Your Top 10 sights that you have seen with your own eyes [Archive]

Mangosteen

09-27-2009, 06:12 PM

Here's mine (Not exactly in order)

Total Solar Eclipse
Hawaii, 1991 (Best 7 minutes ever)

Satellite re-entry
Sitting on a beach in the southern Philippines (Boracay), suddenly this fiery object appears for about 10 seconds in the night sky so close that it's rotation is visible.

Mt. Everest
After hiking about four weeks, made it to Kala Patar (18,000'+) for a great view of the mountain.

Taj Mahal
Seeing it from different angles and going inside.

Pagan, Burma
A large isolated plain of 20 or 30 or more ancient temples of various sizes. All unfenced, and open to wander through.

Varanasi, India
The river Ganges flows through this 3000 year old city. The entire place looks like a movie set from Indiana Jones.

Lenticular clouds
Walked out of a restaurant in the late afternoon in Palm Springs, CA and there they were.

Lightning storm
Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia. A storm many miles away caused lightning to flash continuously for hours. The lightning was in front of these huge clouds that reflected the flashes that occurred about once a second.

Ellora, India
Hard to describe, but its a large ancient temple that was carved right into the side of a stone mountain. It goes quite deep into the rock with many rooms and statues.

Two juvenile Bobcats
A rare sight here in southern CA. At sunset their white coats just shined, (And they didn't even eat my old dog who got way too close!)

What cool stuff have you seen?

Nava

09-27-2009, 08:50 PM

The nurse carrying my baby brother in her arms.

The picture of my nephew holding his father's finger in his tiny, tiny ones.

The view from the gardens of the Alhambra, which made my 9yo brother (the one who is generally understood to have the aesthetic sensitivity of a brick) exclaim "wow, now I know why they fought so hard to keep this place."

The look in that same brother's face, taking New York in.

The sea, playing hide-and-seek with our train from behind the coastline's hills.

A little child discovering that the waves keep moving... and moving...

Families laughing as they walk into a hotel bar, flushed after a day on the slopes.

The full moon of August over Miami, looking like the biggest Navel orange ever.

Everybody hale and healthy, on the other side of the street on that day when the apartments building where we lived had to be evacuated due to a fire on the top floor, and one of the neighbors across the street organizing which neighbor was going to feed breakfast to which shivering family.

Three rainbows at the same time, on the sky over Bilbao.

Fetchund

09-27-2009, 08:50 PM

Dolphins off the shore just before sunrise.

The Northern Lights

Meteor showers

Halley's Comet

3 Grey foxes on my front lawn

A Yellow Faced Grassquit in Florida

Kittens being born

My dog screaming through weave poles

a Tree kangaroo in the wild

JustThinkin's face smiling at me on our wedding day.

Imasquare

09-28-2009, 12:23 AM

I haven't really seen all that much so these are exciting for me:

The Hollywood sign
Big Ben
The Golden Gate Bridge
The Sydney Opera House

Imasquare

09-28-2009, 12:30 AM

I forgot about Red Square and St Basil's in Moscow.

garygnu

09-28-2009, 03:04 AM

Yellowstone National Park burning in 1988. (and Yellowstone in general)

The moonbow at Yosemite Falls. (and Yosemite in general)

The Perseid Meteor Shower from the Columbia River Gorge.

The Columbia River Gorge from the top of Beacon Rock.

A spectacular lightning storm in central Washington (somewhere near Cle Elum).

Lake Tahoe in winter while skiing Heavenly. (and the winter in the Sierra Nevada in general)

Walking into Disneyland the morning of July 17th, 2005, after waiting all night, with all the cast members lining the sides of Main Street cheering the stream of guests walking by.

The sunrise at Haleakela. (and all of Maui in general)

Scuba diving in Molokini Crater

hmmm, can't choose. Lower Oneonta Falls? Blue Basin? Pinnacles? Craters of the Moon?

Robot Arm

09-28-2009, 03:29 AM

Ten, huh? Let's see:

(in no particular order)

Rounding the leeward side of St. Kitts and climbing into the rigging to furl the sails, the island, the ship's bell (that I spent three hours polishing) gleaming in the sunlight, and a sea turtle swimming next to the ship.

On a commercial airline flight, passing near a thunderstorm at night with the clouds lighting up from within.

Sunrise on the Champs-Elysees; it was overcast, but the sun came in under the clouds with the most glorious, warm, red light I've ever seen. Thirty seconds and it was gone. (I got a picture (http://www.muppetlabs.com/~eric/enhanced/champs_4.jpg) of this one, but it doesn't do it justice.)

The Ulmer Meunster, tallest cathedral in the world. For a couple Euros you can climb almost to the top; the scale makes it seem massive and fragile at the same time.

