Here's four super US destinations for four unique US experiences!
DROWNED BOROUGHS OF NEW YORK CITY
The grave predictions that New York City would disappear beneath the waves of a rising ocean were graphic but didn’t take into the account that New Yorker spirit. Relocating over the years farther and farther up the Hudson River, NYC has remained a bustling, dynamic city.
But the abandoned buildings and streets that have been claimed by the sea provide a fascinating mix of adventure and historical journey. The mighty business and finance centers of Lower Manhattan still remain intact behind high protective walls, but the sea sends lonely waves through the tumbled debris of lower Staten Island and Brooklyn. Like ancient Greek ruins awash in the surf, the half-destroyed houses, stores, schools, and factories that emerge, ghost-like, at low tide provide a melancholy waterscape of beauty and loss. Boat tours down the streets turned canals let the tourist see at close hand scenes of a time long past, when this was dry land, bustling with life. (No air tours are allowed because of security reasons) It’s an experience one won’t forget.
THE GREAT SEA-WALL OF WASHINGTON, D.C.
Flying up the wide lazy expanse of the Potomac River mouth, it’s not hard to spot the massive emplacement of concrete walls protecting America’s capital from climate change. Rising oceans or not, Washington will not budge, nor surrender to the encroaching sea. With massive government funding, determined leaders of our country have devised a strong, stalwart defense: the James Mountain Inhofe Ocean Revetment Project. Jokingly referred to as “De Seawall” (“D. C. Wall”) by locals the Inhofe Ocean Revetment is an immense dam of concrete and steel. And it’s built much like a river dam: thick at the bottom and slanting outward against the pressure of the water. It safely encompasses our Capital Building, White House, Pentagon, all other military and official bureaucratic structures, and the private residences of those who run these venerable institutions.
Though most of the common residential, commercial, industrial, and recreational areas of D.C. were regrettably left outside the Ocean Revetment because of budget concerns, they still can be seen by guided tours travelling along the road atop the walls. (No air tours are allowed because of security reasons)
Those concerned the ever-rising oceans will overtop the Revetment need not worry. The President and Congress have vowed never to abandon the hallowed ground of the capital, no matter what the cost, and will set whatever budget is needed to keep that promise.
THE NEBKANHOMA DESERT
This sundrenched, open expanse of land displays a magnificent beauty that transcends the former drab, humdrum prairieland it was. A land once cursed as the Dustbowl has been reborn with a brand-new ecology and breathtakingly awesome image. Stretching from the western slopes of the Ozarks nearly to the Rockies, America’s newest desert is a treasure trove of images and experiences for the tourist. During the short wet season, vast dry washes with names like Red, Arkansas, and Upper Platte rush for a few weeks with sparkling water that brings a brief greening to the desert. Ghost towns and even remnants of abandoned cities with evocatively empty, decaying roads form a meaningful counterbalance to the drowned communities of the East Coast. Here there is peace; here there is soothing release from the relentless advance of the oceans.
But the desert is far from lifeless. Busy superhighways with trucks and pipelines carrying rich tar-sand oil from the north crisscross it with the important business of commerce. (No air tours are allowed because of security reasons)
OLD LAS VEGAS
Like New York, Las Vegas refused to capitulate to the fickleness of inexplicable climate change. True, Lake Mead is no more, and the loss of cheap, plentiful electric power has radically changed the city but it still embodies the Golden West, where fortunes were lost and once vibrant cities turned to ghostly shells of themselves.
Unlike the lost sunken cities of New Orleans and Miami Beach, Old Las Vegas is still easily accessible to the tourist and nostalgia-lover. The Strip is a fabulous ruin of grandeur and opulence, with many of the old casinos, hotels, entertainment complexes and bordellos still mostly intact. They are protected not only by the dry desert air but by residents who guard against vandals and souvenir hunters (Note: Nevada has “Shoot if You Suspect” laws).
There are literally dozens of day trips one can make through the preserved part of the city. Make sure you shower before you arrive, though, as there’s a very strict daily water allotment per person.
L.A. – BABY BABE, YOU’RE STILL THE SAME
No worries about either rising or disappearing water here – Los Angeles is still the magical fairy-tale city it’s been since the 1920’s. Indian film companies now have so many facilities here it’s called “Bollywood East”, and the Chinese Foreign Cinema Bureau recently opened a huge studio/production complex in Burbank, its largest outside China.
The steep West Coast beaches have barely been affected by rising oceans, though the weather’s a little hotter than it was sixty years ago and rain rarely falls in the LA Basin. But LA’s complex of ocean desalinization plants powered by the extensive solar power arrays that cover the eastern mountain slopes and much of the Mojave Desert (it gets 357 days of sunlight a year) keep Los Angeles a place of “swimmin’ pools and movie stars”. (No air tours are allowed because of security reasons)
Tourists may be surprised to find their accommodations have a water usage fee. Though the price of water may be high ($6-15 per gallon), gasoline is still cheap and plentiful since the Marine Sanctuaries were opened for oil extraction by the Emergency Power Resources Act of 2035. So L.A.’s freeway lifestyle still rolls!
Sun, sand, entertainment, food, fun – and don’t forget all beaches are nude (enforced) – means Los Angeles can still rock, no matter what the climate does.