Eugenious

My friend Melynda at YourWildChild.com posted a list of “Top Ten Nature Sights [sic; some are sites] (I want to visit).” Before looking at hers, I decided to compile my own. Now, if you’re wondering what to give me for Christmas, I’ll take those frequent flier miles for a trip to the southern hemisphere.

1. Torres del Paine National Park, Chile: backpacking the “Circuit”  around the granite towers of Paine, climbing some mountains if they’re not too scary, chatting up the guanaco.
2. Sweden: biking from town to town, sea kayaking from skerry to skerry, skiing from hut to hut, picking up my diesel Volvo. I also recently took a quiz that recommended I live in Stockholm, so I wouldn’t mind visiting some populated places, too.
3. Alaska’s Brooks Range: hiking, canoeing, avoiding grizzly bears (okay, admiring them from a distance)
4. Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania: This mountain is attractive to me for many reasons. I’ve never visited Africa; Tanzania is home to elephants, hippos, hyenas, zebras, lions, chimpanzees, and giraffes; and Kilimanjaro is the highest point in Africa. Although its altitude regularly spanks climbers, Kilimanjaro is a walk-up. And, like I felt I needed to see some of Glacier National Park’s eponymous glaciers before they’re gone, I’d like to see the snows of Kilimanjaro before they’re gone.
5. Isle Royale, Michigan: I want to hear the wolves, and I’ve never been to Michigan.
6. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado: I’ve never spent time in Colorado, other than a night in Boulder on my westward drive. The density of high peaks, aspen, and John Denver’s inspiration holds some appeal.
7. Newfoundland, Canada: biking and hiking
8. Puszcza Bialowieza, Belarus and Poland: This is apparently the largest remaining old-growth forest in Europe. It has reintroduced wisent (European bison) and  konik (wild horses), as well as enormous oaks.
9. My cop-out “places in the southwest” answer: Arches National Park, Monument Valley, Havasu Falls. Havasu Falls would probably win, if I had to choose.
10. Na Pali Coast State Park, Hawaii

As I was deciding, I realized that I had a few places that were both natural and cultural, so I get to add a few more to my list, because, really, it’s a new list:

1. Machu Picchu, Peru
2. Cappadocia, Turkey
3. Pompeii, Italy
4. Canyon de Chelly, Arizona

This entry was posted in the categories Julie, outdoors, Travel by julie on Tuesday, 2 November 2010, 22:52. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.