Sights in USA
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Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve
In 1982 the state reserved 48,000 acres along the Chilkat, Klehini and Tsirku Rivers to protect the largest known gathering of bald eagles in the world. Each year from October to February, more than 4000 eagles congregate here to feed on spawning salmon. They come because an upwelling of warm water prevents the river from freezing, thus encouraging the late salmon run. It's a remarkable sight - hundreds of birds sitting in the bare trees lining the river, often six or more birds to a branch.
The eagles can be seen from the Haines Hwy, where turnouts allow motorists to park and view the birds. The best view is between Mile 18 and Mile 22, where you'll find telescopes,…
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US Army Museum of Hawai'i
The US Army Museum of Hawai'i traces the military history of consolidation of power under King Kamehameha in the 1700s to the US army's ongoing role on the island. Located at Fort DeRussy Military Reservation, the museum occupies Battery Randolph, a reinforced concrete building erected in 1911 as a coastal artillery battery.
The battery once held two formidable 14-inch disappearing guns with an 11-mile range, designed to recoil into the concrete walls for reloading after firing, which shook the whole neighborhood. A 55-ton lead counterweight then returned the carriage to position. Also on display is a Cobra helicopter and various military tanks and machinery. On the 2nd…
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Exit Glacier
The marquee attraction of Kenai Fjords National Park and one of Alaska's most accessible glaciers, Exit Glacier was named by explorers crossing the Harding Ice Field who found the glacier a suitable way to 'exit' the ice and mountains. Now 3 miles long, it's believed the river of ice once extended all the way to Seward.
From the Exit Glacier Nature Center, the Outwash Plain Trail is an easy half-mile walk to the glacier's alluvial plain - a flat expanse of pulverized silt and gravel, cut through by braids of grey meltwater. The Overlook Loop Trail departs the first loop and climbs steeply to an overlook at the side of the glacier before returning; don't skip the short…
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Chitina
The end of Edgerton Hwy is 10 miles beyond Liberty Falls State Recreation Site, at little Chitina, the last place you can purchase gas. There's a grocery store here too, and a café, an art gallery and a ranger station. Backpackers can camp along the 3-mile road south to O'Brien Creek or beside Town Lake.
At Chitina, the McCarthy Rd begins, auspiciously enough, by passing through a single-lane notch blasted through a granite outcrop. From here 60 miles eastward you'll be tracing the abandoned Copper River & Northwest Railroad bed that was used to transport copper from the mines to Cordova. Though your around US$40-a-day rental car can usually travel this stretch during…
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Johnson Space Center
While manned US space missions such as the Apollo and shuttle programs have their high-profile launches from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the planning and most of the training happens at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), just outside of Houston.
The glory, guts and cigarette butts of the NASA experience have been theme-park packaged as Space Center Houston, the tourist gateway to the JSC. Heavy commercial sponsorship has led to exhibits featuring Saturn automobiles with 'space age plastic components' and a collection of Lego rockets (with kits for making them available at the giftstore).
Despite all the hype, however, you can find some actual evidence that the…
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Astor Place
This square is named after the Astor family, who built an early New York fortune on beaver pelts (check out the tiles in the wall of the Astor Place subway platform) and lived on Colonnade Row, just south of the square; four of the original nine marble-faced, Greek Revival residences on Lafayette St still exist. The large, brownstone Cooper Union, the public college founded in 1859 by glue millionaire Peter Cooper, dominates the square – now more than ever – as the school now has its first new academic building in over 50 years, a striking, twisting, nine-story sculpture of glazed glass wrapped in perforated stainless steel (and LEED-certified, too) by architect Thom…
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Hetch Hetchy
In the park's northwestern corner, Hetch Hetchy (which is Miwok for 'place of tall grass') gets the least amount of traffic yet sports waterfalls and granite cliffs that rival its famous counterparts in Yosemite Valley. The main difference is that Hetch Hetchy Valley is now filled with water, following a long political and environmental battle in the early 20th century. It's a lovely, quiet spot and well worth the 40-mile drive from Yosemite Valley, especially if you're tired of the avalanche of humanity rolling through that area.
The 8-mile long Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, its placid surface reflecting clouds and cliffs, stretches behind O'Shaughnessy Dam, site of a parking…
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Golden Sands Beach
A very interesting afternoon can be spent at Nome's Golden Sands Beach , stretching a mile east of town along Front St. At the height of summer a few local children may be seen playing in the 45°F water, and on Memorial Day (in May), more than 100 masochistic residents plunge into the ice-choked waters for the annual Polar Bear Swim.
Usually more numerous than swimmers here are gold prospectors, as the beach is open to recreational mining. Miners will set up camp along the shore and work the sands throughout the summer. The serious miners rig their sluice and dredging equipment on a small pontoon boat and anchor it 100yd offshore to suck up the more productive sand along…
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National Museum Of American Art & National Portrait Gallery
These inseparable Smithsonian museums are looking brilliant these days, thanks to a multi-million-dollar facelift. They share the 19th-century US Patent Office building, a neoclassical quadrangle that hosted Lincoln's second inaugural ball and a Civil War hospital. Walt Whitman based The Wound-Dresser upon his experiences as a volunteer nurse here ('The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand/I sit by the restless all the dark night…').
