United States
What states in the united states have lush vegetation?
I'm trying to write a book but I can't find a place to set it in. I know I want it in the United States, in a beautiful rural area with a small town, and a lot of trees, like forests of them, and the winter gets pretty cold. If you know of a place like this or live somewhere around one, please let me know what state it is, and if your comfortable, what town it is too. Thanks!
Oh boy, Pennsylvania fits the bill.
Forests, meadows, waterfalls, huge boulders around riverbanks.
Winters are cold and last from Halloween until St. Patrick's Day. November is absolutely bleak, cold winds, gray skies, maybe some sleet. Always snow by Christmas, and January is brutal with black ice on the roads, many inches of snow. February is still cold, and the snow turns to deep gray slush at the sides of the road.
The forests get thick and tangled, not like California where you can walk easily between the trees, this is hard going. Western Pennsylvania has remnants of the glaciers' retreat, where huge boulders line the riverbanks. Rushing rivers where kayakers or swimmers can be killed, slippery rocks on the river bottom, often brownish water.
Noon is the hottest time of the day (not like down South where it's more like four o'clock.)
Much wildlife, deer, robins, cardinals, squirrels, chipmunks, black bears, pheasants, grouse, etc.
Cook's Forest is in Western Pennsylvania, it's a second-growth forest that's a state park now. That means it was untouched since the 1700's. The trees are so tall that the whole forest is complete shade (and the mosquitoes will eat you alive in the shade.)
Humidity, the sound of cicadas in the evening, mourning doves cooing at dawn.
Amish men plowing their fields with draft horses, Amish buggies on the road.
You have a lot to work with in a novel set here.
New Wilmington is a tiny town there, a college town, surrounded by this kind of thing. North of there is Grove City. Places like that. It would be nice if you could see it.