What do you love about your State?

Or alternatively, if you live outside the US, your province, country, or whatever else floats your boat. :)

Me, I love Massachusetts because:

Today my State legislature overwhelmingly said NO to an Constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality!

Also, we have beautiful beaches, gorgeous forests, diverse cities and towns: Boston, Worcester, Northampton, Amherst, Springfield (kinda :P)...

The Freedom Trail, Whale watches, The Berkshires, the Patriots and Red Sox! (sorry Celtics.. :shrug:)

Fresh seafood, kickass Chowdah, maple syrup, Boston Baked Beans, Boston Cream Pie :D

What do you love about *your state"?

especially today, because of the vote :party:

But that's not the only reason I love this state.

The history alone is enough to make me teary eyed.

The weather is beautiful; I love the seasons.

and then there's the food...

You and b_b are correct ... you left Lynn being totally fucking awesome, but I forgive yahs.

WICKED PISSAH!!

I am allergic to snow and pathologically adverse to below freezing temperatures.

We have a totally amusing tourist spectrum with the utter fakeness of Mickey and Universal on one extreme and gorgeous natural attractions on the other. We send up the Space Shuttle one day and rank at the bottom quarter for science education the next.

We have Fantasy Fest in Key West and gay days at Disney in a state that forbids gay couples to marry or adopt kids. (Though they can foster for eons.)

We are a blue state turned red by computer manipulation.

We are in the midst of a special legislative session to reduce taxes while people scream for better public services and improvement in education.

The bi-polar nature of this state is simply beyond compare.

We have such incredible potential....but all that could be moot when the sea levels rise by 20+ feet due to climate change.

:hide:

That was funny! :rofl:

potholes.

and good public transportation, and if you head upstate we have great forests, gorges, rivers and waterfalls. This is a beautiful state.

I was just being a wise ass as per usual.

I do infact live upstate. I love the 4 seasons, the mountains, and our proximity to many major cities.

Potholes to HELL!!!!!!!!!!



lost

And we have cool license plates.

Despite some horrible throwback legislation recently.

The Great Lakes -- miles and miles of gorgeous beaches; smooth and sandy on the Lake Michigan side, rocky and rugged on the Lake Huron side, majestic and wild on the Lake Superior side.

Whitefish! You have to try it.

Mackinac Island; a step back in time and so historic.

Spellbindingly beautiful autumn color.

Pistons, Red Wings, Tigers, University of Michigan, and (shut up) the Lions. What other routinely dreadful team sells out their stadium every home game?

We put the world on wheels (although many of our friends seem to have forgotten that).

Arsenal of Democracy.

Canada -- so close, so great.

The mighty Mackinac Bridge.

The Upper Peninsula -- all of it.

Not being Ohio....

So much, so much, so much. You have to visit!

...them's fightin words! :grr::rofl:

Put-In-Bay
and Ceder Point

GREAT PLACES.......


lost

But not Cedar Point. Honky tonk.

Michigan and Ohio have been enemies since Ohio tried to block Michigan's statehood and we went to war over Toledo.

Everybody recycles and cares about the environment

It's CLEAN here

It's civilized, less crime, etc.

There are not so many HUMMERS and SUVs

Economy is in excellent shape

Beer is fabulous

My homestate:

1.5 hours from the Atlantic Ocean

Wuter ice (that's not a typo!)

Chicken Cheese steaks

NY is lush, green, basically friendly people, and lots of culture.

My home state of RI has great chowdah too, clam cakes, Dell's frozen lemonade, Newport Creamery (which isn't so great anymore), Narragansett Bay and the ocean, and the best coffee milk evah. People are basically assholes though.

i love it! :bounce:

I get some every time I go home (in season). I bought Dell's powder packets last time I was there. You can make it in the blender. It was damn expensive, but worth the price having a little piece of home anytime I want it.

RI is sort of like the bastard suburb of Mass. It grows on you like a PITA little sister.

