Oceans Or Mountains: Which Do You Prefer, And Why?

The weather is getting warmer (Especially today, record high!) so, we're starting to think of where to take the kids when school is over.

Last year we went to Jersey City, and that was nice and all, but I was thinking of taking them to the mountains in Maine or something along those lines. But we could easily do beaches in the same state.

Now, keeping in mind that I don't have a job right now, so money is tight (like Disney is a hard pass) Any thoughts?

 

A few years ago, I went on a terrible road trip (My driving partner had a mental illness, and it was very challenging) where we couldn't stop and could only drive in daylight, so I didn't get to see much of anything I wanted to stop and look at. However, the views from the window (straight shot across the country from Spokane to Syracuse on I90) was wonderful.

All the states "left" (West) of Wisconsin even LOOK geographically different as you pass through them. Idaho was gorgeous (but terrifying, we were coming down a mountain and an 18-wheeler had to cut across Infront of us because it lost its breaks!) Montana was amazing, everything was so pretty - Except Wyoming. F Wyoming. And Illinois. Wyoming gets one more chance because I could see the mountains in the far distance and I'm willing to bet that part looks less like a cat litter pan.

But the mountains were so beautiful. I wish I could have stopped to see them (anything).

 

Nice pictures Wenchie
If the weather is nice I reckon the beach is the place to be
Years ago I used to go bush with my 4X4 and camp out in the mountains with just a tent or a swag and it was really nice seeing the beautiful scenery and being in the middle of nowhere. At least here in Australia you don't have to worry about bears or other big critters attacking your camp......I live in Victoria so no crocodiles either hehehe.
If the kids like bush walks then maybe that's the answer

 

Doesn't literally everything in Australia have the ability, if not the will, to kill you? It seems like on the documentaries. I still want to go.

 

Hehehe yep we seem to have struck it big time when it comes to venomous/poisonous creatures as a lot of the critters here rank as the most venomous in the world and we have a lot of them.
With a bit of care and common sense you are pretty safe. The trick is to know what the dangers are in the area you may be exploring and take precautions. Our spiders and snakes and also some marine life are really deadly but there is usually antivenom available so long as you stay calm and get to a hospital quickly you will probably have a good outcome. Of course the problem is that Australia is a huge country that is mostly sparsely populated and in a remote area there may not be a hospital and you will need to rely on the Flying Doctor Service to come and that may take too long.
We don't have bears, lions, tigers, leopards, wolves or other big predators in the wild although in the north of our country we do have some nasty saltwater crocodiles in rivers and estuaries and in the coastal swampy areas plus as a bonus, all around the coast we have white pointer sharks, grey nurse sharks and tiger sharks all of which are known to attack humans. Popular beaches in Australia mostly have surf life saving patrols and shark watchers to warn swimmers to get out of the water when a shark is spotted.

The biggest risk is foreign visitors wanting to tour the outback in the centre of Australia and they may hire a mobile home or a campervan and not realise how far it is between towns and run out of fuel then a day or two later run out of water as it is extremely hot even in Winter (it is called the red centre for a reason) and there are almost no rivers or streams. If they don't have a satellite phone then they may not see anyone for a week or two. There are large areas of Australia with no mobile phone coverage and two way radios generally only work line of sight and that is if someone is monitoring for transmissions. In this case pay to go on a tour with a tour guide and several other vehicles with vehicles that have been prepared for this type of journey, the extra money paid is worth it to ensure your safety.

On the whole visitors are pretty safe here and there is plenty of things to see and do that you won't find anywhere else in the world. If you stay around the coast where most of the population lives you will have plenty of hospitals and doctors if needed.

Now for a humorous song by the Scared Weird Little Guys

 

Here there are definitely things that can kill you (mostly Americans, but some places there's bears and alligators) some venomous/poisonous things. Mostly weather. And it's only certain parts of the country.

We're roughly the same size, and there's a lot more desert in Australia, so imagine for pretend that Perth to Melbourne across the bottom of the country was mostly desert or balls hot, and had all the gators, they have snakes and spiders that can melt flesh. Queensland had some bears, but not like the area of the Great Sandy Desert, those bears can eat the Queensland bears. There are some great cats in there, but nobody ever sees them, and in the mountains, there are also snakes. Each part had a different kind of weather that could put you under.

 

That's my lame visual comparison of the US and AU. I live in Queensland in that scenario, but kinda in the middle of it. I can't decide if I want to go northeast to the coast where it's all mountains and beach, or someplace different entirely.

 

I live in the rural Gippsland region of Victoria and we have brown snakes, tiger snakes, copperhead snakes and red back spiders as well as paralysis ticks. There are lots of other critters but these are the ones that could kill or harm you the most. We have lived here for almost 6 years and my property backs onto farmland and in this time we have only had a baby brown snake in the garage after a storm and he left of his own accord. We do have red back spiders in the garden shed and near the garage back door but these are sprayed with long term insecticide once a year by a pest control company as we don't want our doggo with a red back bite as that would be fatal. In my area the only predators with any size are dingoes and foxes and these usually flee from humans and only attack if cornered.
I live 15km from the coast and from the top of my backyard I can see Westernport Bay and French Island in the distance. It is really handy because if we want to go for a drive in the mountains we head north and if we want to go to the beach then we head south. There are National Parks and forests at nearby Gembrook and Mount Burnet so if you want to go for a picnic or BBQ it is not too far to go. Cardinia Reservoir is also fairly close and a large part of the complex is open to the public for picnics and BBQs and the park rangers run nocturnal bushwalks two nights a week and you go out for a bush walk after dark to look at all the nocturnal animals in the area. We used to take our kids and it is really family friendly.
What part of the US are you in? Hmmm....you said you have gators so does that mean you are somewhere near Florida? Our typical weather is that it is mostly hot. We only get snow in the mountains in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania during Winter. Around the coast it is usually in the range of 10°C to 30°C. During summer it often gets to over 40°C during the day and a low of 30°C overnight.....luckily we have some good air conditioners lol

