I’d love to see the photos!
I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned Niagara Falls.
When brought our daughter to law school in Buffalo we decided to take a ride over to the falls since it wasn’t much further. We took the Maid of the Mist boat ride to near the base of the falls.
Seriously, if the sight of that immense wall of water, roaring mercilessly, doesn’t move you, you must not have a heart or soul. It took me by surprise how magnificent the falls are, I found it life changing. I now look for the awesomeness nature and the world wants to show us.
Niagara Falls! Slowly I turned …
Sorry.
I’ve seen it, but I was more impressed by a lake in the jungle of Venezuela, which I visited in 1987. It was a trip on a cruise which passed Angel Falls (saw it, but too far away to be very impressive) and brought us to this camp. We took a boat ride around I think seven waterfalls all pouring into this lake. And we got close. My daughter really liked Victoria Falls, but I’ve never been there.
One from a long way back, the Milford Track in New Zealand. It’s regulated, difficult to get reservations, and subect to the whims of the weather. I expected the hike to be fun but too popular to be fun. It was phenomenal, especially when the weather was clear. We got out early each morning and had the trail to ourselves each day.
White water rafting in Costa Rica. To this Colorado native, it was very nice that the water was warm.
Three weeks in Bavaria and Austria. All travel by train. Stayed in ‘mom and pop’ hotels, many of them very old. Amazing history. We are doing the British Isles in 2025. Oh and Iceland and Norway too.
I’m a bit long in the tooth for adventure such as SCUBA now a days. But saw some great stuff off of Ambergris Caye, Belize. And Mexico too. Dived with sharks around. It’s a bit disconcerting when the dive boat throws chum in the water to gather them when you are decompressing in the water.
One event that lived up to my expectations was Open Cockpit Day at the Castle Air Museum. The highlight of the day was getting to sit in the pilot’s seat of a B-36 and looking out of that massive glass nose dome. The second-best thing was going up into the rear cabin of the Avro Vulcan. The cockpit itself wasn’t accessible but you could poke your head in and get a good look at all the controls and instrument panels.
My husband got to fly in a Collings Foundation B-17, which blew him away. Unfortunately that plane no longer exists 
I immensely enjoyed whale watching off the coast of Newfoundland:
We also visited gannet and puffin colonies which were pretty amazing as well.
Back in the '90s, we stumbled upon the Sir John Soane’s museum in London. We just revisited this past April and it’s still as delightfully quirky as ever.
Yep, me too. Fantastic experience. I sat next to a veteran who had been shot down but made it back to England and went on to train B-29 pilots.
Speaking of B-29s, I would’ve really liked to take a ride in Fifi, but the cheapest seats were out of my price range.
I enjoy whale-watching trips and often do one to three a summer ( or did, pre-COVID). However while all of my recent trips have been productive and well worth it, I’ve had the misfortune of being skunked a couple of times. Trips revolving around very mobile nature can land anywhere between awesome and bust.
But less mobile nature (at least on land) is pretty consistent 
. Año Nuevo in season is always cool.
Also in Belize my wife and I stayed at a Jungle ‘resort’. Very cool. When we left, they took our bags, and we (just my wife and I) took a canoe down the Macal river. They met us in town and took us the rest of the way to the airport.
It was very laid back and relaxing. One of the nicest little side trips I’ve ever done.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is the gardens of Versailles. My wife and I took the train from Paris but we hadn’t done our research and we came on the one day a week that the palace is closed. I was disappointed and I almost suggested we go home, but my wife suggested we check out the gardens. I was blown away by the size and by all the work that must have gone into creating them. We rented a rowboat and had the whole Grand Canal to ourselves for half an hour, then we wandered the gardens for at least another hour. Really impressive.
It already got a couple of mentions but - the Grand Canyon. Looking down into it is one thing but looking up from a raft for 6 days is quite another. Multiple hikes up side canyons (Havasu Canyon is unbelievable), awesome and very knowledgeable guides, a fellow rafter who was a geologist, great food and more. The trip of a lifetime and worth every penny.
I forgot to mention the ultimate light show: a total eclipse of the sun.
We traveled from Las Vegas to Kansas for the 2017 eclipse, and were with my wife’s uncle, an astronomer who had chased almost 20 eclipses before. Despite his experience at picking good locations, the weather was cloudy, and because we were a party of ten, with four over eighty, we didn’t have the option of a last-minute run for clear skies.
