Your first impression, and lasting impression of a state, different from norm

[ethanhopkin14]

This is a child of the Parts of States that Identify More With Their Neighbors thread.  I was thinking about how I was born and raised in Austin, but my extended family is from Marshall, TX.  with 25,000 people it has some but not all, so if you wanted something Marshall didn't have, you went to Longview, and if they didn't have it, you went to the big city of Shreveport, which was 37 miles away.  Going to Shreveport was no big deal to people in Marshall, but to me, crossing state lines was an enormous deal.  So we would go to Shreveport when I was a kid, and frankly it was unimpressive.  My vision of Louisiana was more of the same run down-ness you saw in northeast Texas.  This was for a long time what I thought of Louisiana, just an extension of east Texas.  It wasn't until I got much older that I started to realize most people identify Louisiana with swamps, bayous, zydeco music, big band music, dancing funeral processions and of course, New Orleans.  I went to southern Louisiana and New Orleans for the first time when I was 28 and I finally understood where most people's vision of Louisiana came from, but I still see it as I did when I was a kid.  So this thread is about states you visited for the first time and didn't get the more generalized view of the state because you didn't visit the area that generalization comes from. Me personally this thread is ironic because I hate Texas generalizations.  Most people think the whole state is a flat desert and are amazed when the visit Houston for the first time and see it is in a very dense pine tree forest, or that there are mountains in Texas.

This doesn't just stop at geographical features.  What else in life was your first introduction to something not the most excepted version of it.  Some examples I can think of, like in music, when Chicago had their second boom in the early to mid 80s.  All the kids at the time had no idea they had a successful career starting back in the 60s with a completely different sound.  With Tom Seaver's recent passing, I read a quote from someone that grew up a Reds fan and was too young to remember his Mets days, only identify him in a Reds uniform, but to me he was first and foremost a Met.  I also do that with baseball teams.  I came of age with the Pirates, Cardinals, Reds and Phillies all playing in concrete donut stadiums with the old astro-turf, and was shocked later when I learned they all used to play in incredibly beautiful stadiums, like my Cubbies play in, and the Phillies were actually a red team, not a burgundy team!  Now that the Padres went back to brown, they went to brown and yellow, but my vision of the Padres in brown was their brown and orange combo of the late 80s early 90s, so that's my mind's image of the Padres brown, not brown and yellow.   When I grew up, the Chevelle Malibu was more of a family car, since their station wagon was based on it, only to find out in my teens that in the late 60s it was a muscle car, but I still think of the Malibu as a station wagon, same thing with the Oldsmobile Cutlas. 

Anyway, any other examples of things, call it where in the state you visited or call it just luck of timing in your life, that your lasting memory of a place isn't really the popular vision?  Maybe it was a place that has low crime and you got robbed there, or some place everyone says is a dump but you went to a very pretty part of town?

[GaryV]

My son moved to Bloomfield, IN several years ago.  When we went to visit him we were pleased to find actual scenery, hills, etc.  All our prior visits had been in just northern IN, flat cornfields.

[kurumi]

We visited Jackson, WY and the two national parks. Bison, moose, hiking, and a wine-tasting tour of some very expensive art galleries.

We realize this may not be representative of the state as a whole :-)

[CoreySamson]

When I first moved to Texas, I was intrigued how different it was from what all the misconceptions say about it. Frankly, it looked a lot like where I used to live (Baton Rouge). Of course, I was 8 at the time. More recently, last year I was surprised how urban the area around the Alamo is, as I thought it was out in a state park or something like that.

California struck me as busy and congested (I flew to San Diego and LAX, so yeah).

South Carolina's Peach Tower in Gaffney was an eye-catcher to my young self, so I thought South Carolina had peaches everywhere. Usually people associate peaches with Georgia.

Arkansas struck me as desolate, strangely enough. (I guess I compared the Arkansas side of the Mississippi to the Tennessee side)

[STLmapboy]

I went to Alabama at age 12, for the Huntsville Space Camp, and fell in love with it. The roads, the people, the scenery...lots of people like to bash Alabama for tons of things, but I really think it has a unique character and it is still one of my favorite states.

[STLmapboy]

Arkansas struck me as desolate, strangely enough. (I guess I compared the Arkansas side of the Mississippi to the Tennessee side)

It can be a lot lonelier in SE Arkansas than in the northwest. Many of the cotton towns have emptied out.

[Ned Weasel]

New Jersey is awesome, actually.

My 2009 Chevy Malibu has the worst turning radius of any car I've driven.  When I looked it up, I learned it has a longer wheelbase than my 1986 Pontiac Grand Prix.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

When I clinched US 61 in fall 2015 I expected Mississippi to be the most boring state I would be passing through. It turned out to have the most sites that I wish I was able to see, but wasn't able to because of a combination of poor planning, late evening travel, and the following day being Sunday. Revisiting Highway 61 (pun intended) is on my list of things to do in the future.

[DandyDan]

The first time I went to Nebraska, which was about 4 months before I moved there, I was surprised to find out Omaha had actual hills there. The first time I went to Kearney, where my brother lives, I was surprised they had a hill there. I was also surprised they had actual forests in Nebraska.