The Portrait Gallery's permanent collection contains more than 4000 images of known faces from all walks and eras of life. The presidential portraits are particularly notable. Look for Gilbert Stuart's famous Lansdowne portrait of…
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Stan Price State Wildlife Sanctuary
Named for an Alaskan woodsman who lived on a float house here for almost 40 years. The sanctuary includes an area that has been closed to hunting since the mid-1930s, and due largely to the former presence of Price and his visitors, the bears here have become used to humans. The bears are most abundant in July and August, when the salmon are running.
Most visitors to Pack Creek are day-trippers who arrive and depart on floatplanes. Upon arrival, all visitors are met by a ranger who explains the rules. You must leave all food in a cache provided near the south sand spit. You may not leave the viewing sand spit to get closer to the bears, although you may use a small…
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US Air Force Academy
One of the third-highest profile US military universities in the country, this is something like the Ivy Leage meets basic training, where the students are soldiers, all have killer academic and extra-curricular backgrounds and work full-time while going to school. It can be a surreal place, but it's well worth visiting, especially if fighters are rocketing into the sky from the airfield.
Did we mention they have a decent football team and are nestled on their own base-campus tucked high on a plateau at the base of the pine draped red earth Rockies?
Set 14 miles north of Colorado Springs, you can access the base from the north (exit 156) or south (exit 150) gate. Most…
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Cades Cove
A cove, in Appalachian parlance, means a valley, but Cades Cove is far more than that. Many consider this special place to be a national treasure, thanks to its poignant cultural legacy, telling pioneer architecture and plentiful wildlife. And then there's the landscape itself, lush green fields enveloped by an unbroken expanse of mountains. It's no wonder so many families return year after year.
The first settlers - most of English, Scotch-Irish and Welsh stock - arrived in the 1820s. By 1850 the valley's population had swelled to its peak of 70 households and 451 residents. Today, thanks to the excellent preservation efforts of the NPS, you can still get a vivid sense…
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Sterling Park
'Homeward into the sunset/Still unwearied we go/Till the northern hills are misty/With the amber of afterglow.' Poet George Sterling's City by the Sea is almost maudlin – that is, until you watch the sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge from the hilltop park named in his honor.
Sterling was a great romancer of all that San Francisco offered – nature, idealism, free love and opium – and was frequently broke. But as the toast of the secretive, elite Bohemian Club, San Francisco's high society indulged the poet in his eccentricities, including carrying a lethal dose of cyanide as a reminder of life's transience. Broken by his ex-wife's suicide and loss of his best friend,…
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C&O Canal Towpath
There are all kinds of green escapes from Washington’s urban jungle, but the C&O is one of the more pleasant, if only because of the unexpected way it leaps out at you. There you are, wandering through the Valley Girl paradise that is Georgetown on a sunny day, and all of a sudden: wooden water wheels, a green canal, shaggy horses, flat-bed barges and a cobbled path running alongside, all so bucolic you expect hobbits to emerge from the bushes with fiddles and ale. The canal, one of the civil engineering feats of the 19th century, runs 185 miles from here to Cumberland, MD, and once brought goods and passengers from the capital to the then-beginning of the American West.…
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Green Lake Park
One of the most popular spots in the city for recreationalists and sunbathers, scenic Green Lake Park surrounds Green Lake, a small natural lake created by a glacier during the last ice age. In the early 1900s, city planners lowered the lake’s water level by 7ft, increasing the shoreline to preserve parkland around the lake. After the lowering, however, Ravenna Creek, which fed the lake, no longer flowed through. Green Lake became stagnant and filled with stinky green algae. Massive dredging efforts to keep Green Lake a lake (instead of a marshy wetland) continue. The lake is prone to algae blooms, which can cause an unpleasant condition called ‘swimmer’s itch’ to anyone…
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Louisiana Superdome
Hovering like a giant, bronze-tinted hubcap amid the CBD skyscrapers and the elevated I-10 freeway, the Superdome is one of New Orleans’ most easily recognized structures. The immense indoor stadium, with its sophisticated climate-control system, has hosted six Super Bowls, presidential conventions, the Rolling Stones (largest indoor concert in history) and Pope John Paul II. On New Year’s Day the college-football Sugar Bowl is played here, and in fall this is the home turf of the New Orleans Saints. All of this excitement occurs in a structure built on top of an ancient burial ground, which some say is the source of the Saints seemingly cursed 40-year history. The…
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USS Missouri
The decommissioned battleship USS Missouri, nicknamed 'Mighty Mo,' provides a unique historical 'bookend' to the US campaign in the Pacific during WWII. If you're a history buff the USS Missouri is a worthwhile sight, but if your time or money is limited a visit to the USS Arizona Memorial will suffice. The 887ft-long USS Missouri launched near the end of WWII and served as a flagship during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
On September 2, 1945, the formal Japanese surrender that ended WWII took place on the battleship's deck. The USS Missouri is now docked on Ford Island, just a few hundred yards from the sunken remains of the USS Arizona and is managed by the…
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Haleki'i-Pihana Heiau
One of Maui's most important historical sites, Haleki'i-Pihana Heiau holds the remains of two adjoining temples atop a knoll with a commanding view of central Maui.