Flying a light plane out of Paine Field in Everett, Washington. It was night, and as I turned away from the lights of the airport, it felt like I was flying into the stars. The moon was reflecting off the water and I could make out the shapes of the islands like is was daytime.

El Capitan in Yosemite.

Honorable Mention (impressive, but not quite Top Ten material):

Riding the train into Philadelphia, graffiti and trash lining the tracks, stopping in the sooty darkness, and then coming up the stairs into the 30th St. Station.

Grand Canyon

The Las Vegas strip at night.

(Tongue in cheek, I could mention the flight attendant I had a couple weeks ago from Cedar City to Salt Lake City, but that's not really in keeping with the spirit of the thread. Damn, she was gorgeous, though. Pretty sunrise on that flight, too.)

Ranchoth

09-28-2009, 03:50 AM

Fog wisping, fast, over the hills just north of the Golden Gate Bridge (actually, I've seen this a number of times. Every time's like the first, though.).

Comet Hale-Bopp. I was expecting a little dot. Yow.

A meteorite crashing, maybe a mile or two distant. Big bada boom.

Sunrise, past the tops of the clouds, through an airliner window, somewhere over New Orleans, 1992 (I woke up to see that).

Light shower in late afternoon sunlight, outside a bookstore window, early 2005. Jane Birkin's Les Avalanches (http://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B00061QK0C/ref=pd_krex_dp_001_011?ie=UTF8&track=009&disc=001#) was playing.

Moonrise over a redwood ridge, near sunset, summer 1999.

Probably a tie between the Sierra Nevadas in winter, and a Difference Engine in operation.

An little old Pekingese, wagging his tail, brought into an animal shelter, 1992 or '93. His name was Mugsy, and he was almost my second dog.

This sign. (http://www.yesterland.com/images-main/newsign.jpg) (I was 8)

Castaway Creek (http://z.about.com/d/themeparks/1/0/k/N/TL4.jpg), Disneyworld. (I was 9)

even sven

09-28-2009, 03:55 AM

No order-

1. Mt Everest- I slept at the tent camp on the Chinese side. You can see the mountain looming above you when you brush your teeth in the morning. At night you can barely breathe from the altitude as the beautifully ornamented Tibetan families running the tents chat with you and serve yak butter tea.

2, Meenakshi temple, Madurai, India- My favorite temple. It's like a city. It is rumored to have over a million statues. It's all incense and jasmine and the tinkle of bells. I spent days just hanging around.

3. TImbuktu- It really is hard to get there, and it really does feel like the edge of the world. There isn't much to see there. The sands drift across the place, piling up at street corners. But man, the feeling of history is there. It's still all nomads and scholars of 1,000 year old universities out there. As remote and exotic as it's reputed to be,

4. The Great Mosque at Djenne, Mali- It's the world's biggest building made of mud. It's awesome.

5. Taj Mahal- The part they never tell you is that it is as exquisite up close as far away. Truly, a perfect building.

6. Lhasa, Tibet- the Potala Palace looms above the place like a fairy tale castle in the sky. The pilgrims from distant mountains walk, chanting and spinning prayer wheels. The temples are dark and ancient and still thriving with life. And the city itself is probably one of the most cosmopolitan in China- with Tibetans of every kind in their elaborate local dress, Han Chinese, and Westerners. All that, with clear blue skies and beautiful mountains. The place has problems no doubt. But it still feels like a dream.

7. Sainte Chapelle, Paris- Oh the light!

8. Santa Cruz, CA- Lived there six years. That place will steal your soul, but it is heaven on earth.

9. The Great Wall at Simitai- Truly breathtaking. I didn't expect to think much of it, but it is truly impressive.

10. The Sahara Desert- Ok, I just like deserts. It's vast, and full of camels and nomads who still cross it to trade salt, sleeping in the day and navigating by stars at night.

cdsilv

09-28-2009, 07:45 AM

Waterspout headed towards the sailboat I was on - it veered before sucking us up.

My daughters frolicking in the surf of Gulf Shores, AL. White sand, clear water, my kids.

Dolphins playing at the bow of a sailboat while kids chortled in laughter

Sunrise over snow-frosted Sugar Valley in North Ga. from the mouth of Saltpeter Mine Cave.

A lightning storm above and around a Third Eye Blind outdoor concert onboard NAS Pensacola - never rained on the concert, just scared the hell out of the band.

Various hurricanes and their attendant devastation.

Nylon being made from butane & water going from liquid to solid between two spinneret heads.

Tx, La, Ms, Fl & Ga from 5k feet in my friends Piper Cherokee during a few days of 'just bumming around'.

'Big Sky' sunsets in Houston, TX.

The Chatuga River (the river Deliverance was filmed on) from a raft ON the Chatuga river. Whitewater rafting.

