Inside The Osceola &Amp: Fill & Download for Free

For the most part, yes. I enjoy living in Orlando but there are plenty of downsides.First, with Florida being a “no individual income tax” state, there is a shortage of state investment in education and public works. Most major efforts in transportation and infrastructure are private-public financing efforts which on roads means TOLLS TOLLS TOLLS. There is a particularly egregious dumbass toll on the Osceola Parkway which is $2 each way making the cost for a Celebration area resident to visit the nearest shopping “mall” and non-tourist McDonalds a whopping $4 — do that ten days a month and the bill adds up.Second, the politics in central Florida are dominated by big tourism and big agriculture — specifically Disney and “Big Sugar.” Both surpress wages and pull their profits out of the state. Both lobby heavily to tell you otherwise and get what they want. For instance, the Orlando International Airport has about a dozen ways to get to Disney, but if you needed to take a taxi or Uber to your home, you’d find the service to be lacking. Forget it if you need to park your car at the airport in the months of November or December — booking parking spots even 3 weeks in advance can be quite hard to get. The reasons for this are due to Disney’s long hatred of cars — they want their visitors to arrive by chartered means and stay fixed to Disney property.Third, the cost of housing in Orlando is very high relative to wages most people make. This isn’t a problem for people who make a New York City salary and commute there for work as needed, but if you are working locally you’ll have a tough time making the money to live here. I had a nice new 2 bedroom apartment near Disney that cost $1250 a month when I moved in back in 2014. When I moved out in 2018, the rent was $1850. I bought a house for less. These unusually high housing prices means that apartments are now multi-generational homes and with all those extra people comes extra cars in the parking lot. The folks next door had 5 people living in their 2-bedroom and 4 of them worked odd hours at Disney to make the rent and had 5 cars among them. There simply isn’t enough parking in an apartment complex here to deal with it.Fourth, local employers not in healthcare or Disney basically suck. They are either not investing in their workforce or are under no pressure to be attractive places to work or community-focused. There are exceptions, but they usually cater to 20-somethings with their bean bag chairs and bullshit amenities.Fifth, though there is no personal state income tax, there is a “Mickey Tax” which is the cost of living close to Disney and having to pay resort prices to go there and do things most people do in their hometowns for less. Disney World is the size of Manhattan, so if you want to go to a movie, dine in a nice restaurant, or shop, chances are you will end up on Disney property at least once a month. I go weekly. You will also have visitors who want you to join them when they visit inside the parks. The annual passes, high food costs, and time spent with Disney is expensive — I easily spend $6k a year there — and can be quite disruptive to your work life if you don’t plan accordingly.Sixth, it’s a bitch to get your car washed or detailed here. I have a guy come to the house to do it and pay a premium. Land is too valuable for car washes when It competes for space with hotels and restaurants. Other services like dry cleaning, home cleaning, plumbing, locksmithing, etc are also a nuisance because you don’t have these vendors with actual stores now — rent is too high and you have to “know someone” to get the services you need.Seventh, Spanish is a dominant language here. Your work life will involve Spanish if you are in a service or healthcare field. This could be a problem for some.Eighth, the traffic is horrendous. We are in the middle of a major traffic construction project called the “I-4 ultimate” which is five big-ticket construction projects all happening concurrently. And if that wasn’t enough, the state is investing in the Florida turnpike and the central Florida tollroads which makes these impassible sometimes. We’ve also had a population surge here in the last few years. Transportation just doesn’t happen quickly here and Florida itself has a surprising scarcity of highways that traverse the state East-West. A 60-mile drive to Tampa easily takes 2 hours and plenty of people do it daily for work. Add to these problems the “Tour-ons” who don’t know where they’re going or how to drive, and you’re in for a real hassle.Ninth, you have to become aware of dates you wouldn’t normally track. For instance, the days when school is out on the sixth countries around Orlando that coincide with days the cheapest Disney annual pass isn’t blocked out should be marked on your calendar. Why? Well, Florida residents like to go to Disney too and drive their cars on these days, so when you find that on some odd February Tuesday every road everywhere is slowed to a crawl, it’s because the Osceola County schools had a teacher workday and the students all went to Disney. Or Universal. Or SeaWorld. They are in the cars ahead of you with their exhausted parents.We do have good weather though.

