THE (ALMOST) UNDELETED

I live in Sacramento, CA. I was not born here; I was born in Washington, D.C., and lived there for thirty years. I came here for school and really never left. My plan was originally to get the hell out to a "real" city, like Los Angeles, San Francisco or Seattle, but I never got around to it. Now I love it here and will probably stay until I retire (though my career may in fact take me to Seattle someday before that). Here are some pics of the town.



This is the city from our waterfront. Sacramento is the capitol of California. We have a very, very well developed Old Town here that has been reconstructed with a lot of Old West architecture. We are also a major transportation nexus, as two major river systems meet here, four major highway systems converge, the California Deep Water Canal ends here (giving us direct access to the Pacific). In the nineteenth century we were the terminus for the Pony Express, and the end of the transcontinental railroad. Gold and Transportation built up the city you see, though now we are a government and financial center for California. We also have an enormous agricultural base. Our two major crops are rice and tomatoes, though if it will grow in the ground anywhere on Earth, it will grow in the Sacramento Valley, and likely does somewhere. The picture below shows some of the Old West stuff. The building on the right we call Darth Vader. The onle on the left is our federal courthouse:



The picture above was taken from the docks of this building. It was the corporate headquarters for The Money Store (a high-risk, short term lender and financer of durable goods) until they went belly up in the 90's. Now it is the HQ for the California Department of General Services:



The Tower Bridge is one of our landmarks, and you will see it in most touristey photos of the city. It connects West Sac with Sac, and will in a few years be the starting point of our proposed River Walk.



We are well known for our foliage here, and have more trees by number and per capita than any other city in the U.S., second in the world only to Paris. This is our Roman Catholic Cathedral.



Our baseball team, The Sacramento River Cats, are one of the best teams in all of AAA baseball, and our stadium, Raley Field, is the envy of even some major leaguers:



We had modest beginnings:

Looks like a really nice city Omph!

I live in Vancouver Canada but I was born and grew up in Edmonton, which has a pretty large footprint, but not a very big downtown. About a million people give or take. It is very spread out and doesn't have very many trees. I'm probably moving to Calgary this spring, which is basically a slightly bigger, more metropolitan, cleaner version of Edmonton. The main downside to Calgary is that there is a big rodeo there ever year. Why is that a down side? Because rodeos = coyboys, and cowboys are trouble makers. We call it Cow-town.

I'll put up a picture of each, because I'm not really too patriotic about any of them.

Vancouver is my favorite so far because it's mostly immigrants and has diverse ethnic groups, which I really prefer over having to look at pasty white people all day. It has a pretty bad homeless population because it never gets very cold here (maybe snows a couple days a year and barely drops below zero degrees). It has amazing old buildings and great amounts of trees, though there are no buildings older than 1886, because that year the entire city burned down (seriously, the whole thing).

Here's some views of the downtown, I live in the south which isn't so interesting to look at, no tall buildings.





And here's Edmonton. Its claim to fame was that it had the biggest mall in the world for a long time, then they built a bigger one in the states, so Edmonton built theirs bigger so it was the biggest again, and now I think there's one in India that's way bigger, I think Edmonton has given up now.

Both of these are from pretty much the same angle, but one shows the Aurora Borealis.





And Calgary. I don't know that much about Calgary.

I was born and raised in what is now Hamilton. I grew up in the area known as flamborough, but also had close ties to nearby dundas.
Hamilton is known as the "waterfall capital of the world." with over 100 waterfalls within the city limits (most in flamborough/dundas) and hundreds (possibly thousands) of acres of conservation area around the spencer creek watershed, it's a beautiful area to visit.
EDIT TO ADD DETAILS OF HOW MUCH CONSERVATION AREA IS IN HAMILTON (TAKEN FROM HAMILTON CONSERVATION AUTHORITY WEBSITE):
453 square kilometres (175 square miles) is land-based, with the balance comprising Hamilton Harbour and parts of Lake Ontario. Within this area, we hold in public trust 4,400 hectares (10,700 acres) of land. These include 14 significant Niagara Escarpment properties, seven major conservation areas, a magnificent 121-km trail network, 12 significant wetlands, breath-taking waterfalls, and underground streams and caves.
below are some of the sights along trails in flamborough/dundas:

