I may be the only one on this board who’s hiked the Snowdonia Way in Wales from Machynlleth to Conwy. Considering that we did a combination of high-level and low-level route sections, not to mention a few [del]wrong turns[/del] side trips, I’m sure nobody followed the exact path we did.
Another fairly unique UK hike is in the Lake District from Ulverston to Coniston. We’ve also done the round trip around Ullswater.
I’ve been to the Scilly Islands in Cornwall and visited every island you could get to by public boat.
In China, I worked in Shandong province for eight months and visited all of the provincial highlights, at least the best sounding ones in the Lonely Planet.
In France, we’ve done a week’s bike riding in the Entre-Deux-Mers following a custom wine tasting route.
A couple other remote places in Europe are Flåm, Norway (including the village, not just the tourist area) and Mjlit Island, Croatia.
Libertyville High School? Yes I’m a Giants fan. I remember Brett Butler very well. He was on the team at Candlestick Park when the Loma Prieta earthquake stopped Game 3 of the 1989 World Series.
Related places I’ve been: The San Francisco Giants played at Candlestick Park, which is now demolished. I attended many games there, as have other Dopers.
I plan to drive this too in a newish Jeep Grand Cherokee. From the reading I’ve done, the truckers are just trying to get through and do their job. The road isn’t wide, so tourist drivers like us need to be watchful for trucks and give them space to get past. I intend to pull over and let them pass easily, so I can then continue at my leisurely, scenery-admiring pace.
Just keep your eyes peeled for the truckers, give them room, and I think we’ll be fine. If I don’t, e.g., then a trucker will likely be on the CB radio telling other truckers, hey folks watch out for the asshat driving the white Grand Cherokee with California plates. Which then could lead to other, umm, interesting encounters with other truckers.
I was driving a 27’ motor home and had no problems with the truckers. The only incident worth mentioning was a company pickup truck with an asshole driving it that passed me at a high rate of speed, which threw a cloud of rocks up into my vehicle. No damage, but it really pissed me off. The rule of thumb on that road is that if you slow down, so will the truck drivers. If you are throwing up a big cloud of dust when you approach an oncoming semi, he’s probably not going to slow down, which could cost you your windshield. I just slowed to a stop and pulled as far to the right as possible. My understanding now is that there are even tour buses driving the highway.
As for gas, the highway is about 400 miles to Deadhorse from its intersection with the Elliot Highway just north of Fairbanks. You can refuel at Coldfoot, which is about 240 miles from Deadhorse, so as long as your tank will get you that far, you’re fine. You can then refuel again at Deadhorse for the return trip.
Many good places to visit in the future in this thread!
I am reasonably sure that noone has been to Longyearbyen (Svalbard) or to Koh Rong Sanloem(a small island off Sihanoukville in Cambodia)
And I am very sure that noone has been on Round Island, Mauritius. The island is a conservation area and off limits to visitors except for field station personnel (I got in because my now ex-girlfriend did the fieldwork for her thesis there and I got to go there for 10 days). It is home to several species which are either very rare or extinct outside of the island (e.g. the Gunthers Gecko or the Telfair Skink). Plus a huge colony of Shearwaters and Petrels.
I have been backstage at Madison Square Garden. When we were leaving we were directed to an elevator which would take us up to street level. We couldn’t find the elevator so we asked an old man who was sitting on a chair where the elevator was. He informed us that we were in it. It was huge. He said that it’s the elevator they use to bring beer into MSG. They don’t load the cases of beer into the elevator - they drive the truck into the elevator and bring it down into the building.
Yup. I remember going through the reactor compartment of the D1G prototype reactor in upstate New York, and squeezing around a tight space inside. IIRC, it was the heavily shielded ion exchanger (which acts to filter out any impurities in the coolant, and is therefore itself highly radioactive, even when the plant is shut down). Anyway, it was a very exposed position to squeeze your whole torso around one of the more radioactive parts of the plant. I imagined I was getting a whole body X-ray, but worse (because they were gammas).
That sounds a lot like the private logging roads deep in the North Maine Woods. These unpaved roads are the only way to access the upstream starting points for many of the inland wilderness waterways, like the Allagash River and the West Branch of the Penobscot River.
Every time I’ve traveled on these roads, I was in a van full of people while hauling a trailer with 5-6 canoes. Anytime we encountered a logging truck on these gravel roads, our driver pulled over as far as he could to get out of their way. Many of them drove at ridiculous speeds (50-70 mph on dirt roads). Our drivers always noted that it was their road and they always had the right-of-way, so it was best to just get out of their way.
Check!
The most remote place I have been was on the western shore of Lake Baikal, where the famous end of the road can be found. We took one of this Sowjet hydrofoils (Cometa) and went further, past Listvyanka, to places where I guess I will never be again but not all the way up to Nizhneangarsk. That was almost 20 yr ago, wonder how much tourism development there has been since. By the turn of the Century it was desolate but beautiful.
Check the Ciudad Encantada too. It was in all my geography schoolbooks and one day I went.
Yes!
Mine too! I crossed it a couple of times, as I have a Spanish passport too (Germans had to go through other checkpionts). But I lived round the corner, so it probably does not count. 1982.
I am an interpreter myself, I have not worked there, but we were allowed to visit. Have been in many other booths, of course: probably all the (Spanish) booths in Brussels, in the Bundeskanzleramt in Berlin, the Reichstag… funny how you get blasé with all the places they let you in as an interpreter.
I also was in Oulu and drove to Saariselkä, Finnland. In Winter! That is the other end of the road I mentioned above, or at least feels like it is.
I don’t remember if it was the basement, but it was certainly the employee only area - I worked on the installation of the security system for the UN in '92 or '94 (don’t remember, but it was during the winter Olympics)
I went with him to plenty of employee only areas too, but this was an interesting one since you got in through the lower level of the lobby. I got lots of funny looks - but if you walk confidently, you can go lots of places.
What fun, making this list. Interesting places, but no doubt each of them have been visited by at least one other board member!
Knossos Palace, Crete
Backstage at the San Francisco Symphony
Kyongbuk Palace, Seoul
Golden and Silver Pavilions in Kyoto…I lived between them (they’re kilometers apart)
Tower of London
Meteor Crater, Arizona
Death Valley
Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood and Mt. Baker (all Pac NW)
South Point (southernmost point in USA, is on south side of the island of Hawaii)
“The cave where Zeus was born, Crete” Granted, there are probably lots of places in Greece claiming this
Cape Canaveral, FL
Cape Flattery, WA (Most NW point of WA)
Have visited all 50 states!
But one oddball place that almost NOBODY has visited but me: Years ago, as a high school exchange student living in rural Japan (Shuchi, in Tamba-cho, Kyoto prefecture) I blazed a trail to the top of a small mountain that’s always looking down on the village but had no trails I could find (or anyone knew of). Got to the top and sure enough, found the rumored remains of an old building with a stone foundation. Locals called it “Castle Mountain” so presumably this building was a medieval keep of some kind.
I’ve been to - but did not take the tour of - the Tower, but it is the easternmost point I’ve been to in a both relative and absolute sense (since I’ve never been out of the American/Western European quadrant.)
If I go back to England I might visit Canterbury which would make it a little harder to determine the eastern- and westernmost place I’ve been to.