[In_Correct]

I hate Texas generalizations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIGGxxphnf8

[kevinb1994]

New Jersey is awesome, actually.

My 2009 Chevy Malibu has the worst turning radius of any car I've driven.  When I looked it up, I learned it has a longer wheelbase than my 1986 Pontiac Grand Prix.

Thanks, from a (albeit, former) resident of the Garden State.

[SEWIGuy]

Iowa is a cool place.

[webny99]

This is an interesting thread!

I'm curious to know people's thoughts about New York, because I've lived here my entire life and I probably have a very different view of the state than 99% of people who have visited. Because NYC.

As far as other states: There aren't any that wildly exceeded my expectations or underwhelmed. But that's often the result of a small sample size. I'll definitely think about it more the next time I visit a new state.

[I-55]

I used to think Ohio people were lazy because from the time I remember trips to West Virginia (when I was 5), I-75 was always under construction in Dayton (and it was/has been for years). This lasted up until I was in my teens when I learned about urban growth and planning and realizing that the project had to be huge because the old road was a dumpster fire. I do want to know why the US-35 ramps are always getting closed though.

Nowadays I see Ohio as a beautiful state where you can find lake shores, farms and mountains, with plenty of things to do and places to go, and as a state that takes care of itself pretty well.

[The Nature Boy]

This is an interesting thread!

I'm curious to know people's thoughts about New York, because I've lived here my entire life and I probably have a very different view of the state than 99% of people who have visited. Because NYC.

As far as other states: There aren't any that wildly exceeded my expectations or underwhelmed. But that's often the result of a small sample size. I'll definitely think about it more the next time I visit a new state.

When I hear "New York," I think of the Adirondacks first and foremost and then possibly the Finger Lakes region. It takes hearing "New York City" for me to think of the city.

[US 89]

The first time I went to Nebraska, which was about 4 months before I moved there, I was surprised to find out Omaha had actual hills there. The first time I went to Kearney, where my brother lives, I was surprised they had a hill there. I was also surprised they had actual forests in Nebraska.

Agreed on the hills. I drove I-80 across Nebraska a few weeks ago and was prepared for the worst - a long, flat slog of nothing but cornfields. To be fair, that does describe a lot of the state, but I was surprised to see some decent-looking hills in the Pine Bluff, Kearney, and Omaha areas. Same goes for southwest Iowa and northwest Missouri.

[ethanhopkin14]

No disrespect to anyone who's commented, but topic wasn't places you went to with a pre-conceived notion of what the state was like, only to be surprised.  I do enjoy those stories, but the premise to this was really, when you went to a place with zero notion of the place you are about to go to, you have an experience, and you hold on to that experience.  Then much later on, you realize your experience was not what that place is known best for (or maybe the opinion of the masses), and in some cases, it's the opposite.  Kinda like you are ignorant to things in the beginning.

Another good example from my life is Pittsburgh.  I went to Pittsburgh for the first time in my life to go to a Pirates game.  I knew absolutely nothing about Pittsburgh, except it had three rivers and The Steelers and Pirates used to play in Three River Stadium (which is how I knew there were three rivers) which wasn't there anymore.  I guess I also knew there was a steel industry, but only knew that because their football team was the Steelers.  Basically everything I knew was from watching sports on TV.  That was it.  So I went there with no knowledge of anything Pittsburgh.  Heck I didn't even know Fred Rogers was from Pittsburgh until after I went, so there was this TV show I watched when I was a kid, and I didn't use any of that as a frame of reference because I didn't know any better.  So I am literally going to Pittsburgh, imagining in my head a blank piece of paper with three rivers on it and the structure of Three Rivers Stadium, which did me no good because it wasn't even there anymore.  I drove from Washington, DC on I-70 and was blown away how gorgeous the countryside was.  Then I get to Pittsburgh and I can't believe how beautiful it is.  It has mountains and the rivers are big and pretty.  There is this huge walking/running area on the west bank of the Allegheny.  The ballpark was amazing with a downtown view and the bridges are incredible.  I think, I want to live here because it reminds me a lot of Austin.  Then I get home, tell everyone that Pittsburgh is amazing, and everyone starts trashing it.  Everyone says that Pittsburgh is filled with rude fat people and it's just another rust belt town, like all the other rundown rust belt towns that are a shell of their former self, and their former self wasn't that great.  I was immediately mad at everyone because they hadn't been and they were just making inferences based on other people's thoughts of what Pittsburgh was supposed to be.  I really didn't know that's what people thought of Pittsburgh before, but only found out after I had been and thought it was an amazing place. 

[Max Rockatansky]

New Mexico has a massive Spanish influence which is probably the most prevalent of any western state.  In California and Arizona it largely has been buried by modern life. 

[Brandon]

Vermont: one large garage sale when we drove through to New Hampshire in late 1986.

[MikieTimT]

Arkansas struck me as desolate, strangely enough. (I guess I compared the Arkansas side of the Mississippi to the Tennessee side)

It can be a lot lonelier in SE Arkansas than in the northwest. Many of the cotton towns have emptied out.

Outside the metropolitan areas and around the mountain lake areas, NW Arkansas can be pretty desolate too.  Much more nature than people in general, but a lot more pleasant to drive through than SE Arkansas.