The site was the royal court of Kahekili, Maui's last ruling chief, and the birthplace of Keopuolani, wife of Kamehameha the Great. After his victory at the battle of 'Iao in 1790, Kamehameha came to this site to worship his war god Ku, offering the last human sacrifice on Maui.
Haleki'i (House of Images), the first heiau, has stepped stone walls that tower above 'Iao Stream. The pyramidlike mound of Pihana Heiau (Gathering Place of Supernatural Beings) is a five-minute walk beyond, but a thick overgrowth of…
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Santana Row
A completely planned real-estate venture, Santana Row is a mixed-use space that brings together shopping, dining and entertainment along with townhouses, lofts and flats. There's a large boutique hotel and a multiplex cinema.
At its heart is a pedestrian-friendly thoroughfare that calls to mind 'Main St' ideals of traditional American small-town life, but the style of the architecture and overall effect is Mediterranean. The restaurants spill out onto sidewalk terraces, and public spaces have been designed to invite loitering and promenading. The idea is a popular one, and on warm evenings, the area is swarming with an energetic crowd. There are some excellent…
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Waikamoi Nature Trail
A half-mile past the 9-mile marker, a wide dirt pull-off provides space for a few cars to park below the Waikamoi Nature Trail. This peaceful 30-minute trail loops through tall trees with wonderful fresh scents and lots of birdsong. The grand reddish trees covered with climbing philodendron vines are Eucalyptus robusta. The ridge at the top of the trail provides a fine view of the winding Hana Hwy.
The next few sights come up quickly, so keep a keen eye out. Waikamoi Falls is at the bridge just before the 10-mile marker. The lower waterfall has a pool and it's possible to walk a short way up to a higher waterfall, but the rocks can be slippery, and the bottom waterfall is…
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Old Kona Airport State Park
Despite being only a mile from downtown, the 217-acre Old Kona Airport State Park is often overlooked by visitors. Its lengthy shore offers solitude and the relaxing sound of waves, and it's a good place to picnic or stroll. The old airport runway skirts a long sandy beach laced with thick strips of black lava rock. Though there are a couple of breaks allowing entry into the water, fishing, not swimming, is the major activity here.
At low tide, the rocks reveal countless aquariumlike tide pools holding tiny sea urchins, crabs and bits of coral. One at the southern end of the park is large enough to be a keiki (child) pool. The waters offshore of the park and adjacent…
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Union Station
How beautiful is Union Station? Well, even commuters who use it to get to work – people who should loathe the sight of it – say the grand entrance hall, meant to resemble a Roman triumphal arch, never fails to impress. This was the first structure built in accordance with the McMillan plan, the 1901 campaign to revitalize DC’s then dead urban core. Union is one of the pinnacles of the beaux arts and city beautiful movements that transformed the American urban landscape in the 20th century. Besides being an architectural gem, Union is also a semi-minimall and serves as Washington’s main rail hub. The main hall, known as the Grand Concourse, is patterned after the Roman…
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Mo'okini Luakini Heiau
One of the oldest and most historically significant temples in the Hawaiian islands, Mo'okini Luakini Heiau sits on a grassy knoll near 'Upolu Point at the northern tip of the Big Island. The massive structure, which measures about 250ft by 125ft, with walls 6ft high, was a 'closed' heiau, reserved for ali'i nui (kings and ruling chiefs) for fasting, praying and offering of human sacrifices to their gods.
There's a clear view of Maui and, during winter, humpback whales, from the heiau site. There are no facilities. The heiau was dedicated to the god Ku, and built from 'sunrise to first light' by up to 18,000 'little people' passing water-worn basalt stones in complete…
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Lincoln Memorial
Anchoring the Mall's west end is the hallowed shrine to Abraham Lincoln, who gazes peacefully across the reflecting pool beneath his neoclassical Doric-columned abode. To the left of Lincoln you can read the words of the Gettysburg Address, and the hall below highlights other great Lincoln-isms; on the steps, Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famed 'I Have a Dream' speech.
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Rough Point
Once called the 'richest little girl in the world,' Doris Duke (1912–1993) was just 13 years old when she inherited this English manor estate from her father. Duke had a passion for travel and art collecting; Rough Point houses many of her holdings, from Ming dynasty ceramics to Renoir paintings. The grounds are equally impressive.
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