RealityChuck

09-28-2009, 08:14 AM

Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick
Lincoln Memorial
The Blowhole on Oahu
Gettysburg Battlefield
Antietam Battlefield
View from the top of the Empire State Building
The first sight of my daughter
Seeing the Rocky Mountains while flying west.
The view from Cabin 18 at Sand Point Beach on Schroon Lake, NY.

Labrador Deceiver

09-28-2009, 08:35 AM

The Chatuga River (the river Deliverance was filmed on) from a raft ON the Chatuga river. Whitewater rafting.

Nitpick: That would be the Chattooga river. What a gorgeous stretch of water.

Jettboy

09-28-2009, 08:59 AM

• A small group of 6-7 dolphins swimming in the Ashley River in Charleston, SC; seen from a bridge as I was on my way to work one morning.

Most of the other morning travellers were busy yakking on their cell phones, cramming an Egg McMuffin in their mouths, or pretending they were in a NASCAR event and didn't see them —or had seen similar a zillion times— so I was sure it was meant for my eyes alone. To a guy from land-locked central Texas it was a magical sight.

• The Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, Texas at sunset. Those six rusty, graffiti-covered Cadillacs all sticking up out of the ground at the same angle and lancing into that pink, orange and purple West Texas sunset that stretched on forever...wow.

• My wife in her wedding dress walking toward me on her father's arm looking like a fairytale princess.

• My son seconds after he was born, bright pink and still coated with that white-ish post birth goo, looking up at me with terrified eyes and shreiking like he'd just seen some Lovecraftian horror.

• The aftermath of Hurricane Wilma on our Fort Lauderdale, FL neighborhood. When the storm had passed I walked outside to see what damage my first-ever hurricane had wrought. I was stunned into silence by the destruction.

There were more trees uprooted and/or snapped and broken than there were left standing. Cars had been shoved around like the toys of some angry giant child. Several trees had fallen into and on top of parked cars (our downstairs neighbor’s Buick was one of the unlucky tree/auto hybrids). Dozens of the sheet metal carports at our apartment complex had been shredded and mangled by the wind and were scattered around like huge strips of aluminum foil. Shredded mini blinds hung out of hundreds of broken windows. You couldn't walk more than three feet without encountering some sort of debris.

• A car wreck happening right in front of me.

I was right behind a little old lady in a green minivan stopped at the light where Wilson crosses S. 1st. The light changed, and the little old lady starts across the intersection. KERRR-BLAM! A car (later found to be driven my a drunk college kid) comes screaming down S. 1st at about 50mph, runs the red light and slams into the rear driver's side of the little old lady's minivan. The green minivan spins around TWICE —at one point going up on two wheels— as it crosses the street at an angle and crashes into the side of a locksmith's shop. The drunk's car smashes into a lightpole on the other side of the street. Miraculously, no one is seriously hurt, although the little old lady has a nasty gash on her forehead that splashes blood across her windshield.

The entire incident —the sudden, huge release of violent energy— only took about 5 seconds. I started to say, "Holy shit!" but only got to, "Holy sh..." and then it was over.

• A space shuttle launch. I've seen it twice; both times it was accidental. Once my family and I were on the highway and saw an incredible bright streak of fire and smoke off to the east. It didn't dawn on us for a half hour that it was the shuttle launching. A few months later we were working on the front lawn and saw the same comet-like streak in the sky.

• Denver, CO early in the morning. I was coming into the city for the first time, and could see of the city lights out in front of me and the Rocky Mountains off to the west being hit with first hint of sunrise.

• A storm far out over the Atlantic ocean, seen from Key West, FL. Huge puffballs of purple-black clouds lit from inside by lightning, and reflected in the dark mirror of the ocean.

panache45

09-28-2009, 09:02 AM

Total solar eclipse (3 times)
Transit of Venus
Bryce Canyon
Flying over the Grand Canyon in a small plane
Landscape Arch in Arches National Park
View from top of Empire State Building (day and night)
Kilauea lava flows at night
Matterhorn from directly over it
Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona
Fireworks at the Eiffel Tower on Bastille Day

GuanoLad

09-28-2009, 09:19 AM

Saturn and Jupiter.
A lightning storm over my home. Hours of non-stop flashes.
Whales.
Darling Harbour in Sydney.
Sunset above the clouds.
The Tantive IV Blockade Runner, inside and outside.
Standing on the top of a snow covered mountain range.
A TV series I co-wrote, screening on national television.
Two women having sex.
This (http://www.guanolad.com/aw/). (warning: NSFW, two click rule applies)

bup

09-28-2009, 09:24 AM

my newborn daughter

a 30 foot underground waterfall into a pool in a cave

humpback whales up close

underwater Dutch national park just off Saba

Sifnos island - basically, the whole Greek Mediterranean

a manatee swimming right by my daughter

Badlands National Park

...and three involving sex.

elbows

09-28-2009, 09:26 AM

Watching the sunrise up through the Sun gate overlooking the ruins at Machu Picchu.

