When I used to live in Midwest I was lucky enough to go to Isle Royale National park. One of the wildest places I have ever been to.

The beaver dams were just awe-inspiring! They were well over my height and held water extremely efficiently. Its very impressive how animals can build such grandiose structures with basically dirt and sticks.

The park is also famouse for its moose and wolves that control each other populations.

Lots of wild blueberries, strawberries, mushrooms and mosquitoes <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I only saw a moose but no wolves, though. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

I suspected a tad of it, somewhere in the back of my mind, -but yeah, I mostly missed it.

Of the 14 Western States, (15 if you include Hawaii as nominally Western), -my favorites on down all round rankings would go;- Arizona, NewMexico, Colorado, Alaska, California, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Texas, Oklahoma, and Nevada.

Hawaii would be something like 1 quarter to 3 quarters way down this list, -don't know quite where.

Plains states like Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas are of course substantially Western as well. With places like Scottsbluff and the Black Hills, -and many other things in their all round persona, -they've gotta be!

And finally there is of course the great Canadian West! British Colombia, Alberta, the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Saskatchewan, -in that top on down of an order!

Last but not least, Mexico is a great Western area! It only extends down from our great American Rockies and West.

I salute your remaining a full out native Arizonan, as you essentially said. [color:"black"] [/color] [email]desertrat1[/email]

Oh yeah!, -I've heard of Isle Royale (along with its wolves), -and have been very attractively impressed with the place! [color:"black"] [/color] [email]redflare[/email]

Some other great areas very similar to our American West, (in terrain and climatologically, -if often not culturally), are,-

Persia / Iran (which also works out to be right about the size and shape of our Great American West), the entire Kazahkstan / former Soviet Central Asia area, Spain / Iberia (not forgetting Portugal), the Sahara and North Africa, the entire Arabian Peninsula (mostly Saudi, of course), the Israel to Iraq and northward to (and including) Turkey area, places like Namibia's Kalahari and Chile's Atacama deserts, Argentina's Patagonia complete with its gauchos and Pampas, even the Brazilian Sertao and Cerrado, in a sense. Also the great Sinkiang / Tarim / Turpan areas of Western China, Mongolia and the Gobi, Manchuria somewhat, the Himalayas and Tibet, the South American Andes, places like Kashmir, along with Afghanistan and Pakistan, Australia with its Outback and Great Red Center, and Mexico and Canada, as already mentioned by me.

Now for some other places *culturally* Western, -filled with that great pioneering "Spirit of the West"! (if *not* terrainwise or climatologically always so!). These would include Siberia, -the Great Russian "West", which of course is actually East. And its Caucass and Urals. Also Australia and its Outback, Canada and its North, Brazil and its Amazonian and other interior, and the wilds of Borneo and other Indonesian and Phillipine islands. (a little overlap does occur between these two general lists, -though mostly they do not.).

Theres no place totally like our Great American West! But there are a goodly number of places worldwide, -that are a lot like it! [color:"black"] [/color] [email]ScottrezaLogan[/email]