I decided to edit this down a lot & just say the Russian River area to see the Russian River with its redwood trees & native ferns & moss under the trees & madrone & manzanita as well. I love the trees wherever I go, & I used to live out there until the commute just got to be too tiresome. Well, it's still a nice place to visit & to take walks. There's the Armstrong Redwoods State Park there as well. The houses, too, are interesting. Often they were once summer cabins for folks from the city, & often have wood-burning stoves or maybe propane tanks or some combination...maybe even everything electric, except for a wood-burning stove for heat. Many of them are built on stilts due to frequent winter flooding or because they're perched on hills. Sometimes it feels like living in a bird's nest. The cats could go in & out a window & jump down to a stump. In a storm we'd watch the redwoods sway--a bit scary, & they do sometimes fall, but not too often. Power outages are frequent, though. We also watched the squirrels fly from tree to tree. As the cats watched that sight, I told them, "Now don't you try that." Having moved from flatter land & places with city lots, fences, & normal trees for climbing, I always wondered what they thought. At least they could sun themselves on the redwood deck, & they got pretty adept at taking the stairs down to my apartment, still pretty high up like a bird's nest.
By the way, I'll vote for the Branson area that Suzianne mentioned. My mother went there a couple of times with her travel club from Oklahoma, & it's like a 2nd version of Nashville. It was only later that I was looking at a Missouri map to see where Rockaway Beach was because we had a great time on our family vacation there several times when I was a kid. I found out that it's quite close to Branson. We went swimming, rented pedalo boats, stayed in a cabin with our own kitchen, & signed up & went on the early morning horseback ride that ends up at a cafe for breakfast, then makes a return ride to the starting point. I wonder if they still have all that. It was great for families.
Ah, well, I see this is still pretty long. Well, that's it. You can always scan it & get on with your life.