Seeing the sunset, from my hammock, on the South China Sea.

Attending a full moon Puja, at a small monastery outside Kathmandu, the entire monastic community gathered into the small gompa chanting as the moon came up - magic.

Clambering among the deserted ruins, overgrown with jungle, of SE Asia.

The view from an elephants back, picking it's way, carefully through the jungle undergrowth.

The vale of Kashmir.

The Zanskar mountains from the air.

The northern lights & meteor showers, lying on a giant rock, lakeside, in the far north.

Snorkeling in the clear and salty South Seas.

My daughter. (A child I surrendered to adoption while a teenager!) After 28 yrs apart!

lieu

09-28-2009, 09:53 AM

Hiking the Inca Trail, sleeping in old ruins each night and seeing Machu in sunrise as we descended to it.

A huge Lynx with massive padded feet amble acroos the road during a snowfall in Yukon Territory, one of many experiences involving grizzly, black bear, Dall Sheep, Rocky Mtn. Bighorn Sheep, Moose, Auroras, etc. driving up and back down the AlCan Hwy.

A very large, blonde Wolverine circling around a Moose trying to get to her calf on the North Slope, Alaska.

A Grizzly chasing a moose and her calf into the brush and then reappear, only now it was following a big Bull Moose. They pulled a switch in the brush. We were sitting above on the banks of the Collville and watched the entire drama unfold below us.

The evolution of a day on Santorini, from sunrise to sunset.

Views from mountain summits; Blanca, Guadalupe Peak, East Spanish Peak, West Spanish Peak, Massive, Elbert, and many others.

Huge boulders calving off the cliffs of the Colville west of Umiat, plunging into the glacial milk river as the supporting permafrost below melted on a summer day.

Hiking across the debris of St. Helens a few years after the blast.

Cruising across the Four Corners on a motorcycle at 19 and camping out at Sedona, Zion, Bryce, Lake Powell, Petrified Forest, Toroweap, Saugauro, etc.

My daughter moments after her birth as she looked into my eyes and clenched my pinkie, screaming all the while for me to reassure her that everything was going to be okay.

Procrustus

09-28-2009, 10:03 AM

snorkling with turtles in Maui

Humpback whales in Alaska (there were some in Maui too, but not as close)

Bald Eagle trying to pick up a young otter in front of my house

two daughters being born

Star filled sky on cold clear summer night in Montana.

a couple of sexual visions that I'll never forget.

watching from the Senate Gallery asr Ted Kennedy delivered a speech I wrote while a summer intern.

Angel of Doubt

09-28-2009, 10:09 AM

The Aurora Borealis

A sunset seen while driving the Denali Highway. The entire sky was ablaze with intense and unearthly orange, red, fuschia and purple. People were stopping and getting out of their cars to watch it.

The sugar sands and aqua blue water of Panama City Beach.

Seeing my cat the next day after he got out and I panicked all night.

A snow leopard at the zoo.

The moving van of a guy I got into some conflict with at our apartment complex.

Coming out of our cabin face-to-face with a bull moose eating my horse’s hay that was stored there. Dad thought it funny to tell me to go out and check the hay without mentioning the moose. Thanks a lot, Dad, very funny!

The next three are just sentimental crap noone’s interested in, so here you go.

schnuckiputzi

09-28-2009, 10:13 AM

Rafting down the Kenai River in Alaska, watching a mother moose and calf drinking from the shallows.
Pretty much all of Alaska -- everywhere we looked was a calendar shot, it was September and the aspen were turning golden
Looking up into the bottom of a tornado over our house -- it had just torn up a lumber yard and pink insulation was swirling up into the center
Each of my babies - little pink bald girl, black-haired tan baby girl that looked Hispanic, fat blond boy that didn't open his eyes for a week because he was early and wasn't going to get all worked up yet.

Lightnin'

09-28-2009, 10:24 AM

Watching the Space Shuttle re-entry over Texas, right at sunset. It was a huge, silent trail of plasma across the entire sky. The only thought I had was, "This is the 21st century. We should be seeing this every night."

Crater Lake in Oregon. Seriously, pictures can't do it justice. It's simply too big to be seen, even in person.

The remnants of two hurricanes in Houston, TX. Imagine huge mountains of clouds towering over you, with silent lightning arcing from horizon to horizon.

Whales breaching near the diveboat I was on in Hawaii. Nothing that big should be able to leap that far out of the water.

The first time I saw snow hit the mountains when I was living in Oregon. One day, the mountain was rocky, and the very next day it was completely covered in snow. Something that big shouldn't be able to change that abruptly.