hamilton is known as the hammer and also as steel town, due to its two major steel mills that love to create artificial clouds everywhere:

the city is still quite nice, heavily treed downtown, and with a decent bar scene in Hess village; a routine stop for the students at the 3 universities and colleges in town:


i'll always be a resident of flamborough in my heart, but at least hamilton has a great library system.

Glasgow

I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana but I've lived in Georgia most of my life.

I grew up in Marietta (Pop. 58,478 - 2000):

Marietta was founded in 1842 and became the base for the Western Atlantic Railroad. Durring the American Civil war, it is the town where Andrew's Raiders borded the train, The General, and began what is know as The Great Locamotive Chase.
General Sherman burned it to the ground in 1864 along with Atlanta.

Virtual Tour

Now I live in Douglasville (Pop. 20,065 - 2000):

Douglasville was originally a native American landmark called Skint Chestnut after a promenently large, barkless chestnut tree on a topographic rise. It was established in 1875 and absolutely nothing has happened there since.

Listen to the Douglasville Police Department

To simplify usually I just say I'm from Atlanta, which is about thirty miles from both. The metro area is enourmous.

Panoramic Atlanta Skyline

Atlanta is the capital and the largest city in the U.S. state of Georgia with a population of 519,145, and the core city of the ninth most populous United States metropolitan area at 5,278,904, with a combined statistical area of 5,626,400. Atlanta is a world city that ranks as the 33rd-largest in the United States. It is the county seat of Fulton County, although a small portion of the city extends into DeKalb County. Residents of the city are known as Atlantans.

Atlanta has in recent years undergone a transition from a city of regional commerce to a city of international influence, and has been among the fastest growing cities in the developed world for much of the 1990s and 2000s. Between 2000 and 2006, the metropolitan area grew by 20.5%, making it the fastest growing metropolitan area in the nation. The Atlanta Metropolitan Area is the central metropolis of the Southeastern United States and is also the largest metropolitan area in the emerging megalopolis known as the Piedmont Atlantic MegaRegion

Freak, do you think you could shrink that monster, or maybe just post a link? Thanks

Omphalos wrote:Freak, do you think you could shrink that monster, or maybe just post a link? Thanks

Done, but I still have to pan right to see the pics by other people in the topic.

Freakzilla wrote:

Omphalos wrote:Freak, do you think you could shrink that monster, or maybe just post a link? Thanks

Done, but I still have to pan right to see the pics by other people in the topic.

Well, a little panning isnt so bad. But that monster was so big when I went to add a comment the dialog box was six screens to the right! It was a bit extreme. Thanks for fixing it, Freak.

Although I will admit it is not anywhere near as striking when shrunk like that.

inhuien wrote:Glasgow

Looks like they've cleaned it up a bit!

Suck in a lungfull of that fresh London air.



But it's not all like that, here's some pics of the area I grew up in -

Omph, whenever I go to Sacramento I make sure to visit the RailRoad museum, love it!

As for me, I was born in Yakima Washington and my father was with the Forest Service so I spent my early years in Oregon, Dry Creek, Toketee Falls Ranger Station, and Cottage Grove before ending up in Cloudcroft New Mexico.

Toketee Falls



Cottage Grove



Cloudcroft





Just above the trestle looking towards White Sands

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v285/ ... Basin2.jpg

The tunnel

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v285/ ... Tunnel.jpg


Just below the tunnel

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v285/ ... Basin1.jpg

Rob

Robspierre wrote:Omph, whenever I go to Sacramento I make sure to visit the RailRoad museum, love it!

We are members of the RR museum. My boy loves trains. In the upstairs section they have a couple of giant Thomas playsets for kids to play.