I lived in Woooooooooonsocket for 12 years.

And Lincoln Park, they steal my money once a month, bastards!

:hugs:

Providence is definitely growing into a cool city though.

lol...just kidding

I love the closeness to the beach, being close to major cities but can find areas rural enough to hide from everybody, the food (Italian especially) and the produce (we aren't called the Garden State ironically y'know) and I love the people...Jersey people rule, we are as tough as nails but a lot nicer than you would think

especially in this part of the state. I prefer the whole mountain region rather than being limited to NC.

The culture is unique. Not enough diversity though.

People from here are generally friendly.

Thing is.. I WANT OUT! hehe

:hi:

Pennsylvania is home to two wonderful traditional amusement parks, Kennywood and Knoebels, along with others, Waldameer, Dorney Park, Hersheypark, Lakemont Park, Dutch Wonderland, and DelGrosso's. Unfortunately we're losing two of our parks this year. Conneaut Lake won't be opening this year, and everything at William's Grove is now up for auction.

If you visit PA, make sure you visit our amusement parks!

:bounce:

I love the change of seasons even though I hate winter.

:hi:

It is absolutely beautiful! ;)

Small fishing towns full of great food and interesting people...


Fantastic beaches and water...


Interesting wildlife, kayaking, and parks...


Funky tourist attractions...


and, of course, the weather!

with in the next year
Key West to be exact...
When I do I will have an open invitation
to anyone to visit !!!!!!!!




lost

It's like living inside of a lush, untamed, tree-filled garden for most of the year. Forests, rivers, hills and ridges, all of it so beautiful you could weep for seeing it. Pepperoni rolls are a regional treat, and something every kid here grows up eating.

barbeque, collard greens, Calabash shrimp

all-around SWEET state.

hundreds of smaller ones that are now surrounded by a marine sanctuary, the world's most isolated urban center, many endemic (not found elsewhere) plant species, about fifteen different kinds of ethnic food, and (until recently) Don Ho. :-)

edit: Oh yes, the breakdown in the state House is 43-8 Dem, and in the Senate, it's 20-5. How we blew forty (40) straight years of Dem governorship, I will never know. :grr:

It being Hawaii and all that :P

Someday, I'll visit there.

LOL, I'm working at Don Ho's Island Grill for the summer...suck em up!





I'm from California originally and like everything outside the cities and the agricultural hinterlands i.e. the Coast Ranges and the Sierra Nevada's.

Point Reyes



San Francisco Bay



Salton Sea



The campus of UC Berkeley



GO As!!!!!!!!!!

Mz Pip
:dem:

*sniff* ~ gets all nostalgic and ponders lost youth ~

:hi:

who want to build a pro-sports stadium for their team and who simply must dip into the public tax $$ to do so. That and Iowa Corn-Fed Beef. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! :9

Redstone

German cooking at its finest!

the side trips to the Amanas for dinner were great.

I could live in Eastern Iowa, and be happy. It's real America, right there. (I've never been in the western part of the state, and it may be just as nice.)

Redstone

It's a very comfortable place to be. Cedar Rapids has a lot to offer, even Waterloo too, and Iowa City. There are parts of western Iowa that are very very conservative and delight in being stuck in the 1950's however.

Sioux City has a surprisingly lively gay community, for example, even though it's in Steve King's district. And I was introduced to localvorism in western Iowa, but a bunch of cool hippie types in Wright County! Iowa is just a cool place all-around. At least, that was my experience.

out in the rural areas, the smaller towns.

I hope to return to rural Iowa some day. I'll certainly retire there. I'd like to work there again, though. Some really interesting folks--and some true progressives.

There's a lot of things that are attractive about this area. Throw in a good bookstore like a Border's and it wouldn't be bad at all. There are a number of people from the east coast living here, wanting to move out of the congestion, but not wanting to live 500 miles from civilization.

and in rural Iowa, I can avoid 'em. In Illinois, every town looks EXACTLY like the next. I guess there are people who want that, but none for me, thanks!