A tornado in Austin, TX. Clouds shouldn't be that shape.

A rainbow after sunset in Oregon.

El_Kabong

09-28-2009, 10:29 AM

First glimpse of the Pyramids and Sphinx

Surrounded by elephants at Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe

The bungee jumpers at the Victoria Falls bridge

Riding from Quito over the crest of the Andes down into the Amazon basin, Ecuador

Earth-grazing meteors during the annual Perseid shower, around 2000 or so

Dead Horse Point, Utah (never been to the Grand Canyon yet, can't even imagine what that'd be like)

Viewing a waterspout from a mile away in a helicopter on its way to a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico

A full moon rising through clouds from a farmer's field in western PA

One of my earliest memories, seeing a blood-red sunset from a car I was riding in, when I was about two years old

Any of several times when I've been able to watch lightning in a distant thunderstorm at night.

Kyla

09-28-2009, 12:41 PM

8. Santa Cruz, CA- Lived there six years. That place will steal your soul, but it is heaven on earth.

Okay, this just amused me because I haven't been back to Santa Cruz a single time since I graduated nine years ago and would be happy to avoid the place for the rest of my life. Different strokes.

In no order:

1. Walking through St. Stephen's Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem just as the muezzinin start calling out the sundown prayer. A hundred calls echoing and reverberating off the walls, the lights of Al-Aqsa turned on, the gold of the Dome of the Rock still gleaming a bit from the last bit of sunshine, hundreds of people milling around the courtyard of the Western Wall.

2. The traffic in India. It is AMAZING.

3. The Grand Canyon from the air. I flew over it on a commercial flight from Detroit to Las Vegas several years ago and it was just astonishing.

4. Wild dolphins in the Red Sea at Nuweiba', Egypt. (I swam with them, even! They were very playful and obviously amused by us silly human creatures.)

5. Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. My BF-at-the-time and I really didn't know what to expect when we decided to check this place out while driving across the country. I think our ignorance may have been part of what made this amazing place extra-spectacular. We were blown away.

6. Monkeys in my street, Hyderabad, India. MONKEYS IN MY STREET, PEOPLE. It was the awesomest thing ever.

7. The road between Sarajevo and Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Possibly the most scenic bus ride...ever.

8. Crossing the Michigan Avenue Bridge in Chicago. Maybe this is a bit sentimental. I just love it so much. The bustle of the people, the skyscrapers rising up on all sides, the boats below you, the lake to the east. One of the best places to see how beautiful Chicago is.

9. Chichen Itza, Mexico.

10. I'm having a hard time deciding on a number ten. I'll leave this one blank, something to be filled in in the future.

Clothahump

09-28-2009, 12:50 PM

In no particular order:

The Alamo
Goliad
The San Jacinto Battlefield
The Grand Canyon
The Meteor Crater
The view from the Empire State Building
The Statue of Liberty
The Smithsonian
The White House
The U. S. Capital

Wow, that's ten right there and I haven't even gotten out of the USA.

Halley's comet
The Sydney Opera House
Hill End
The Monumen Nasional in Jakarta
The end of a missile shot from Vanderburg AFB coming into Kwajalein, Republic of the Marshall Islands
The sunken ships in Kwajalein lagoon

Kyla

09-28-2009, 12:55 PM

OH OH OH. I'm changing my non-#10 to: the Hagia Sofia, Istanbul. How could I have forgotten? Possibly because my mind was blown.

ETA: Or possibly Cappadocia, Turkey. That blew my mind as well. I DON'T KNOW.

ianzin

09-28-2009, 01:00 PM

1. The 'Treasury' in the ancient stone city of Petra, Jordan

2. The Kilauea Caldera, Hawaii Volcano National Park

3. The view from the very top of the Petronas Twin Towers, KL, Malaysia

4. My first glimpse of a walking Komodo dragon, Komodo Island, Indonesia

5. The planet Mars over Ayer's Rock at dawn

6. The view from the unfortunately named 'Guano point', Grand Canyon, USA

7. Sunset, Labuan Bajo, Indonesia

8. The interior of the Cathedral on Spilled Blood, St Petersburg

9. The Hiroshima Memorial, Hiroshima, Japan

10. Aerial view of glaciers, Milford Sound, Sth Island, New Zealand

11. Interior, Batu Caves, outside KL, Malaysia

I selected 11, so shoot me. I could list dozens. I've been very lucky.

MsWhatsit

09-28-2009, 01:07 PM

Not to pick nits (OK, I'm totally picking nits) but the Smithsonian isn't really one sight. :D

Here are mine. This is tough.

Mt. Rainier looming in the distance on a clear day in Seattle.

