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.
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.
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.
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:
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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.
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The traffic in India. It is AMAZING.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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Monkeys in my street, Hyderabad, India. MONKEYS IN MY STREET, PEOPLE. It was the awesomest thing ever.
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The road between Sarajevo and Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Possibly the most scenic bus ride…ever.
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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.
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Chichen Itza, Mexico.
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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.
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
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.
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The ‘Treasury’ in the ancient stone city of Petra, Jordan
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The Kilauea Caldera, Hawaii Volcano National Park
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The view from the very top of the Petronas Twin Towers, KL, Malaysia
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My first glimpse of a walking Komodo dragon, Komodo Island, Indonesia
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The planet Mars over Ayer’s Rock at dawn
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The view from the unfortunately named ‘Guano point’, Grand Canyon, USA
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Sunset, Labuan Bajo, Indonesia
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The interior of the Cathedral on Spilled Blood, St Petersburg
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The Hiroshima Memorial, Hiroshima, Japan
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Aerial view of glaciers, Milford Sound, Sth Island, New Zealand
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Interior, Batu Caves, outside KL, Malaysia
I selected 11, so shoot me. I could list dozens. I’ve been very lucky.
Not to pick nits (OK, I’m totally picking nits) but the Smithsonian isn’t really one sight. 
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.
I’ve got this poster on my office wall. Never been there but I’m guessin’ it’s pretty special.
No particular order:
- The Great Wall at Simatai – just spectacular. Mostly because I think mountains are the coolest.
- The Great Pyramid at Giza
- The Treasury at Peta – but there was no Holy Grail inside.
- Nijo Castle in Kyoto.
- Walking around on the Arctic icepack.
- La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
- 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.
- Sunsets in Hawaii.
- North Korean soldiers staring at me from 20 feet away with high power binoculars.
- Lake Tahoe.
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…
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)…
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Watching Nelson Mandela step out of a limo and walk through the gates of Jesus College, Oxford.
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The Grand Canyon, south rim, when I was 11.
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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.
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Duke Humpfrey’s Library, Oxford. Like stepping back in time.
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The entrance to the Eisenhower Tunnel, on I-70 west of Denver. I even pulled to the adjacent rest area to take a picture.
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Looking down at a small wildlife preserve in Almeria, Spain, which was situated between two sheer canyon walls.
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Radcliffe Camera, Oxford, seeing a graduation ceremony from the inside.
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A binturong! I know it was in a zoo, but…a binturong! Now I want one of my own!
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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.
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I’ll have to think about #10. So many things, I suppose.
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
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.
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
-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.
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.
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 standof 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.
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My wife giving birth.
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Haley’s Comet
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Kahotek comet
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A relative buried in Arlington National Cemetary with full honors.
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The Oval office
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a person die / dead w/i 5 minutes earlier
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US Embassy in Colombia, 1 week before the hostages were taken.
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The insides of my own leg.
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The ‘green flash’ at sunset while out at sea.
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Various name-drop celebrities/politicians
Boy, there’s some well-travelled sonsabitches on this board. I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to measure up, but . . .
[ol]
[li]Stonehenge in the fog, before they built the fence around it.[/li][li]Molokai from a mountain plantation in Maui at sunrise.[/li][li]A lightning storm during a blizzard.[/li][li]My two-year-old granddaughter eating ice cream for the first time.[/li][li]Petroglyphs that hadn’t been seen in thousands of years up to then.[/li][li]The Grand Canyon at sunrise.[/li][li]A Louisiana bayou with fog two feet from the ground.[/li][/ol]