Thanks, Telemark and Scougs That is what I had suspected. I still want to see them with my own eyes
As for other sites, my list is too long to type. At the top would the Great Wall, the Hagia Sophia, the chateaux of the Loire, Venice, …
One odd one is that I really want to see a kangaroo in the wild, for some reason.
Barring that, you could do what we did – take an Everest flight out of Kathmandu. We used Buddha Air. Very nice.
Glacier / Yellowstone are both well worth a visit. While visiting Yellowstone, make time to visit Grand Teton (when we were there, we actually stayed in Teton and drove up to Yellowstone several times). If you’re there for 2ish weeks you could combine Glacier with that same trip; it’s a bit far to go on anything shorter than 10 days. If you go to Glacier, bring your passport in case you want to cross over to visit Waterton Lakes park as well.
My son just took a cross-country train trip - the Empire Builder. When he announced his plans, I threatened to stow away. Per my recommendation, he did coach from DC to Chicago (to save funds; one night in coach ain’t fun but is doable) and got a roomette for the western bit for 2 nights. If you’re travelling with another person, get a bedroom - it’s significantly more comfortable for 2 than a roomette is. If you’re solo, a roomette is fine.
I have a bucket list, but it’s so pedestrian that I don’t think I should share it. It would only reveal how little I’ve travelled.
I grew up in Alaska with the northern lights, and I agree with the others that it isn’t usually anything close to what you might expect. I did see one spectacular display when I was going to college in Fairbanks. It was as close to the perfection you see in some photos as I ever hope to see.
That is how I felt about seeing the total solar eclipse in 2017. Everyone I talked to at the site agreed that nothing could have prepared them for what it actually looked like that day. The traffic was an unqualified nightmare, but I would still recommend it to absolutely everyone.
Failing health would now place limitations on the places I could actually enjoy, but I can still think of a few (given buckets of money to fulfill my bucket list):
Total eclipse- I’ve missed three now, two to weather, one to not being able to travel a mere hundred miles to the center of totality.
Can you take a train from Moscow to Vladivostok? It would be something to get a visceral realization of how effin’ huge central Asia is.
New York City would be good IF I had an expert guide to show me all the things I might otherwise miss.
Being somewhat depressive, I might like to spend a few days (in safe warm quarters of course) in some utterly bleak, stormy high latitude place- Patagonia or maybe Svalbard. Drinking hot cocoa with schnapps and reading while looking out the window at the 60mph winds driving the icy waves onto the barren rocky shore.
Let me save you a trip there… it’s a big thriving city that looks like most other big cities in Japan. If you like oysters they have good oysters.
They do also have a notable museum dedicated to documenting Japan’s role as the real victims of WW2.
Trans-Siberian Railway
I’ve seen four total solar eclipses: in Hawaii, just NE of Paris, on the island of Guadaloupe, and the 2017 in Hopkinsville, KY. To see the one in 2024, I’ll just have to step outside our house and look up.
I try to explain this to people sometimes, and I wonder if this is how truly religious people feel when trying to explain God to us atheists.
Having hiked Bright Angel to Phantom Ranch, and spent a week rafting all the way to Bar-10, I make the following claim: The difference between seeing the canyon from the rim, and hiking down to spend time inside – is exactly as great as the difference between seeing a picture and viewing it in person. There’s no comparison.
Ooh, I was in Hopkinsville two years ago too. It was my first. It was the most amazing freaking thing I have seen in my life.
I’m going to Argentina in December 2020.
At a ranger geology lecture one evening he asserted that 99% of the visitors to the South Rim never step off of the rim. Since then, if I happen to be wandering around near the Bright Angel trailhead and I see a first-timer (they’re easy to spot) I tell them, “Follow me,” take them about twenty yards down the trail, then say, “Congratulations; you’re now a 1%-er,” and drop that statistic on them.
Wanna visit:
Already did:
For those of you mentioning The Grand Canyon - consider the rafting trips that last 6-7 days. You have to book ahead and it can be expensive but it is an experience you will never forget.
Pullin nailed it perfectly.
If you visit the Grand Canyon nearby Bryce Canyon is better at least to me. Also there are 4 other Southern Utah parks that are great too. Zion, Canyonlands, Arches, and Capitol Reef.
Now that the thread has popped up again, I’m happy to report that I made it back there a couple of months after I posted. Didn’t take a rafting trip, but I really enjoyed wandering around the whole area. One attraction that I hadn’t planned on, but was really a highlight was Lost World Caverns (reputed to be the home of Bat Boy). I had the whole place to myself almost an hour, it was awesome.
Missed this thread first time around. Honestly, there is nothing I’d go across the street just to see awesome splendor. Recently at Angkor Wat, and seeing the sunrise behind was a yawner, compared to listening to my driver tell me about being raised a Khmer Rouge orphan.
Things I did seee, just because they happened to be along my itinerary – climbed the Great Pyramid, Auschwitz by myself with a mimeographed self-guide sheet, Mona Lise equally solitary. Eclipse, Midnight sun, Victoria and Iguassu Falls. 1300 species of roadside birds. A week in Idi Amin’s Uganda. Drove my own car across Arabia on roadless track.
If you’re young, the scenery will be there forever. Travel to see the constantly shifting foreground. The thing I most sadly missed? The Grand Ole Opry, in the old Reiman Auditorium, when I lived in Nashville. I’d gladly trade ten Taj Mahals for that.
I’ve been to all of them. Bryce is the winner; it’s like being on another planet.
Northern lights in Alaska.
Yellowstone in mid May or early October.
The Holy Land at Easter.
The Vatican at Christmas.
The White House with Obama.