One snowy day in Chicago, the conditions were just right, and suddenly the sun hit the snowflakes in such a way that the snow looked like falling glitter. It was a heavy snowfall, and I could barely see two feet in front of me. People, trees, buildings, all surrounded by this swirling sparkling glitter. It was amazing.

Seeing a B-24 Liberator take off from Boeing Field in Seattle earlier this summer.

A bolt of lightning striking a parking lot less than 100 yards from where I was standing. (Impressive, but I don't need to repeat this one.)

Carhenge, in Alliance, Nebraska.

My husband's face, the morning after I met him.

Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the Wright Brothers flew their first planes.

Niagara Falls.

Wagon wheel tracks left by Oregon Trail wagons, somewhere in Wyoming.

A family of deer, less than 10 feet away from me, when I was running on a trail in a local park.

lieu

09-28-2009, 01:16 PM

10. Aerial view of glaciers, Milford Sound, Sth Island, New Zealand.I've got this (http://productsfromnz.com/browse_1472) poster on my office wall. Never been there but I'm guessin' it's pretty special.

Ravenman

09-28-2009, 01:19 PM

No particular order:

1. The Great Wall at Simatai -- just spectacular. Mostly because I think mountains are the coolest.
2. The Great Pyramid at Giza
3. The Treasury at Peta -- but there was no Holy Grail inside.
4. Nijo Castle in Kyoto.
5. Walking around on the Arctic icepack.
6. La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
7. A bunch of animals in the wild. Elephants, hippos, giraffes, zebras -- all that stuff except for a lion. While walking around, not in a truck or nothing. And they weren't in cages. Botswana is awesome.
8. Sunsets in Hawaii.
9. North Korean soldiers staring at me from 20 feet away with high power binoculars.
10. Lake Tahoe.

GargoyleWB

09-28-2009, 01:38 PM

Hmmm...

-- The recent (2004?) Mars orbital proximity. Big and orange to the naked eye, and I happened to be out in the mountains away from the city lights.

-- Getting surprised nose-to-nose with a huge sea turtle while snorkeling. We held eye contact and, I swear, the turtle then rolled its eyes as if to say "Great, another freakin' tourist".

-- A back-alley market in Shanghai. The smells, sounds, and visual chaos were overwhelmingly beautiful.

-- Breastesses. All of them.

-- A low flyby of an An-225 at an airshow. Designed by Vogons, I got a new appreciation for the description "It hung in the air in the way that bricks don't"

-- Alone flying a Cessna and climbing over a cloud layer for the first time. Also, my first night time flying.

-- Mt St Helens blowing itself up, and the strange otherwordly ashfall turning day into night.

-- Forbidden City in Beijing. To do something so historically forbidden, and how history dramatically changes. Behold the power of the tourist!

-- Lemons filling the streets and rotting on the sidewalks in Italy, saturating the air with lemony smells, squishing under my shoes. Lemons? My American brain boggled at the incongruity...

Duke

09-28-2009, 01:58 PM

I'll not count all of the things I've seen that were only of personal interest to me, to keep this relevant (and coincidentally SFW)...

1. Watching Nelson Mandela step out of a limo and walk through the gates of Jesus College, Oxford.

2. The Grand Canyon, south rim, when I was 11.

3. Any of the times I've been to Beaver Stadium to watch Penn State play football...not for the game but for the 100,000+ crowd. That is a LOT of people in one place.

4. Duke Humpfrey's Library, Oxford. Like stepping back in time.

5. The entrance to the Eisenhower Tunnel, on I-70 west of Denver. I even pulled to the adjacent rest area to take a picture.

6. Looking down at a small wildlife preserve in Almeria, Spain, which was situated between two sheer canyon walls.

7. Radcliffe Camera, Oxford, seeing a graduation ceremony from the inside.

8. A binturong! I know it was in a zoo, but...a binturong! Now I want one of my own!

9. A Lollard Bible from c. 1370, handwritten and looking little worse for the wear after over 600 years, and put on my desk at the British Library. What history.

10. I'll have to think about #10. So many things, I suppose.

Little Nemo

09-28-2009, 02:21 PM

Not a full ten but six that come to mind:

1 - An Apollo launching
2 - A live tiger, uncaged, in the same room as me
3 - "Old Sparky", NY's electric chair
4 - A double full-arc rainbow
5 - The base of Niagara Falls, close enough to touch
6 - A group of dolphins following a boat I was on, jumping up and down in the wake

cochrane

09-28-2009, 02:35 PM

I haven't seen much, mot even enough to make 10, but here's my list in no particular order.

I've been to Niagara falls and ridden the Maid of the Most.

I've been to Washington DC, many times. I've been to the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol Building, the Pentagon, and to Arlington Cemetary. I've seen the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and John F. Kennedy's grave. I've ridden the elevator to the top of the Washington Monument and seen the view from nearly 555 feet high. I saw Smokey the Bear at the Washington National Zoo.