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... a=N&tab=wi

chanilover wrote:Looks like they've cleaned it up a bit!

Not to sure about that, I think the wind's just changed direction.

Other Atlanta attractions:



Stone Mountain is the largest granite stone in the world, home to the world's largest bas relief carving (Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis) and the birthplace of the KKK!

That should put you in the mood to vistit...

The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site: http://www.nps.gov/malu

We also have the world's largest aquarium: Aquarium Webcams

Rob: that is the coolest waterfall I've ever seen!

Freak : many trips to Stone Mountain; somewhere I've got some old pictures of myself with
the 53rd Alabama Partisan Ranger re-enactors, with the relief in the background.

And for historical accuracy, the organization that became the original Ku Klux Klan was formed
by John Lester, James Crowe, John Kennedy, Calvin Jones, Richard Reed, and Frank McCord in Pulaski, Tennessee,
on Christmas Eve, 1865. (You don't want to know why I know that. )

SandRider wrote:Freak : many trips to Stone Mountain; somewhere I've got some old pictures of myself with
the 53rd Alabama Partisan Ranger re-enactors, with the relief in the background.

And for historical accuracy, the organization that became the original Ku Klux Klan was formed
by John Lester, James Crowe, John Kennedy, Calvin Jones, Richard Reed, and Frank McCord in Pulaski, Tennessee,
on Christmas Eve, 1865. (You don't want to know why I know that. )

My bad, the second KKK was founded there in 1915.

33/6

Baraka Bryan wrote:Rob: that is the coolest waterfall I've ever seen!

The Umqua River in Douglas County Oregon has al ot of wonderful waterfalls and trails, many of them short hikes off the highway, I miss the water

Rob

I live in Springfield, the crappy capital of this decrepit state called Illinois. I've been here about 8 years now. It doesn't compare to the places above in beauty or interest. But ok, here are a few pics anyway.....

Abe Lincoln Museum:



Lincoln's tomb:



Can you tell a lot in this city revolves around Lincoln worship?

Lincoln's house:



Lincoln's law office. About three doors to the right there is a used bookstore where I shop all the time:



Here's the inside of the IL Dept. of Revenue building; I've never been in there, and didn't know what it looked like until I found this picture; wow, futuristic-spacey, they should use it in sci-fi films:



Here's the IL Dept. of Natural Resources building that I drive by every day:



Here's the Dana Thomas House by Frank Lloyd Wright:

Those state buildings are cool, L-K! The revenue building looks a bit like the inside of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in lovely Cleveland, OH.

I really like Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. Something about his stuff that never gets old for me, even though can probably get Falling Water toilet paper now

For some reason I thought you lived further south, like Mo or Ar or somewhere.

Omphalos wrote:For some reason I thought you lived further south, like Mo or Ar or somewhere.

I grew up at the very southern tip of IL, literally a 15 minute drive from MO and maybe an hour's drive from AR.

More pics! You've probably seen most of these a million time before -

Houses of Parliament -


Other touristy pics -




This is my favourite building, Swiss Re Tower, also known as The Gherkin -



This is City Hall, affectionately known as The Bollock -



This is Brick Lane in the East End, which does great, cheap curries. Competition is really fierce so they have guys standing outside all the curry houses trying to entice people in. You can usually do a deal for at least free starters and a free round of drinks before you go in.

some beautiful pictures of lovely places. Mine can't compare but here's a couple of pics from one of the small towns remaining.

We're so big we have our own caution light. Don't blink or you might miss the town as you drive through it.


The school is long closed but the building is still there.


our fancy town hall


The old outdoor theater where we use to do a play every year. It endied in 1999 after 19 seasons.


However, I leave out in the country so this is what I see on my way home:


all of these were taken on Christmas eve with a cell phone. The temperture was in the low 70s nice day. We can never tell with North Carolina weather. Hope you find them interesting. We're small but I'm proud to call it home and our volunteer fire department is the best in the county and among the top in the state (as far as I'm concerned)