4 ms·

Most of the wilderness is quite nondescript, though. There are far too many people for the few amazing sites. Compare to Norway, the Mediterranean coast and isl

Most of the wilderness is quite nondescript, though. There are far too many people for the few amazing sites. Compare to Norway, the Mediterranean coast and islands, the Alps, and the Canary Islands.

dougmwne 5y ago
Europe has no true wilderness and is not even in this race. Huge areas of the US are essentially untouched, no visitors, no buildings, no roads, just primal Earth. The Alps are practically suburban in comparison to the Rockies.
- deleted 5y ago
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- mortehu 5y ago
  I wasn't really talking about unvisited regions, so the Alps wasn't meant to be an example of that. I think you should be pretty easily able to find more remote wilderness if you look to the North or the East. Recall that Europe is larger than US, although of course a large part of that is very remote.
- DetroitThrow 5y ago
  He edited his original comment to omit "repetitive", which made it even more chuckle-worthy. I've driven through most of the places he mentions in Europe, and with that knowledge it seems even more arbitrarily chauvinistic to try to claim the limited areas he mentions are close to the diversity of the entirety of the US or North America. While I love several of the national parks in France, their nature of being so clustered ends up being much more repetitive than the gigantic sequoias, brutal deserts, enormous mountains, and temperate rainforests one can experience in the USA - and that's just west of the Mississippi.
  - mortehu 5y ago
    The fact on the ground is that if you visit a tiny 100 foot waterfall in Pennsylvania, there will be a parking lot, a $25 entrance fee, a gift shop, a show every two hours, and security rails around the path. The travel distances between sights most people would want to see are vast, and hence the crowding. Go to Niagara falls, and there's literally an amusement park.
    - dougmwne 5y ago
      That one's on the Canadians. Our side is nice little park. I've done a lot of hiking on the east coast and even a managed park with an entry fee and a visitor center with a little movie will have hundreds of miles of wild trails. 1% of it will be for the car tourists with railings, pavement, strollers and small children. Yellowstone for example, for as touristy as the main areas are, has 900 miles of trails. It is incredibly wild. Our protection of public lands is a crowning achievement. We have 7,000 state and national parks covering an area roughly the size of Spain. Sorry you didn't like the park you visited in PA.
      - DetroitThrow 5y ago
        And considering the problems he seemingly has with the state of US parks is worse in Europe in those same French national parks, the black forest, the alps... Well, I suppose he already declared crowds weren't an issue in Europe, but I'm surprised to see him bring it up against US parks given the state of the "wilderness" he has been to.
      - mortehu 5y ago
        For comparison, the city of Oslo has more than 1500 miles of marked and maintained trails, and this isn't even a destination for hiking.

Most of the wilderness is quite nondescript, though. There are far too many people for the few amazing sites. Compare to Norway, the Mediterranean coast and islands, the Alps, and the Canary Islands.

dougmwne 5y ago

Europe has no true wilderness and is not even in this race. Huge areas of the US are essentially untouched, no visitors, no buildings, no roads, just primal Earth. The Alps are practically suburban in comparison to the Rockies.

deleted 5y ago
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mortehu 5y ago
I wasn't really talking about unvisited regions, so the Alps wasn't meant to be an example of that. I think you should be pretty easily able to find more remote wilderness if you look to the North or the East. Recall that Europe is larger than US, although of course a large part of that is very remote.
DetroitThrow 5y ago
He edited his original comment to omit "repetitive", which made it even more chuckle-worthy. I've driven through most of the places he mentions in Europe, and with that knowledge it seems even more arbitrarily chauvinistic to try to claim the limited areas he mentions are close to the diversity of the entirety of the US or North America. While I love several of the national parks in France, their nature of being so clustered ends up being much more repetitive than the gigantic sequoias, brutal deserts, enormous mountains, and temperate rainforests one can experience in the USA - and that's just west of the Mississippi.
- mortehu 5y ago
  The fact on the ground is that if you visit a tiny 100 foot waterfall in Pennsylvania, there will be a parking lot, a $25 entrance fee, a gift shop, a show every two hours, and security rails around the path. The travel distances between sights most people would want to see are vast, and hence the crowding. Go to Niagara falls, and there's literally an amusement park.
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    That one's on the Canadians. Our side is nice little park. I've done a lot of hiking on the east coast and even a managed park with an entry fee and a visitor center with a little movie will have hundreds of miles of wild trails. 1% of it will be for the car tourists with railings, pavement, strollers and small children. Yellowstone for example, for as touristy as the main areas are, has 900 miles of trails. It is incredibly wild. Our protection of public lands is a crowning achievement. We have 7,000 state and national parks covering an area roughly the size of Spain. Sorry you didn't like the park you visited in PA.
    - DetroitThrow 5y ago
      And considering the problems he seemingly has with the state of US parks is worse in Europe in those same French national parks, the black forest, the alps... Well, I suppose he already declared crowds weren't an issue in Europe, but I'm surprised to see him bring it up against US parks given the state of the "wilderness" he has been to.
    - mortehu 5y ago
      For comparison, the city of Oslo has more than 1500 miles of marked and maintained trails, and this isn't even a destination for hiking.