The amenities of both city and country.

Been eating there since I was a kid!

It's really nice to focus on the good of our places, instead of the bad. A nice break...thank you all for your contibutions! :grouphug:

Minnesota -

Seasons
Lakes
BLUE skies (not gray hazy skies)
Thunderstorms
Fall colors
Courteous people

:)

You're a MN refugee in CA :hug:

:rofl:

:thumbsup:

Still, Okoboji is nice.

This (Ecola State Park)



This: (Mt. Hood)



Forests like this:



Wonderful Portland:



And Northwest cuisine using fresh, local ingredients:

We get all extremes of weather-- sometimes in the same day if you're lucky. Plus we haven't given our electoral votes to a Republican since 1972.

But it is better than Kansas.

Miniature
Maryland possesses a great variety of topography, hence its nickname: "America in Miniature." It ranges from sandy dunes dotted with seagrass in the east, to low marshlands teeming with water snakes and large bald cypress near the bay, to gently rolling hills of oak forest in the Piedmont Region, and mountain pine groves in the west.

Ft. McHenry, the Domino sugar plant, the Skipjack races, sand, surf, mountains, hot, cold, all four seasons, the Chesapeake Bay (crabs, oysters and the Rockfish). Baltimore, Annapolis & Ocean City. MD has it all.

History, food, scenery, fun & diversity.

I also live very near the Washington Mystics, Washington Wizards, Washington Capitals, Washington Nationals, DC Divas, and THE WASHINGTON REDSKINS, which now reside in Landover at FedEx field.

The practice field in Ashburn, VA (Redskin Park) is about 15 miles from where I currently live.

Great food:

Steamed Crabs
Silver Queen corn
Stuffed Rockfish
cornbread
tomatoes
MD fried chicken

except for the Washington sports teams! :) If you haven't done so already, take the Santa Clause Express out of Cumberland up to Frostburg this winter. It's a nice picturesque train ride through the hills of Western Maryland where you get lunch and, if you have kids, a visit from Santa. When we took it, a gentle snow began to fall when we reached Frostburg. It was a beautiful way to start the Christmas season!

but there isn't much i love about it actually :D

:shrug:

Everyone knows about the good things: the redwoods, the Sierras, the beaches, the Bay Area.... but I also like that the WHOLE STATE isn't like that. There's a lot of diversity in both landscape and people.

:D

And Oklahomans take care of each other. We're no stranger to tragedy, be it tornadoes, terrorism or floods. WHen something bad shakes out state, heck any state, Oklahomans reach out. If your house burns down, and you're on the news, no less than 60 people will come to your aid. It's a really freaking awesome community to live it. Now if they could just take care of the less fortunate this way all the time, but that's probably too much to ask.
Duckie

For all of the reasons you said (except hey--Springfield is my birthplace and COOL! ;-) and because the people are mostly liberal and openminded.

And don't forget Cape Cod!

I don't even live there anymore and I think it's the best state. :loveya:

Massachusetts is home. I guess it always will be from now on...
This is where I was born and raised. I always come back here.

I love the smell of autumn and colorful leaves, in the cold crisp air!
I love the vivid blue skies in autumn and I love the first snowfall.
I love White Horse Beach and the roar of the waves on Race Point.
I love spending time at our cape house in P-Town and drinking beers
on the porch, as we laugh and watch the tourists walk by and peek at us! :P
I love spring and the crocus peeking out of a late winter snow.
I love that I can pretty much say what I want and I don't get browbeat.
I love that a lot of people around me think like me and vote like me!
I love the diversity in my present neighborhood and I'll be sad when I move.

Now... ask me what I hate!! :rofl:

Tailgaters!!!!! :grr:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Abbingtion, MA Fall Foliage


Wellesley - Babson College


Race Point, Provincetown, MA.


Race Point Beach, Provincetown, MA.


