What about Mount Rushmore?
here you go.
Why drive all that way?
Because it doesnt really link to your comparing sizes with Fish River Canyon.
[QUOTE=Jjimm]
“Importantly to your comment about competitiveness, I am not American - so there’s no chauvinism there.”
[/QUOTE]
It wasnt the only example, and its still a competitive statement. I could say X country is the best country Ive ever been to, and someone will say no Y was, regardless of who comes from where.
And if you think that its a onesided process, well fair enough I guess.
Otara
This thread has become increasingly pointless. By your argument there is absolutely nowhere in the world worth visiting. Visit the Louvre? Nope there’s an art museum within a few hours drive. See the Taj Mahal? I’ll just find a nice desktop picture. Dive the Red Sea? Waste of cash, I think I’ll just watch the ocean documentaries on the 3D TV at Best Buy. According to you absolutely every single thing on this tiny little planet can be found within four hours of where I live.
I think he was joking. At least, I hope so.
Yeah. Whoosh.
Ask me! I got back (to Australia) yesterday from a two week trip to Los Angeles. I could’ve gone anywhere, but I chose LA because there are things there that *tourists are not able to get elsewhere *. There is something special about seeing, with my own eyeballs, a culture that is so familiar through tv, movies, music etc. Seeing places where famous people lived and died, famous buildings, museums etc.
We spent a lot of time just going about on public transport, just taking it all in and trying to soak up as much as possible.
Of course, we went to the obvious places - Universal Studios, Disneyland, Hollywood Blvd (loved it!)
I felt really loved while I was there - the people are amazingly friendly and helpful, and will actually go out of their way to help a poor tourist.
Our Doper guide, Rick, was amazing - thanks for the great night out Rick!
Sure it does. The Grand Canyon is what it is, and that includes its vast size. It also includes burro tours, National Park Service rangers in uniform, hordes of kitschy tourists, the broader Colorado Plateau geography, and the culture of the American towns and reservations around it. It is not the Fish River Canyon, and of course it could never be mistaken for the Fish River Canyon. It, its massive size (which defines it and the entire surrounding region in an incredibly profound way - you would never understand unless you’ve been there), and everything else about it are iconically, unmistakably, totally American and absolutely nothing else.
Seriously, only the most jaded, disinterested prat of a tourist could possibly dismiss one or both places with a “Eh, they’re basically the same.” It’s completely preposterous. You have different experiences getting to each place, exploring each place, and virtually everything else surrounding them, including the scale.
Jesus Christ. It would be like me going to Multnomah Falls and then saying that they’re really basically the same as Angel Falls. They exist on totally different scales, in totally different parts of the world, in totally different cultural contexts, but, y’know, fuck it. Waterfalls. Pretty much the same wherever you go.
No. No, they’re not. Good lord, of course they’re not.
Fuckin’ waterfalls. You can’t explain that!
I can. It is just water falling due to gravity and going splat at the end. I see the same fucking thing in my shower every morning. There is nothing special about that.
Seen it! Boring! What’s on TV?
Whoosh!
It was my pleasure to be your guide. I’m glad you got to see what you came for.
Look I’m not going to try to cover the entire US, let’s just talk about 1 corner of the US, let’s take one single corner. Starting in LA and staying within a 1 day drive, you have:
[ul]
[li]La Brea tar pits[/li][li]Hollywood (dream factory for the world)(yeah Bolywood is big, but it does not have the global impact of Hollywood)[/li][li]Disneyland (maybe not the first theme park, but still the best)[/li][li]Universal Studios (tour a working movie studio)[/li][li]The Grand Canyon (don’t give me any gruff about Fish creek canyon, drop it in one end of the Grand Canyon and you could not even see it from the other end.)[/li][li]The redwoods[/li][li]Big Sur[/li][li]Yosemite[/li][li]Death Valley[/li][li]Las Vegas (say what you will LV can separate you from your money better than any place in the world.)[/li][li]Name another place where you can snow ski in the AM and surf in the afternoon. (there are a few, but damn few)[/li][li]The submarine canyon off La Jolla[/li][li]Mountains that top 14,000 feet with awesome skiing[/li][li]Empty deserts that make you think you are at the end of the world.[/li][/ul]
Not to mention all the other things I have left off this list like world class museums etc. It’s late, I’m tired, and I could probably go on for another hour or so listing things to do within 1 days drive of where I live, but I will stop here.
Name me another place in the world where you can do more than this in a one day drive from any starting point.
You could start from new York City and have just as impressive a list. Or any number of other cities in the US.
I feel that we can skip reading Otaras posts, because other dopers post words, so we’ve seem similar stuff.
People who have been to both supposedly found them ‘close’. Not identical, not ‘eh’, and presumably from a more informed perspective than people who havent actually been to both, ie you.
I dont read anything inherently disparaging about that, and think you’re being needlessly defensive about rocks myself.
Otara
That’s the insane thing to me: the whole boils down to "rocks"to you.
I have no idea what to say to that. Everest=rocks. King’s Canyon? Buncha fuckin’ trees. Sahara? Sand.
Once again: if you’re going to talk about specific landmarks, even landmarks that have similar counterparts in other countries, then every single country and, indeed, every single street is unique. Hell, my living room is unique, because it’s the only place you can see certain pieces of art. We are all unique and special snowflakes, after all.
OTOH, the Grand Canyon doesn’t really have anything comparable elsewhere.
Seriously, does nobody else at all get my point?
But all countries are unique.
There are simply two types of people. There are those who will take opportunities to travel and see interesting shit for themselves. Then there are those who will argue pointlessly how all that shit is the same and never leave their hometown.
This sums up the Grand Canyon.
Really, if you haven’t seen it, you simply don’t understand. You think you do, because we’ve all seen pictures, of it and of other canyons. But you don’t understand. You CAN’T understand, because there is nothing else like it, and frankly nothing to which a human being has been exposed that really compares. You have to see it to understand it. To say it is “big” is really, really understating the case.
You know, I think I’m going to cancel my trip to Iceland. I was going to go because I’ve never been outside of North America before, and just wanted to experience someplace different. After reading all these posts from Aussies and Europeans, I’m changing my mind.
- Icelanders? I went to a conference in Minneapolis not too long ago, where I met plenty of people with Viking ancestry. Norwegians and Swedes are kind of the same. I can just listen to A Prairie Home Companion, or go to some Lutheran church here in town.
- Waterfalls? Grew up near Niagara Falls, which is bigger than Gulfoss. Besides, it’s just falling water. H²O. Whoo-de-doo.
- Geysers? No different than the fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. If I want them hot, I can visit a national park.
- Hot springs? I’ll visit my friends in Las Cruces, and drive an hour to Truth or Consequences.
- Stark mountainscapes? New Mexico.
- Hear strange languages being spoken? New Mexico. That, or I can go to one of the restaurants here in town that caters to foreign students to hear something more exotic.
- Wild nightlife in Reykjavik? Meh. I live in a college town. Why even leave?