But otherwise it's everywhere - fruits and vegetables come in plastic containers or bags, anything from the deli comes in a plastic container or is wrapped in plastic, even paper products like paper towels or boxes of tissues are also wrapped in plastic.

They try to be less plastic oriented out here but it's still ubiquitous. After every wind storm there are new bags in the trees. I must confess that one day a couple years ago I was working on a messy project and needed to shake out a small, cheap, plastic table cloth that I reused for a drop cloth over and over. I stepped out on my porch to shake it out and it was so windy that it grabbed it right out of my hands and I never saw it again! I went out to the road to try and see if I could retrieve it somehow but it was probably in the next county by then. I live on top of a very windy hill near the bottom of a mountain, the downdraft is amazing. As in, it's amazing any kind of structure lasts any length of time without being blasted to bits.

Otherwise, the area around here is pretty plastic conscious, or they try to be, but we also have a massive tourist visitation rate and that is a whole different situation. Some of them give a damn but too many don't.

I remember when I was a kid that my mother had a hat blow away that she never saw again.

And in stores around here they eliminated plastic bags for purchases several years ago - they encourage reusable bags or will offer paper if you ask. But what's the point if everything that you put in the bag is wrapped or boxed in plastic? Everything I can think of, cookies, drinks including water, pretty much anything for sale in the store comes in plastic. So much for reducing plastic use by eliminating plastic bags.

And we get tourists, too. I live just south of Lake George and in the summer I see license plates from as far away as Texas, Georgia and Arkansas! Most are from nearby Vermont, a lot from New Jersey, the "snowbirds" from Florida and the Quebec and Ontario license plates are back, but when I see the ones from such far away states, I start wondering if they don't have lakes in those states. And when I drive up north the streets are packed with summer tourists - it is a lovely lake, but this is the southern end. When I was a kid we lived right across from the northern part of the lake - and that was lovely, surrounded by mountains, and much quieter.

That tourism in the US needs some basic rules or something. Unruly people coming to your town just to "cut loose" not in view of their neighbors, coworkers and families all summer long gets old fast.

What you probably don't have that we do is numerous busloads of people from China. Cultural differences are an issue along with their inability to observe a few of our social norms and they should not be allowed to drive unless they have actually lived here for a couple years. When that cohort discovered Discover America RV rental was when drive-through parks in the mountains became an exponentially more dangerous prospect. Even if they are in cars you can't be safe in their proximity, seriously, it's a thing. They have no concept of most of our driving rules, have no idea what the signs say and try to rely entirely on GPS which does not work in the mountains.

Among other gripes.