Kansas City is king for BBQ (yes, I’m a total BBQ snob!)There are the standard BBQ places; Arthur Bryant, Gates, Smokehouse, Jack Stack all of which are great.Then there are some more obscure that are very noteworthy.I’m a fan of BB’s Lawnside Blues & BBQ. Inexpensive food and some amazing blues music played.Started in a gas station, there is also Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ (in KC area now called Joe’s Kansas City BBQ).I had a friend that came to visit me simply because they saw a one hour special on the food network about BBQ places in KC. We ate BBQ twice a day for 10 days, never at the same place twice. 5 years later, when he visits, we still find new BBQ places to go to.We always hit Smokehouse (Image above) and we always hit BB’s.During the summer, the Power & Light district in downtown KC has a free concert series. You’re not old enough to go into all of the clubs that surround the concert area, but you can enjoy the music.Most visitors enjoy the Plaza. There are over 150 shops and restaurants. Several fountains decorate the area. Great food, great shopping, but the shopping will be a bit pricey. It’s not far from the Power & Light District.As a little girl, I didn’t much like the zoo. It was depressing seeing all of the animals in cages. That is no longer what the zoo is like in Kansas City.They have created habitats for the animals to move around in. The picture above is one of the boats that takes people through the African animal exhibit. I haven’t been there in several years, but the changes made were fantastic. My kids all enjoyed going there.Kansas City has several lakes. Actually, Missouri does… they were built by the Army Corps of Engineers to control flooding. The first was Table Rock Lake, built right around 1900… this is where Branson is.The newest of the lakes is in South KC and is Longview Lake. This video is the marina on Longview Lake. It’s wild! You go in to the store and buy a bag of fish food for 50 cents. As soon as the pellets begin hitting the water… he come the fish, ducks, and geese.The fish will stack up on top of each other to get more food.About a 5 minute drive from the marina, you’ll hit the swimming beach. It’s an area roped off for people to swim, and has lifeguards posted.If you like baseball… Kansas City Royals games can be fun… you can truly see from every single seat in the stadium.During the 2014 World Series, a letter was written by a SF Giants fan that had been to KC for one of the games."I am a San Franciscan and a Giants fan who attended game six of the World Series in Kansas City."Let me just say that never in my life have I enjoyed being so terribly outnumbers and by evening’s end, clubbed into submission."From the moment I hit the parking lot at Kauffman Stadium in my Giants gear, folks made a point to walk over, introduce themselves, welcome us to Kansas City and wish us good luck. People offered to buy us beer and brats."Most mind-bending was the woman who apologized for the lopsided score."My wife and our friends spent the better part of our flight home marveling at the generosity and warmth of the Royals fans and wondering whether we’d dropped into a parallel universe."At some point, I recall announcing to my wife that I was prepared to move to Kansas City as soon as possible."They refer to your part of the country as “flyover states.” Folks should make a point to actually drop in to Kansas City for a heaping helping of an America most people only dream about."Billionaire John Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt Hotel chain and an investor, wrote the letter.If you happen to go to KC during football season…Not only is Arrowhead stadium a sea of red, but the whole town dresses in red. You can go into any business and you will see people wearing their Chief’s gear on game days.Ask ’em who they like:CHIEFS BABY!!Yeah, I’m a die hard Chief’s fan.When you drive down to Branson, you’ll actually go through my neck of the woods.As you hit the Ozarks, which begins at Truman Lake, you’ll be on HWY 13.About an hour and a half drive from KC, is a place called the Osceola Cheese Factory.They have over 250 types of cheese, and you can taste all of them. People stop to stretch, and taste the cheese. They have containers of samples and people simply move down the line tasting each one.The drive is a beautiful drive from KC to Branson. It will take about 4 hours.You will see signs like the one above. Around the Truman Lake area and south for about 20 miles, you will be in an area where there are several Amish communities.If you happen to see a carriage on the road, most drivers move over to the left lane to give them plenty of room.Once in Branson, there are plenty of zipline companies. You can ride in a seat like above, or using a harness around you. It’s a matter of preference.Silver Dollar City is the amusement park there. If you enjoy old world, you’ll enjoy it. The food is great.There is Lambert’s restaurant… home of the “Throwed rolls”. You may want to stop for lunch there on the way to