[GongOfFour]

Just as an aside, growing up in Texas I internalized a dim view of western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma primarily due to cultural reasons. A few years ago my family and I took a vacation to a cabin in the Ouachita Mountains which is just north of this state park and I couldn't believe how beautiful that country is. The Ozarks are the crown jewel of that region but the Ouachita range from western AR to eastern OK is absolutely stunning in its own right. It reminds me of the times I've been to West Virginia, beautiful and remote and, in some ways (good and bad), apart from time and, for me, unfairly written off by my own biases. I felt a little pang of regret that I had lived for so long only 4-5 hours from such a beautiful place and was just only now discovering it.

[kminehart]

Just FYI our state abbreviation is AR, AK is Alaska. It gets mistaken a lot hahaha

[amelius]

For added confusion, it is also the country code of Argentina.

[GongOfFour]

Thank you, corrected!

[senkora]

The Ouachita Trail is an absolute treasure for backpacking, too. 200+ miles of uncrowded trails with well-maintained AT-style shelters along most of the way.

[pengaru]

Apparently you're not too keen on keeping it that way...

[wernercd]

[citation needed]

[Jarwain]

The implication seems to be that by advocating for the trail, the commenter is encouraging others to hike it, crowding the trails. Which echoes a sentiment I've heard from others too; the more people who hike a trail the worse it gets, from overcrowding and overuse.

[wernercd]

the implication... without backing evidence.

Plenty of routes to responsible use - and there needs to be evidence to back accusations: especially against an individual who's presumably done nothing wrong.

[chasd00]

I know exactly what you mean! I went to HS in north Texas (currently live in DFW) and not once did my family ever consider SE Oklahoma a camping destination. By chance my wife went to a yoga retreat in Broken Bow and was so impressed she forced my to make the drive and we explored the whole area. It’s a hidden gem that many Texans never realized existed because Oklahoma. Earlier this year we bought 20 acres just outside the national forest (2 acres separate us from a trailhead) and plan to build a cabin soon.

[GongOfFour]

Yep we basically have the same story. I don't live in that part of the country anymore but if I did I would absolutely own land up there. Congrats on the new place.

[JohnWhigham]

Yeah, the Ozarks are completely unexpected. I went to Springfield, MS for an internship and the landscape is unbelievable. Beautiful rolling green hills. Before I had thought Nebraska was the entire Midwest.

[colospoin]

Apparently there is a goods-sized National Battlefield nearby, Wilson's Creek. I've never heard of it and didn't realize there were any Civil War battlefields in Missouri.

[MeinBlutIstBlau]

Believe it or not, just because mainstream media likes to paint most of the conservative parts of the US as evil places of hate, they very much are not. They just tend to be poorer/not as industrialized.

[grumpitron]

This seems to be an unnecessary political diatribe that has no relevance to the parent comment.

[halfmatthalfcat]

The entire first sentence of the parent comment is alluding to the cultural (read: political) state of the area, in their opinion. People are allowed to respond to that.

[semanticist]

That only works if you read the comment to be meaning that people in Texas - Texas, mind - consider 'conservative states' as being 'evil places of hate'.

I think that the 'cultural reasons' they're referring to are probably more likely to be stereotypes around those areas being home to backwards inbred hill people who marry each other's cousins at gunpoint, have two teeth remaining, use outhouses, etc, etc.

Every group needs some other group to look down on, I guess.

[halfmatthalfcat]

Well we're both assuming the intent of the OP, so there's really no winning this argument on either side.

[GongOfFour]

To elaborate, my views of OK and AR were a sort of common Texas view that it's a backwoods and backwards place. Just sort of run down and no reason to go there. Obviously I am wrong.

This certainly isn't about politics as, well, there pretty much isn't a more conservative place than where I come from. It didn't occur to me that someone would inject left/right politics into my comment, but I guess that's just the way things are now.

[grumpitron]

I don’t consider culture == politics