I've been to one of the last remaining old-time baseball parks in the country, Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, before cities started building multi-purpose stadiums such as Three Rivers Stadium and Veterans' Stadium. Built in 1909, at the time it was older than Wrigley Park or Fenway.

I've seen the space shuttle Columbia riding on the back of a 747 on its way into Davis-Monthan AFB for the Boeing to refuel.

overlyverbose

09-28-2009, 02:43 PM

No particular order:

-Macchu Picchu
-A meteor shower in the Sandia mountains
-The crater of an active volcano in the south of Chile
-Lava flowing down the moutain on the Big Island of Hawaii
-The crowds screaming for all the marathoners when I finished Chicago
-My little boy smiling for the first time
-My husband when we said I do
-My son visiting a bakery for the first time (he looked around in wonderment, screamed, "Ahhh!" like he'd just realized he was surrounded by donuts and cookies, then started clapping and jumping up and down; this was just three weeks ago)
-The mist clearing over Lago Todos los Santos while I stood on a mountaintop looking down
-Dawn over the archaeological site I was working on in New Mexico

pudytat72

09-28-2009, 02:44 PM

-Total Solar eclipse

-Perseid Meteor Storm (meteor every 3-4 seconds for 5 hours)

-Yellowstone National Park

-Grand Canyon

-New England in the Fall

-full double rainbow so bright it looked electric

-Area around Mt. St. Helens after the blast

-Pamukkale, Turkey

-B52 bombers taking off one after another in an rapid take-off formation. (hoped it was just a drill!-knew they were loaded with nukes)

-Arlington National Cemetery in 1964-standing in a long line to pay respects at President Kennedy's grave.

Darryl Lict

09-28-2009, 02:49 PM

Yosemite Valley.
Grand Canyon.
Morning Glory Pool, Yellowstone National Park.
Machu Picchu (unfortunately, it was raining when I hiked in on the Inca trail, so I missed the fantastic view from whatever the hell that gate is).
Angkor Wat.
1991 solar eclipse in Baja.
Angel Falls.
Lion kill in Ngoro Ngoro Crater.
Victoria Falls.
Okavango Delta in Botswana.
Balloon popping dart shot from twat of some bar girl in Bangkok. Well, that's 11, but certainly worth a mention.

fervour

09-28-2009, 03:12 PM

Top 10 (no order):
Bryce Canyon
US Pacific Coast
Niagara Falls
Arches National Park
New York City
Smoky Mountains along the Blue Ridge Parkway
Badlands of South Dakota
Alabama/Florida Panhandle beaches
A Live Oak stand (http://www.floridastateparks.org/photocontest/ShowPhoto.cfm?Pic=February2008-3612-1502-121&alt=Old%20Fort%20King%20Road)of trees in central FL
Sheesh, only one more? Canyonlands National Park
----------------------------
What didn't make the top 10:

My other great places/thing to see list: Grand Canyon, London, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Zion NP, New Orleans, Lake Fausse Pointe (the Atchafalaya Basin in general), DisneyWorld, Million Dollar Highway, Bannack MT, full double rainbow, The National Gallery in Washington--just too many that shouldn't be left out.

My if you're in the area list: Naval Aviation Museum (Pensacola, FL), Birmingham Botanical Gardens (Alabama), Valley Forge/Gettysburg (Pennsylvania), Devil's Tower, Mt. Rushmore/Crazy Horse, Petrified Forest, Palo Duro Canyon TX, Redwood Forests CA, Mesa Verde

My skip-it (or maybe don't expect much) list: Liberty Bell, Hope Diamond, Hank William Museum, Desoto Caverns. This list could get really long.

Count Blucher

09-28-2009, 03:49 PM

1) My wife giving birth.

2) Haley's Comet

3) Kahotek comet

4) A relative buried in Arlington National Cemetary with full honors.

5) The Oval office

6) a person die / dead w/i 5 minutes earlier

7) US Embassy in Colombia, 1 week before the hostages were taken.

8) The insides of my own leg.

9) The 'green flash' at sunset while out at sea.

10) Various name-drop celebrities/politicians

PoorYorick

09-28-2009, 03:54 PM

Boy, there's some well-travelled sonsabitches on this board. I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to measure up, but . . .

Stonehenge in the fog, before they built the fence around it.
Molokai from a mountain plantation in Maui at sunrise.
A lightning storm during a blizzard.
My two-year-old granddaughter eating ice cream for the first time.
Petroglyphs that hadn't been seen in thousands of years up to then.
The Grand Canyon at sunrise.
A Louisiana bayou with fog two feet from the ground.

