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You need a wetsuit to swim in saltwater in Vancouver as well as Seattle.
That said, we also have inland fresh water...Seattle mostly. It can be far warmer, relatively speaking.
Who swims in the ocean anyway? I rarely see anyone swim in the ocean in real life. Mostly I see surfing and splashing around and even the splashing around is mostly kids. I do recall an LA versus Miami beaches thread and many that picked Miami said that they swim in the ocean often, but I personally never see it that often on either coast.
Staten Island? Not sure if you’re being serious. And upstate NY isn’t in the NYC metro. It’s upstate.
The beauty on the east coast is different than the west. Out west the outdoors become very rugged and isolated very quickly. Because of the mountains I guess. And the mountains near the pacific are much closer than back east. So close in fact that Malibu is currently being evacuated due to fires in nearby mountains.
We, in NYC call it........upstate New York.....!!!!! And is not in the NYC metro.....
Staten Island? Not sure if you’re being serious. And upstate NY isn’t in the NYC metro. It’s upstate.
The beauty on the east coast is different than the west. Out west the outdoors become very rugged and isolated very quickly. Because of the mountains I guess. And the mountains near the pacific are much closer than back east. So close in fact that Malibu is currently being evacuated due to fires in nearby mountains.
Staten Island has a lot of shoreline and a large proportion of parks throughout, some of them very large in size.
There’s a lot of pretty accessible nature going up the Hudson Valley and to the Catskills. Some nice beaches on Long Island and New Jersey to boot. NYC actually has within its metro a pretty good selection of nature. I just wish they had reserved more parts of Long Island.
Staten Island has a lot of shoreline and a large proportion of parks throughout, some of them very large in size.
There’s a lot of pretty accessible nature going up the Hudson Valley and to the Catskills. Some nice beaches on Long Island and New Jersey to boot. NYC actually has within its metro a pretty good selection of nature. I just wish they had reserved more parts of Long Island.
Staten Island isn’t preserved nature though. It’s a landfill that nature grew on top of. And it’s hardly comparable to nice outdoors areas of the US.
How easily accessible do you all feel LA's beaches are? The city itself is set a bit inland, unlike SD with the waterfront.
Venice, Pacific Palisades, and Del Rey are all beach neighborhoods in the city of LA. LA is just so massive with many different types of areas that it can't really be singularly defined as either. 70 miles of coastline in LA County even more when you add Orange County. Overall SD is more beach oriented, but LA has the same atmosphere within the coastal areas.
Southwest cities don't do good on the urban front but are great for outdoor recreation. Vegas, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Tucson, are close to a large variety of options. In 3 out of 4 of those cities (sans Phoenix) you can ski within about an hour or two drive and be in the warm desert in the same day. Tucson proper (so yes, city limits) has two national parks. Phoenix has the largest urban park in the United States. Vegas has some cool red rocks on the west side. Albuquerque has the Rio Grande which probably has some neat stuff to hike and see. But all four of these cities have plenty of places to see within a two hour drive, and if you bump it to four, a whole lot more. The whole state of Arizona is basically a four hour drive (maybe 5 to Monument Valley) from Phoenix and well, there's a whole lot Arizona has.
Phoenix and LA are pretty similar urban wise, as they have the same city fabric, so at that point it comes down to preferences. LA traffic makes it difficult to get to some of the places nearby (i.e. Santa Monica to Palm Springs).
Anything over 70 is too hot to be out in the open for very long. And that's with a lot of sunblock. So I'll take areas with tree cover.
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