiled. From coast-to- coast, from top-to-bottom and in the middle - I saw all of America."
I was stunned. In my opinion the six cities he had visited are an extremely limited introduction to this great country, especially if one stays in a downtown hotel and doesn't venture outside the city center, as he admitted he had done. Actually what he had experiencied is a limited urban America which is almost as foreign to many who live in this country as are London, Moscow or Hong Kong.
I wish every visitor to America could see not only our great cities, but our mid-sized cities as well, and also our small towns, rural villages, countryside, national and state parks, and untamed wilderness areas.
To show all that on this one set of pages would be impossible of course. But I have determined to at least give a small representative sample here.
I feel especially fortunate to have personally visited each of our 50 states, most of them several times. Unfortunately, I have not always taken good photos or kept the best records, so it's going to take some digging to get the material together. Here's my plan:
Must See Tips: A profile of one key city in each state. This may or may not be the state capitol.
General Tips: A page centered around a general symbol of each state. This may be a natural or historical landmark, or some other thing or place which represents the state.
Off the Beaten Path: A natural outdoor feature from each state, be it a mountain, waterfall, seashore, park or whatever.
Restaurants; Shopping; Accomodations: An overview of many of the franchise or chain establishments which may be found throughout the entire nation, or at least over a wide region of it.
These will be my pages, and they will no doubt reflect my own preceptions, prejudices, preferences. As is my style, I will build these in a hop-scotch fashion, here a little - there a little. However, I will try to keep each section in alphabetical order as much as possible.
I'll be working at this for a long time. You're invited to come back occasionally and check on my progress. Your comments or suggestions are always welcomed. |
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