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We spend a lot of time on this forum trying to impart to folks what living in Hawaii is like and frequently, we don't have a frame of reference to compare it to. Perhaps, we can get the Hawaii folks who visit the mainland to observe and mention what differences they noticed while they were there to give small examples of how and why Hawaii is different than the mainland.
For example, we just spend three weeks in Colorado and stayed with a variety of different people instead of hotels or motels. We started in Colorado Springs and there were several night stays in Telluride, Sante Fe (that's actually New Mexico, but mainland folks move from state to state easily), Weston and Denver.
Colorado Springs is south of Denver (mainland folks use North, South, East & West a lot, as well as highway numbers instead of names) and is a fairly large sized city. It is a working city and seems mostly middle class. A lot of folks there probably work in Denver, I know our hosts went to Denver about once a week to shop or for other reasons.
Telluride is small and sort of remote and up in the mountains. It is a cluster of small villages & towns tucked up in mountain crevices. Folks not only want to live up high, but they spend a lot of effort to get even higher. They value high mountains and seem to like the ones above 14,000 feet high. It seemed to be a place where there were folks with a lot of money and folks without much who cater to them. Most of the shops were boutique types. There was, however, a jazz festival going on at the time, so my view of that town is probably very skewed.
Sante Fe is very flat, very dusty, very dry and artsy, and not all that big by mainland standards, but quite large by Hawaii standards. Most of the buildings are just adobe cubes with no overhanging eaves at all. You'd think they'd want huge eaves to shade the sides of their houses, but apparently, the adobe is supposed to be insulation enough that they don't need the large eaves. Although, there was a lot of building going on and most of the new adobes were actually stick framed buildings with adobe mud on the outside. They will be relying on air conditioning to keep them comfortable in the summer, no doubt. As well as heating in the winter. It seemed to be more of a working type town than the little ones up in the mountains.
Weston is miniscule, not really a town at all, from what we saw of it. They are, however, fracking in that area so a lot of the water (most rural folks there get their water from wells) is not drinkable. Our hosts were able to light the water from one of their wells on fire. They are a bit ambivalent about fracking, though, since the oil companies pay everyone who owns land in that area - even if their land isn't itself being fracked - a monthly fee of several hundred dollars (more if they are actually fracking and drilling on the specific property). There didn't seem to be much employment in the area and it seemed to becoming a ghost town. This is just from a casual observation, though.
Denver and the outlying suburbs are freaking huge and has tons of just about everything.
The biggest problem we had was the altitude, we didn't want to do much for the first week or so, although I doubt that would be a problem for folks from Colorado moving to Hawaii. We got out of breath any time we did almost anything physical for the first several weeks and it was still noticeable after three weeks. By that time, it was mostly just a bit more effort to do things, not a huge one. But it was definitely there.
The biggest difference I noticed personally was a huge lack of humidity. One of the biggest parts of that was dry skin so we were slathering ourselves with moisturizers and creams. Cracked and dry lips, so we used loads of lip balm. Now that we are back home again, the thought of slathering on creams and moisturizers seems really icky and sticky. There is a certain lushness to high humidity which feels really good on your skin. At least on bare skin, if there is make up, one would suspect it would be icky. A draw back of the high humidity is mildew and we can tell which rooms and closets weren't aired out in the three weeks we were gone.
Folks in Colorado would leave potato chips out in a bowl on the table - overnight! - and the next morning they would not only still be crispy, but there wouldn't be any bugs in them, either. I found that somewhat shocking. Not that it would particularly matter, food prices seemed about half of what we are used to. Organic milk was $6 a gallon, regular milk was $2,25. I wanted to just go to the grocery and buy a bunch of stuff just because it was so cheap.
In the grocery stores, there were options such as bison available (I had to buy some and make Buffalo Pot Roast just to try it out - it was quite tasty!) and most of the groceries had a deli counter where you could get cheeses and meats cut to order. We have a deli counter in some of our groceries, but they usually cut and serve fresh things like poke (raw fish salad) instead of lunch meats and cheeses. All the mainland fish seemed to have been frozen at one time, including the fish on their sushi from the looks of it. There were a lot of differences in what was available, too. In Colorado Springs and Denver, every single chain store you've ever heard about was available. Plus a lot of other small mom-n-pop types. Every mall seemed to have a dental office as a "store". One strip mall even had a mutual fund store. I didn't go into it, but how odd is that?
All the houses we met up with were huge. Even if they didn't look that large from the outside, there was almost always a basement which doubled the visible area. For some reason, they all had lots of stairs, too. Dunno what it is with the mainland and stairs, but they seemed to have them everywhere. So what would look like a small bungalow from the street would turn out to have 3,000 square feet in it due to the basement and second floor.
Overall, there were a lot less bugs - except for the ones on the highway who were squished on the windshield. I didn't see any bugs in houses. There was a larger variety of wild life out in the yard, though. Squirrels were in the trees, rabbits were hopping about on the lawns, some of the folks had coyote problems (this was in a suburb of Denver) and deer had been eating gardens. A moose had wandered down the middle of a street in a town south of Colorado Springs, although that made the news so it probably wasn't common.
The weather didn't seem to be pleasant very often. By mid morning, it was hot enough to go find air conditioning. They spent a lot of time indoors during the winter, too.
When answering the question "what shall we do today" they considered what was available in a 100 to 150 mile radius which would usually encompass more than one city or town. They never just considered their own locality. There were roads everywhere and the posted speed limit was frequently 75 mph so they could get places quicker. Price of gas was one consideration, but not much of one. Of course, we were on vacation, I'm sure in their day-to-day life, they would stay closer to home.
Cost of restaurant foods seemed in line with Hawaii prices, but grocery store food was significantly less.
Location: not sure, but there's a hell of a lot of water around here!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hotzcatz
Aloha Forum Folks!
(mainland folks use North, South, East & West a lot, as well as highway numbers instead of names)
HEY, no wonder they so confused!!! I've heard of the mainland, think I'll pass. But thanks for the write up.
'Well, you go down I-297, then head north for about 75 miles, take the I-512 Eastbound turnoff, drive for 150 miles, take the WTFamIdoinghere offramp, then turn left at the 128th traffic light. Can't miss it!'
You sure???? You sure you sure???? Really??
Urrrppppp, scuze me, it makes me all halulu i ka po'o
What fun! Thanks for sharing that! As they say in social media, that was a Throwback Thursday for me, triggering fond memories of places I have lived and loved.
I'll follow up with a few personal remarks later, but wanted to give you a high five for now.
Another reason Oahu is like the mainland. We call H-1, H-2, and H-3...H-1, H-2, and H-3.
That's because it's easier to say "H-1," "H-2," and "H-3" than "Lunalilo Freeway" (or "Queen Liliʻuokalani Freeway"), "Veterans' Memorial Freeway," and "John A. Burns Freeway."
Of course, none of the "interstate highways" on "the mainland" have the letter "H" in their abbreviations.
NV PIT survey counted a population of 33,882 homeless people in 2013.
They do a far better job of hiding them than Oahu - perhaps Hawaii can learn something.
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