Tastes of Chocolate

09-28-2009, 05:05 PM

Bald eagles flying through a double rainbow - Boundary Waters Wilderness Area
A pride of 13 lions dozing in the sand, 30 feet from the truck we were having breakfast in - Tanzania
A lightning storm over Iowa. About 20 of us stood outside and watched the lightning flash across the sky.
A monkey in my backyard, in Minnesota. It had escaped the local zoo.
My SO blowing bubbles to my 2 year old godson. They both look so incredibly happy.

even sven

09-28-2009, 07:11 PM

Okay, this just amused me because I haven't been back to Santa Cruz a single time since I graduated nine years ago and would be happy to avoid the place for the rest of my life. Different strokes.

Oh trust me, I'm not going anywhere near the place. Nothing good ever happens there.

But you have to admit- the misty redwood forests crisscrossed with bridges over huge gorges, the stars and bonfires on the beaches, watching the sun rise over the entire span of the bay from SC to Monterey, the empty boardwalk during a foggy winter, the fire trails at UCSC on a windy full moon night, those yellow flowers that bloom from everything in summer.....it's a beautiful place.

Chronos

09-28-2009, 07:43 PM

1: Yellowstone Canyon. If you've never been to Yellowstone, go. Everyone should visit at least once in their lives, and for my money, the canyon is the most beautiful part. It's admittedly smaller than the Grand Canyon, but far more visually impressive.

2: The Peekskill Meteor. It was an extremely bright meteor, a clear bright green in color, that moved slowly across the sky and was seen by folks all over the eastern US. I've since also seen it up close, in a museum, which is cool in its own way.

3: The Aurora Borealis. I've seen it about a dozen times, and it's different each time. The first time I saw it, the whole sky was changing colors, with "windshield wiper" lines of white light sweeping across the sky. The second time, it was green amoebas oozing through the sky. I've also seen what looked like faerie castles on the horizon, and curtains of light like you see in photographs, and other effects.

4: Full-sky sunsets. Anyone can see an impressive sunset by looking west, but every few years, I see one looking out my east-facing windows. The whole sky is just dappled with orange and purple.

5: Comets Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp, though I imagine that everyone has seen those. Either one was a once-in-a-lifetime comet, and they came only a year apart.

More later, perhaps.

MsWhatsit

09-28-2009, 07:44 PM

2 - A live tiger, uncaged, in the same room as me

'splain.

chacoguy

09-28-2009, 07:56 PM

1. The Green Flash at Great Sand Dunes National Monument.
2. Sunset at Sleeping Bear Dunes.
3. Tornadoes at less than a mile away.
4. waking up to The World's Most Adorable Dog who has been patiently waiting, tongue-length away.
5. A mountain lion, in the wild.
6. 20 waterfalls cascading down otherwise dry cliffsides.
7. Sitting, single file, at night, under an arch while rain falls in torrents on both sides of us.
8. 400,000 Sand Hill Cranes in the air, at once.
9. A Bald Eagle nailing a fish, 40' from my raft.
10. An intact pot and sandal sitting right where someone left them 700 years ago.

samclem

09-28-2009, 08:02 PM

Probably sounds provincial, as I"m an American

Grand Canyon
Yosemite and Grand Tetons
Mesa Verde
Glacier National Park
Banff
New York City
London
Octoberfest
Luxembourg City
Lincoln Memorial

Little Nemo

09-28-2009, 08:18 PM

2 - A live tiger, uncaged, in the same room as me'splain.I've seen live tigers before, obviously, but in places like circuses and zoos where they were at a safe distance. But they look a lot different when they're in the same room as you. You realize how friggin huge a tiger is.

MsWhatsit

09-28-2009, 08:21 PM

Er, no, I didn't mean for you to explain what is noteworthy about a live tiger being in the same fricking room with you. I meant, what were the circumstances under which this event occurred? :D

The Shroud

09-28-2009, 10:25 PM

Struggling to come up with my own makes me realize I'm pretty light on worldly experience. But here goes (in no particular order):

-Notre Dame at night from a boat on the Seine

-The towers of the World Trade Center from the plaza below. (Not trying to be sappy--it's just that they were SO tall; it was dizzying.)

-My first glimpse of New York City after emerging from Grand Central Terminal. It was like stepping into a movie (I'm from California).

-David Letterman bounding on stage 6 weeks after heart bypass surgery. I was in the front row.

-The Palace of Versailles

-The Tower Bridge in London

-A couple of Whose Line is it Anyway tapings. I've never laughed so hard for so long.

-Gare du Nord in Paris. I guess it's really just a typical train station, but, like the New York experience, it was my first moment in France and I felt giddy as I took in this view (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Gare_du_Nord_Panorarma.JPG).

-Mulholland Drive & Coldwater Canyon in L.A. Spent lots of time in college on long, introspective drives on these windy roads with great views.

-The Napa Valley when the sun's low and everything's in bloom.