Places I Want To Visit

Right now I’m stuck in Florida with no money and no one who wants to go with me, but one day there are other places I would like to explore.

New England: Since 2007 (if not before) I have wanted to take a road trip across New England.  I grew up in New Hampshire and have seen enough of it to know I want to go back and finish exploring. I have a dream to take a road trip across New England and camp in every state park, walk every trail, climb every mountain, and visit every beach in New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. I may even visit a museum or two. Since they have similar climates and terrain, I would also like to explore New York, Oregon, and Washington. Flatness bores me. I like to see mountains. I like to see waterfalls and rapids. I like to scramble over lichen-covered boulders. I like to turn over stones to look for salamanders. I love the smell of decaying autumn leaves. It smells like home. New England more than any other place is where I want to go.

California: I have also thought of stopping in California to see the redwoods in person. Those trees are just awesome. If I can find a safe and environmentally responsible way to do it, I would also be open to climbing up to the canopy and just immersing myself in the isolation and scale of the place. I’d like to see the rare epiphytes that live up there. While staying in California, I might also visit the kelp forests offshore. Those are cool too.

New Zealand: It is no secret that New Zealand has some great scenery. I’d also like to meet a kea, the only carnivorous, alpine parrot in the world. I’d also like to see a kiwi.

Ecuador: Cloud forests intrigue me. These are rainforests so high in elevation that they are enveloped by clouds. I have always loved the mist. It is simultaneously calming and mysterious. It was in the uninhabited cloud forest of Papua New Guinea that new species of marsupials and monotremes were discovered not too long ago. I probably won’t be allowed there, but my sister visited a cloud forest in Ecuador that sounded interesting.

Peru: Peru has more archaeological oddities than anyplace I know. There is a wall somewhere made of stones cut with as great precision as anything we can do today. There are gigantic figures across the fields visible only from the air. There is an amazingly beautiful mountain city. I have too many other interests to put in the time necessary for training in order to spot and identify items of archaeological significance, but it would be nice to perhaps assist the professionals for a while and be part of the next discovery. In any case, I’d still like to see those giants. Peru has geological oddities as well, such as the Rainbow Mountains.

Antarctica: Honestly, I mostly want to visit Antarctica so that I can tell people I’ve been there, but I also like icebergs and penguins.

Hawaii: I’ve only seen active volcanoes on television and I want to see one in person. Afterwards, I want to relax on someone’s porch to the sounds of birds.

Yellowstone: Everyone wants to see Yellowstone. I want to see the geysers and pretty salt-sulfur deposits.

Virgin Islands: I’ve never been snorkeling and I’ve never seen a coral reef. The Virgin Islands sound like the place to do both.

Underground: Caves are always interesting places, though they can be dangerous. Still, the more danger, the better the story to tell.

Appalachian Trail: Walking from Tennessee to New England through the mountains is a more ambitious and physically strenuous version of the big New England trip. I would probably do this in a later year after getting into shape running around Oregon.

Alaska: Snow on anything is beautiful. Only planetary nebulae come close to this beauty and only women surpass it. I’m not sure whether I would live there or not, but Alaska would be a great place to visit. Another idea is to visit the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia. In addition to bears even larger than the grizzlies of Alaska, they also have hot springs where monkeys bathe.

The British Isles: There is a lot to love about Scotland, Ireland, and England. I love the accents, the climate, and the scenery. I love the history and culture. Any society that can produce Rowan Atkinson, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, J. K. Rowling, C. S. Lewis, Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, John Locke, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Tom Baker, Peter Capaldi, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, and so many other favorites must be doing something right. I’d probably visit the Sherlock Holmes/ Doctor Who theme park.

Other Places I Maybe Want To Visit

Some places I want to visit I know would be too dangerous, far too expensive, much of the time would actually be rather boring, and worst of all would take too long to get there and back to be worth it. They are fun to think about, though.

Mars: The red planet has enormous canyons and mountains, massive dust storms, and roughly half the surface gravity of Earth. It has the most Earth-like climate of any other world in our solar system, meaning it is possible that especially hardy strains of bacteria or lichen might survive. It is possible that liquid water exists deep underground. Someday I’d like to watch a sunset over the Martian desert.

Io: Where else can you watch great plumes of molten sulfur shoot out of the ground many miles into space and drift back to the surface as multi-colored snow except Jupiter’s moon Io? Where else can you watch volcanoes in low-gravity against the backdrop of the planet Jupiter?

The Rings of Saturn: Who wouldn’t want to explore this practically endless sea of ice boulders? Who wouldn’t want to hop from one boulder to another and look for signs of life? What might be hiding among the debris? Saturn’s rings are also the solar system’s largest piece of public art.

Nereid: Lava is supposed to be hot, but the volcanoes of Neptune’s moon Nereid ooze liquid nitrogen, rapidly freezing into ice on the surface. What sorts of shapes might form in the low gravity? At this distance from the sun, it is perpetually night. The sun is merely the brightest star in the sky.

Sedna: If you thought Nereid was cooler than being cool, Sedna is ice cold. More than twice as far away as Neptune at its closest, Sedna traces an elliptical orbit taking twelve thousand years to complete one revolution. Sunlight is so weak there that not even methane will sublimate. Radio messages from Earth that take fifteen minutes to reach Mars and eight hours to reach Nereid can take more than five days to reach Sedna. It is the novelty of the place that draws me. It is our sun’s loneliest outpost (so far discovered).
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Where are some places you want to go?