If you are interested here is a thread I started when I was about to buy my house and there is a lot of old MG member's posts....it is worth a read.....about half way through there are some pics of the house we bought
https://forums.majorgeeks.com/threads/opinions-please.318648/

 

New York - State, not the City - when I said "we" I meant the country. "I" have nothing. The snakes are up in the mountains, the bears come this far south so rarely that it makes the news when they do, and it's generally too cold for recluse/widows. Or it was, that seems to be changing. The only thing we really have is cold and excessive snow.

I really like the house. It's very pretty. I'm trying to save up to buy a new one when my kids no longer need their special education program(s). About half way there!

 

I get the cold because you border Canada and they sure know about cold too!!! Don't you have the Catskill Mountains? That would be really scenic to visit although it is probably even colder up in the mountains. There must be places to ski and that would be of great interest to me. I always said if I have enough spare cash I would go skiing in the Rockies and here I am old and almost blind with myriad health issues and now with spare cash.... but I have missed my window of opportunity so now I can just dream about how it could have been

Thanks we like the house too, it is really welcoming and feels like a happy place. Since purchase we have put up a huge pergola in the courtyard with a 7 foot ceiling fan and a Merbau timber deck and two 6 burner stainless steel gas BBQs with hoods and rotisseries. So now we can sit out in the courtyard under the pergola nibbling some freshly cooked food and sipping a glass of red wine while surrounded by trees and shrubs....our own mini jungle. We run the fan mostly to keep the insects away as they don't like flying in turbulent air and using the fan means we don't have to keep spraying pesticide or burn citronella candles to eat in peace. We tried a couple of large bug zappers but they make a lot of crackling noises when they are burning the insects and the burning smell isn't too good either
We have also planted over 200 trees and shrubs and now most are over 3 metres high which shields our fence lines from our neighbours. Right up the back yard we put in 5 large raised garden beds for growing vegies and 9 citrus trees being a mandarin tree, a blood orange tree, a navel orange tree, a tahitian lime tree, a kaffir lime tree, a cumquat tree a eureka lemon tree, a lemonade tree and a meyer lemon tree and also five fruit trees being a peach tree, an apricot tree, a plum tree, a nectarine tree, a blood plum tree plus two avocado trees that promptly died. Lucky Mrs. joffa is the green thumb otherwise we would still be buying vegies lol

Good luck finding a house that you like that isn't a crazy price. Yeah bringing up kids is expensive and makes saving for a house difficult. We were lucky when we bought the current house because our kids had already moved out and the 6 bedroom house we bought in 1991 sold for a huge sum so we could get what we wanted rather than taking what we could get and making do.
Keep going with the programs and good luck with your kids and I hope everything goes well for you

 

The kids don't like hiking, per se, because they're from the plugged-in generation and there's no WIFI in the mountains, but like like when I forcefully drag them places and they get to see new things.

I have to be careful with the "baby" (he's 13, but he's MY baby, dammit) because he's an alabaster red head with Dermatographia whose skin turns red and damages when you look at it funny, and SPF 100 only works for so long. Maybe we could go to Connecticut, or Maine and see both? Maybe there's stuff to do besides hiking that I could interest them in.

Maybe can go see this in the Catskills: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2175 on our way through to CT or something. I was just hoping for some ideas. I have to plan everything myself and with my recent condition(s) it's kinda hard.

 

Hmmm....redheads and the beach don't go very well together and probably just as bad hiking on a sunny day. I suppose going out on an overcast day would be better but there is still a lot of UV bouncing off the clouds. A good sunscreen and sun smart clothes help but you can still get sunburnt even when taking the best precautions. When our kids were little they were both blue eyed blondes and you had to be so careful as over here there is a lot of sun and sunny days and skin cancer is a common outcome of getting sunburn too often
Our kids were in the Scouts and went camping and hiking regularly and they also did a bit of orienteering when they were older. My son also used to compete in mountain bike races down the sides of big mountains on his mountain bike.....but still given the chance they would be stuck in front of a screen playing some game or other and trying to get them to do their chores took plenty of patience once they were teenagers.
The giant kaleidoscope looks interesting and I am guessing it will either be totally cool or totally crap.
Maybe you could look online at towns on the way for tourist ideas. Maybe see if there are any decent museums or historical society displays as these activities over here are usually very cheap or often free. Maybe a trip to the zoo or maybe a chair lift ride in the mountains although these may cost $$$

Isn't Maine where they have all the lobsters and giant crabs? I really like lobster/crayfish but over here it is really expensive because most of Australia's lobster/crayfish catch goes to Asia where they pay crazy prices and so the Aussie fishermen expect to get the same crazy prices here. When I was younger and before we were exporting to Japan a whole fresh crayfish was about $20/kg and now it is anything up to $180/kg and half of a small 600g crayfish in a restaurant is now about $140.....a bit rich for me so I eat steak although that is now getting a bit pricey too.
Good luck in your search for ideas

 

Yeah, they're famous for the seafood. I intend to get in on that action.

 

Thanks for all the ideas, guys. We have to wait to see what the finance situation looks like when we're ready to go.

If it improves: We're going to take a plane to WA state and drive back, stopping to see whatever we want along the way.
If it does not: We're going to drive to ME, find a cheap place to stay, and explore the trails in Millinocket and the coast along the way there.