Natural Beauty

There are tons of great day hikes around the sculpted landscape and small villages of Cappadocia. Evan and I did one in the Ilhara valley. The guidebook called it one of the top 40 places to see in Turkey for its steep cliffs that towered two hundred feet over the river valley. (It was also cool because Christian hermit monks lived all over the valley before monks moved to communal monasteries.) (Back in the day each of the monks had their own mini monastery and cave for shelter.) While it was gorgeous and a really nice hike, what struck me was comparing it to home. The Valley would not even be on the radar screen in America. We are so blessed with natural beauty that a 12 mile valley as pretty as Ilhara Valley would not even register. It surely would not be an international attraction, like Yellowstone or Yosemite. It would not even be a national attraction, like Glacier or North Cascades, or even a regional attraction like Big Sur or the Marin Headlands. It would be a very nice local park that draws from the surrounding cities and county.

Obviously the US parks do not have millenniums-old churches, but those are not the draw for the Ilhara valley (there are better examples nearby), what draws people to the site is the nature.

So, I came away feeling very lucky that within a short way of my house are such amazing parks and wilderness.