Branson. Yes, they truly throw the dinner rolls at you.When you hit Springfield, MO, you’re about 45 minutes away from Branson. However, if you have ever heard of a store calls Bass Pro Shops, then you will want to stop to see the original store.Yes, this is inside the store. This “marina” is where you’ll find the boats for sale.If you have an interest in anything done outdoors, this store will carry the supplies for it.The original store in Springfield is by far the largest of them all. Be prepared to walk a bit as the store is about 500,000 sq. ft.On to Branson… Take a bit of time to drive around the town. It’s hard to get lost as there are routes marked all around the town. The Landing, pictured above has some nice restaurants.Driving through Branson, can be a bit confusing at times. It is a long strip of road that is non stop places to see and visit.You’ll see the Duck boats on the roads, and on the lake. I’d recommend the tour. It’s relaxing and fun. It doesn’t take too long either.Mel’s Hardluck Diner is where to go if you want to listen to the servers sing.If you still want BBQ… try Danna’s BBQ. It’s nearly as good as what you find in KC.Branson has had some weather issues. They’ve had flooding, and a few years ago took a direct hit from a tornado. Several of the auditoriums simply did not re-open.There are still a ton of tourist shops… you’ll want to hit the strip and simply walk along the stores. You’ll find some good prices there.All around Branson… is Table Rock Lake. The water is clear, and there are more than 800 miles of shoreline.In Branson, you’ll find much to do, but you’ll also find yourself in a beautiful area.Enjoy your trip!

Disclaimer: I'm no student of geography, geology or earth science. Since Quora is a medium for sharing knowledge, I'm hereby posting an article from the Science News Magazine which elaborately answers your question. All credits go to the magazine and the author and no part may be reproduced without permission.The MountainAuthor(s): Sid PerkinsSource: Science News, Vol. 160, No. 21 (Nov. 24, 2001), pp. 334-335Published by: Society for Science & the Public StableURL: Page on JSTOR .Accessed: 02/06/2014 06:56 .America's most dangerous volcanoBy SID PERKINSJust after dusk on Aug. 14, at an amphitheater in Mount Rainier National Park's Cougar Rock campground, a deep grumbling sound began to drown out a park ranger who was regaling visitors with an interpretive lecture about the park's natural wonders. The rumble quickly grew to a freight-train-like roar. That's when the ranger ran to a creek near the amphitheater and saw a large flow of mud and debris surging down the normally placid channel. "It rumbled up on the ridge until about 10:30 [p.m.]," says Jill Hawk, chief ranger at the national park. Although the camp- ground was never threatened, large pulses of rocky mud continued to sweep down the mountainside for more than 5 hours that evening, and smaller clumps followed for the next 5 days. It was a natural wonder all right. Park rangers and scientists flew over the area on Aug. 15 and determined that the event was simply a landslide, not something worse-like an earthquake or volcanic eruption. A week or more of hot, sunny weather had accelerated the melting of a glacier on the south side of the mountain. The excess water had saturated a steep slope of earth and rock. The soggy mix eventually broke away and raced downhill. The landslide was small in geologic terms, says Hawk, but it was plenty big enough to scare campers. She notes that the ranger's interpretive lecture that balmy evening turned into an opportunity to dis- cuss the hazards of living in the shadow of a glacier-covered volcano. Mount Rainier, locally known simply as “the mountain," is the tallest peak in the Cascades, a chain of mountains that parallels the Pacific Coast from British Columbia to northern California. Mount Rainier’s summit bears the largest crest of glacier ice on any mountain in the lower 48 U.S. states. Scientists say the height, steepness, and cubic mile of ice make the steep- sloped peak worth watching. However, they’re most concerned about the rap- idly growing population in the picturesque valleys of the region, which earns the currently dormant Mount Rainier the title of most dangerous volcano in America.The landslide of Aug. 14 provides an example of the many powerful surprises that mountains like Rainier can drop on those nearby. The slump of debris began at an altitude of about 2,740 meters above sea level and didn't halt until it had dropped to an altitude of about 762 m, says Patrick T. Pringle, a geologist with Washington State's Department of Natural Resources. Similar but larger phenomena, called glacial outburst floods, also strike from on high. These torrents, which are sudden releases of water stored within or at the base of glaciers, can contain about 100,000 cubic meters of water, says Joseph S. Walder, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash. That's the volume of several dozen Olympic-size swimming pools. At peak discharge, these