Nevertheless, the eclipse was still an amazing experience. There were some breaks and thinning of the clouds, so sometimes we could see the sun without needing glasses. And the darkness of totality, which the clouds made look like a sunrise in all directions, was incredible.
I completely understood why people become addicted to chasing eclipses.
The next one in North America is April 8, 2024. If you can possibly get yourself somewhere in its path, it will be one of the best 2-3 minutes of your life, guaranteed.
The Gilmore Car Museum not only didn’t disappoint, it kind of blew me away. I didn’t know much more than it was supposed to be a “good” museum, but driving on to the grounds it was clear this was someplace special. Not only were the collections and the buildings that housed them impressive, but I happened to be there on the “Celebration of Brass” weekend, a huge gathering of pre-1916 vehicles. If you’re an auto aficionado, the Gilmore should be on your bucket list.
On our tour of Costa Rica we went to Tortuguero, which you have to take a boat to get to - it took us maybe 2 hours? I saw a basilisk lizard running over the water and next day on a boat trip around the area we saw otters. Otters!
I don’t suppose this counts but dad and I went on a tour of Panama and at one hotel we walked outside at night so dad could look for frogs. While he was busy admiring the one we found I saw branches rustling in a tree and went over and shone my flashlight up into the tree. 3 or 4 monkeys stared at down at me. I rushed back, got dad (and the frog) and we just stared at them and they stared at us for maybe 5 minutes until they left. Panamanian night monkeys.
Same. We arrived on a day Versailles Palace was closed so we packed a lunch, bottle of wine, and spent the whole day exploring. We loved it! We did the palace tour the next day which was neat, but too crowded. We preferred the previous day of walking the grounds.
I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment! I was disappointed our travel schedules didn’t coincide - we could have had our own mini-Dopefest on the train!
We also did part of the Coast Starlight, the day before,but just from LA to the San Francisco area (where we spent the night, then got on the CZ in the morning). We actually extended our trip so we could do both - we had to visit LA (aging relative), and I really wanted to do the CZ.
For our own contribution to the thread:
- Grand Canyon is spectacular. Crowded as hell, if you go to the South Rim, but the North Rim is stunning as well.
- On the same trip that we saw the North Rim, we also visited Zion National Park. It doesn’t get nearly the hype that some others do, but it has a combination of stunning mountains, hikes that range from easy to challenging, relatively moderate temperatures for Utah in the summer, and very low-key opportunities to relax and enjoy - hint: bring swim togs or at least water shoes; there’s an area where the tour bus drops you off, where the river is shallow and a bit wider, and it’s a wonderful spot to wade and splash and cool down. The tour buses are there because private cars are not permitted in that section of the park - which means less exhaust fumes, and no fighting for parking spaces in the scenic spots. I was skeptical but it really made the day so much easier. Of all the places we saw that trip (Bryce, Zion, North Rim) that’s the one I’d go back to.
Ooooh yeah. A friend had booked a place near the beach in South Carolina for 2017. We were sitting with her on the beach, looking at the cloudy sky with great trepidation and disappointment. But things cleared up JUST in time. I booked a place for us to go see the one this April - first tried a place near Burlington, VT (to make it easier for my daughter to join us), then that fell through immediately. I tried another further west, then another further west… both of which basically declined the booking within hours. Finally got a place in north central NY which should be pretty much ideal… if the sky isn’t cloudy!! I keep waiting for the owners to realize “wait, ECLIPSE PRICES” and cancel our reservation (most places near Burlington were asking 600+ a night for a 2 bedroom condo, for example).
There is a thread about this already. My daughter’s house is in the path, and we have our airline tickets already. My wife’s best friend from college had a house in the path of the last one, and we saw it from there. Spectacular.
We saw the lizard in Panama. Our guide called it the Jesus lizard, because it walked on water.
I visited Barringer Metor Crater back in the '80s and was very impressed by it. The
museum was free and fascinating but you had to pay to see the crater itself. I was
a bit reluctant to pay to just see a big hole in the ground but it was well worth it.
It was an amazing site and I was able to hike all the way around the crater’s rim.
Yep. That’s what dad always called them. Apparently I also saw one running across water when I was 5 down in Venezuela, but I have no memory of it.
We saw this in 2016. I was all “that’s a lot of money for a 15 minute stop” but dad had been wanting to see it for years, so okay. They now have an excellent little museum and have places to sit so you can admire the Crater. We spent about half-an-hour just sitting and staring.