White Horse Beach, Plymouth, MA.


and



Mt. Greylock, MA.

Does that make sense?

Redstone

Oh yeah Im from Bama.

mountains, forests, foothills, lakes, rivers, beaches.. wildcats, bears, wolves, it's just perfect!
I live in Virginia now though, which is okay, at least the weather's kinda the same, but someday I'll move back to NC

but right now I can't think of any :D

Rivers, the ocean, sandy beaches, rocky beaches, forests, deserts, chaparral, hills, mountains, valleys, boondocks, huge ass metro areas.

No other state encompasses as much diversity as CA

2 hours north and be in the mountains and lakes
or I can go 1 1/2 south and be at the shore.... the ocean with sand and beach, boardwalk and rides!!!!!
2 1/2 hours is AC and the OCEAN.......
40 minutes north east is NYC!!!!

2 hours west is Hershey Park...

JERSEY ROCKS!!!!
Oh yeah we have the Jersey devil
AND our own magazine
WEIRD NJ!!!


nuff said



lost

Well, it's home.

The food's to die for, if you're not a vegan.
BBQ everywhere.

The Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham.

US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville.

Sugar-white Gulf Shores and Dauphin Island
beaches (sorry, Florida, but yours just don't
compare. Except, of course, Ft Walton and Panama
City).

Ft Paine, home of the best country-rock group EVER-
Alabama. Nice scenery in the Appalachian foothills, too!

The people are friendly, overall. We're not too overbuilt (yet). The Northwoods are in a class by themselves.

And the three months of road construction make the nine months of winter seem not so bad after all.

I love the Ozark Mountains, along with its fall foliage...

I love our 600000 acres of lakes, along with some of the finest trout and bass fishing in the country...

I love the fact that people are generally helpful, and willing to make you feel at home...

I love the Razorbacks(NCAA) and the Travelers(AA Angels' Affiliate)

I could go on forever, but I shall not...

...that you can still afford to purchase a decent house in a decent neighborhood and not have a 40 year mortgage to be able to afford the payments.

Piyoush Jindal (R), who has to change his name to "Bobby" to get all of the racists to vote for him, is about to become our Governor. And honestly I can't say that our current Governor Kathleen Blanco (D) is any better. There's a few Democrats that I'd rather see be Goveror than Piyoush, but for many of them it's very hard to find a difference.

The only thing that keeps people showing up to vote for most of the Democrats in this state, is that the Republicans say and do unbelievable things. You'd be amazed how much more you want to vote for Mary Landrieu after her opponent Suzzie Terrell accuses her of having "lost her Catholicism".

But yea there's quite a few good things about Louisiana. For starters, our food is to die for.

:-)

There are a great many reasons to love the state of Washington, it has mountains and a desert and the ocean and Starbucks but right now my dog Karma is what I love most about this state. (Friends and relatives who may lurk here: I love you all too but you are NOT curled up at my feet right at this moment!)

yee ha!

There's a chance to meet politicians every 4 years and that's about it. The old saw about low/no taxes is baloney - they get you on everything else and you practically need a permit to look cross eyed. Knowing what I know now, I would have stayed in Vermont. On the plus side, we live in a nice location that we're happy with.

Especially the Lake Winnipesaukee area and the White Mountains.

Cities with a rich cultural life, farms, forests, mountains, beaches, a large amount of the best colleges. Most of all, I love the people. I love the type that has been here forever and I love the new immigrants who comes from every place on the globe to go to college and then decide they love Boston and they stay! Other places have particular communities of immigrants, here we have them from everywhere!

A center of education and research including some of the most brilliant minds in the world, tempered with the likes of hard-working fisherman and mill workers and everyone in between.

Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins...

Plymouth, where my ancestors landed and met my other ancestors.

The birthplace of the Revolution

AND THE FOOD, yes, the food (you forgot LOBSTER).... I concur with the OP.

And it's fun!

the people. Etc