This is kind of more a “bucket list of places I have obsessively thought about wanting to go, particularly during the pandemic when I can’t go anywhere, some of which I would like to visit for the first time and some of which I would like to visit again.”
All the national parks in Utah. How did Utah wind up with so many stunning, gloriously beautiful national parks? Some of them look like another planet! I set up a post-pandemic to-do list in April of 2020 and “Zion National Park” is on it.
Iceland. I went to Iceland in 2019 and I really want to go back. If you fly somewhere on IcelandAir (which flies out of Minneapolis, where I live), you can arrange a stopover for as long as you want in Iceland for no extra charge. In just a few days I got to see geysers, a black sand beach with a pretty terrifyingly wild ocean (Icelanders will warn you to never turn your back on the ocean), lava caves, a hot-spring-fed river where you can pick a point to soak in, steam pouring out from cracks in the ground, and a crater lake – that was all just a couple hours from Reykjavik. I would really love to go back and see stuff like the volcano that is currently spewing red hot lava in such a way that you can stand at a safe distance and take pictures of it.
Petra, in Jordan. This shows up in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and I assumed for years it was just a movie set. It’s not a set. It’s entirely real. I would love to see it.
Florence, Italy. Everyone I know who’s been to Florence gets starry-eyed talking about it. I’ve never been! I had a 12-hour stopover in Rome once so I got a whirlwind tour of some of the cool stuff there (mainly the Coliseum), but I would really like to see Florence.
Prague. I mean, check out the pictures. SO PRETTY.
South Korea. Years ago (like, many years ago at this point), my husband and I went to Hong Kong. We flew on an airline with a stopover in Seoul, and I peered out the windows during our stopover and wished we could stay longer and see Korea.
The Florida Keys. The only time I’ve been to Florida, we visited the Everglades and the Keys and basically nothing else. Both are amazing. Probably my favorite thing was the coral reef. I actually hated snorkeling because I kept getting water in the snorkel tube thingie but being able to see the reef and the fish made the annoying stuff totally worth it.
Japan. That’s a very non-specific destination, because every time I start imagining where I might go in Japan I find some different beautiful and interesting place I’d like to visit.
Sequoia National Forest. I’ve been to California, but not recently, and I’ve never gotten to see the redwoods. I would really like to see the redwoods.
Throw a dart.
One of the things I’ve found is that almost anywhere (not absolutely anywhere, but pretty close) has stuff that’s cool and surprising and interesting. A few years ago, my family went on a road trip to Kansas City to see the total eclipse. In addition to the eclipse itself (which was amazing), we visited this weird but fascinating museum showcasing the goods that spent a century buried under river muck after a steamboat sank (the Steamboat Arabia museum), and after driving a couple hours east to find a better vantage point for the eclipse, we pulled up Google Maps to see if there was somewhere nearby that might be interesting, and visited the Rock Bridge Memorial State Park, which had both a really cool rock bridge, and a really interesting cave called the Devil’s Icebox. It left me pretty well persuaded that no matter where you go, there’s probably something interesting nearby.
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| Photo Content from Naomi Kritzer |
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