glacial outbursts often match stream flow rates experienced only in the worst of floods. At least three dozen glacial outburst floods have occurred in Mount Rainier National Park during the past century. Bridges, roads, and park facilities have been damaged or destroyed on at least 10 occasions. Even so, Walder notes, the effects of such floods don't normally reach beyond the boundaries of the park. Mount Rainier's most far-reaching and therefore most dangerous threats derive not from landslides and glacial outburst floods but from its volcanism. As with most volcanoes, the mountain’s past behavior gives a preview to its future hazards. Writ- ten history in the area goes back only about 180 years-a period much too short to adequately represent the activity of a volcano that’s hundreds of thousands of years old. Indeed, the documentary evidence includes a record of only one eruption, in the 1840s. But the sedimentary evidence- including deposits rife with pumice and volcanic ash, or tephra-suggests that Mount Rainier has erupted at least 11 times in the past 10,000 years. The 1980 eruptions of south- western Washington's Mount St. Helens showed that even relatively thin accumulations of tephra can disrupt social and economic activity over a broad region. Downwind, in the eastern part of the state, the communities of Yakima, Ritzville, and Spokane received between 1 and 8 centimeters of ash and came to a near standstill for up to 2 weeks. More dangerous than tephra are so called pyroclastic flows, which roll down a volcano rather than towering above it (SN: 1/13/01, p. 21). The hot gases, ash, and rock particles form a dense fluid that travels at 10 to 100 m per second and typically hosts temperatures above 300?C. The flows' high densities, velocities, and temperatures blow down, bury, or incinerate everything in their path. Scientists have found only a few deposits near Mount Rainier that resulted from pyroclastic flows. One such layer that’s about 2,500 years old shows up about 12 kilometers southwest of the volcano’s summit, and another, 1,000 or so years old, appears about 11 km northeast of the mountain. However, pyroclastic deposits near the mountain may be rare only because the ash flows were often converted into something more dangerous before they left the mountainside, Walder says. When the hot ash in ground-hugging pyroclastic flows sweeps across glaciers, it can melt prodigious amounts of ice and snow. This water mixes with the ash and other debris to form a lahar, which looks and flows like wet concrete. Lahars can travel at speeds up to 100 km per hour on Danger from Mount Rainier looms over communities near the dormant volcano, including Orting, Wash., which is built on ancient mudflows up to 6 meters thick. steep slopes near the volcano and can reach much farther from the volcano than pyroclastic flows can. In 1998, the U.S. Geological Survey issued a report stating that lahars pose a greater threat to communities around Mount Rainier than any other volcanic phenomenon. More than a dozen volcanic lahars have spewed from Mount Rainier in the past 6,000 years. About 1,200 years ago, a lahar that spilled down valleys on the northeastern slopes of the volcano filled both forks of the White River with 20 to 30 m of debris. The lahar's front edge flowed more than 100 km to reach the spot where the city of Auburn sits today. About 1,000 years before that, a similar lahar filled the Nisqually River southwest of the mountain to depths as great as 40 m and flowed all the way to Puget Sound. Scientists have discovered the de- posits from more than 60 lahars that occurred in the past 10,000 years. Many of these have been so-called cohesive lahars, which form avalanches that con- sist primarily of ancient volcanic rocks weakened by exposure to the elements. In particular, sulfur gases spewed by the volcano react with rainwater to form sulfuric acids, which gradually break the rocks down into clay. The largest of Mount Rainier's post-Ice Age lahars was the Osceola Mudflow, which struck more than 5,600 years ago and inundated the White River valley with more than 3.8 cubic kilometers of material. Its leading edge reached all the way to Puget Sound. Deposits from this event now cover about 550 square kilometers and ex- tend as far as the Seattle suburb of Kent. Another cohesive lahar, dubbed the Electron Mudflow, was spawned by the collapse on the west flank of the volcano about 600 years ago. This lahar was more than 30 m deep when it entered the Puget Sound lowlands near the present-day town of Electron, more than 60 km away. All of the major river valleys that drain Mount Rainier have been inundated with lahars, says Pringle. Many of the commu- nities northwest of the volcano have been built in whole or in part atop these sediments. The town of Orting, north- west of the volcano, sits on deposits from both the Osceola and the Electron Mudflows. Evidence of lahars' potential to destroy is directly underfoot. When the debris from these lahars comes to rest, it often swallows entire forests. In the area sur- rounding Orting, for example, the Elec- tron Mudflow entombed a stand of ma- ture Douglas firs. Excavations during construction of subdivisions and sewers around the town in the past 9 years have exhumed the deeply buried stumps of more than 100 trees. The most impressive stump, Pringle notes, measured more than 7.5 m in circumference about 1 m above the ancient ground level. It would be one of the largest Douglas firs in Wash- ington State if it were still alive today. The relentless growth of populated subdivisions shows that residents- to-be either don't realize they're in an ash flow-prone zone or aren't worried about it. Some members of the emergency- response community have a different view. "I wouldn't build a home or a school there," says Ed Reed, a program manager with the Pierce County Department of Emergency Management in Tacoma.To assess the risk from Mount Rainier, scientists have combined remote sensing, geologic mapping, and com- puter modeling into an evaluation of materials that might be swept up into a lahar. Volcanic rocks are poor conductors of electricity when they are newly formed, but as they weather and become saturated with water, they conduct electricity up to 300 times better, explains Thomas W Sisson, a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. Also, fresh volcanic rocks are slightly more magnetic than ones that have been weathered and weakened, he notes. Sisson and his colleagues have flown helicopters equipped with electromagnetic detectors at low altitude over the mountain to locate such degraded rocks, which might crumble and contribute to a mudslide. By broadcasting radio waves along flight paths about 250 m apart, the researchers mapped the mineral degradation on Mount Rainier. They found that only the upper, west slope of the volcano has an appreciable thickness of weakened rock. Most material of this kind fell off the mountain 5,600 years ago in the Osceola Mudflow, says Sisson. The horseshoe-shape crater left behind-similar to the one left by Mount St. Helens' 1980 eruption-faces east, he notes, and it filled up with fresh lavas that today form a relatively strong, stable core. Sisson and his team reported their findings in the Feb. 1 NATURE. He and another group of USGS colleagues recently extended that research. By combining the distribution of weakened rocks with geologic maps that show the steepness of the terrain, they constructed a computer model of the mountain. Then they sliced the model at nearly 30 million different combinations of angle and depth and calculated the capability of the rocks below the slices to resist the force of gravity and hold up the mass of rocks above. In other words, they estimated whether the rocks could prevent a landslide. Even though the mountain's north face is the steepest, Sisson and his team found that the upper, west side of the volcano would be most likely to produce lahars that contained more than 0.1 cubic kilometer of material, an amount about one-third the size of the Electron Mudflow. The team published its results in the September GEOLOGY. These findings may allow emergency-response officials and scientists to concentrate their monitoring on the portions of Mount Rainier that most threaten the surrounding population. Sisson and his colleagues are now turning their remote sensors to Mount Adams and Mount Baker, two other Washington State volcanoes in the Cascade Range. Some of the rocks on Mount Adams are about 30,000 years old, and some of those on the slopes of Mount Baker were deposited there about 18,000 years ago. By comparing the depths to which the minerals are weathered, it may be possible to accurately estimate the rate at which rocks lose their strength and capability to support the material upslope. Lahars can be triggered by seismic activity or the movement of magma inside a volcano as well as by ash flows sweeping across glaciers. Scientists want to find out how often these debris flows sweep down a mountainside without warning. Sisson says that with one exception-the Electron Mudflow, about 600 years ago- all of Mount Rainier's lahars occurred during periods associated with volcanic activity, when eruptions also laid down tephra deposits. Maybe an eruption also stimulated the Electron Mudflow but left no evidence, he adds. It's possible that the eruption produced little or no ash, that the tephra fell in winter and then washed away with the spring melt, or that scientists just haven’t found the ash deposit yet. A definite link between lahars and volcanic or seismic activity would be good news for those living in the mountain’s shadow. Fortunately, remarks Sisson, "volcanoes usually give warning signs that an eruption's on the way." The construction of homes and sewers in Orting has exposed more than 100 huge stumps, the remains of old-growth forests that were smothered by mudflows from Mount Rainier.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please [email protected]. . 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