I would love to explore the non-Burin peninsula parts of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Burin Peninsula blew my socks off! But I only had a few days.
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I won’t include famous places like the amazon rainforest that I’m sure are on just about all of our bucketlists. Instead, I will just list places I expect to visit within the next year that I’m especially excited about. My interests are in microscopic life in inland waters, often hypersaline, so probably includes a few destinations most people would have little interest in. :)
- Mono Lake, California - A hypersaline terminal lake with neat tufa formations
- Lake Abert, Oregon - Another hypersaline lake, but without the neat tufa formations
- Owens Lake, California - A sad remnant of a lake. The dry lakebed is now one of the leading sources of air pollution in the US.
- Lake Tahoe, California/Nevada - Too developed for my tastes, but also too important to pass up.
- Fish Springs, Utah - An oasis in the desert. Good for birding, and for my interests in exploring the remnants of the ancient Pleistocene Lake Bonneville.
- Blue Lake, Utah - Another oasis in the desert that used to be part of Lake Bonneville. Clear waters are popular with scuba divers, and it has at least one endemic species of diatom.
- Locomotive Springs, Utah - Yet another spring in the middle of nowhere that used to be part of Lake Bonneville, but I like them.
- Bear Lake, Utah/Idaho - One of the most ancient lakes in North America (250,000 - a few million years old). Its clear water comes largely from groundwater with lots of dissolved calcium. There’s a few endemic species. I was just here but only got to spend a couple hours on the shore; hardly a proper visit.
And then a few less-famous far-flung places that I may very well never get around to visiting:
- Lake Baikal - Pretty much the best freshwater lake in the world.
- Lake Tanganyika - Pretty much the second best freshwater lake in the world.
- Dead Sea
- Tarim Basin
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I love poking around close to home but if time and money were no object?
Drive the Dempster Highway to Inuvik, take the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk to Tuktoyaktuk, fly to Banks Island, canoe down the Thomsen River where I will photograph a yellow-billed loon for iNat.
Train from Moscow to the Russian Far East where I will brush up on my Russian, drink Kvass, eat Uha and photograph a Steller’s sea eagle for iNat.
Bird Darien, Panama.
Dive the Maldives.
Dive Antarctica.
Hike Mars.
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Both ambitious and poetic! 
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Wow! Thank you for including the interesting details of these lakes. Especially interesting about the ancient Lake Bonneville. Is that the one that emptied when a natural dam on the Columbia or Snake River broke? Or, did I misremember?
Goodness! This looks breathtaking. I took a quick look at each of your places, and how I wish I could make those treks, too.
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I read your blog and am very intrigued — what a wealth of phenomena to consider. I agree about the aurora, which would be just amazing to witness. Once, a friend and I tried to plan a trip; but it was a lot considering our short visit might not coincide with a good display.
It might be hard to beat Lake Baikal (It’s got it’s own freshwater seals after all), but Lake Biwa in Japan might be second best lake in the world for me. Lake Titicaca is up there, too.
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There are so many places and so many species, it’s hard to pick just a few. There’s quite a few in Alaska: I want to see the grizzlies at Katmai, and sail the Aelutians to see the whales as they come north to feed. I’d love to explore the Gates of the Arctic and find the Arctic Woolly Bear moths. I’d love to see the seals and polar bears along the north coast (with a respecful distance from the bears, of course). Lynx, moose, pine martens, wolves and wolverines–there’s just so much to see!
There’s plenty of places on my list that are not animal related, too: The Eye of Africa in Mauritania, Coober Pedy, the underground opal-mining town in Australia, the volcanoes of Kamchatka, Lechuguilla in New Mexico and Cave of Crystals in Niaca, Mexico, Catatumbo lightning storms on Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, the Ice Festival in Hokkaido (with a stop to see the snow monkeys, so still a little animal related), Lake Biwa, and the Tokaido highway in Japan as well as the Ryukyu islands (beaches with star-shaped sand, anyone?).
Honestly, even if I had the funds and the freedom to travel to all these places right now, I doubt I’d ever be able to see all even in several lifetimes, which makes me sad. All the more so as some of these places may not be there forever.
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Ahh… yes, seems quite true. Makes the ones you do get to see even more precious.
This might seem like a contrarian thing to say, but for me, a lot of the big, spectacular nature areas are kind of “Hallmark Holidays”. That isn’t to say that I haven’t enjoyed them, but often they are just a name that gives added prestige. I have been to Glacier National Park, and it is spectacular, but as far as the wildlife that you see there, it is the same as you will see anywhere in Western Montana.
Up until a few weeks ago, I had been living in Humboldt County for a year, and could visit a small Redwood grove with a short walk, and much larger Redwood areas with a slightly longer trip. And, don’t get me wrong, Redwoods are impressive, but after a while, I stopped noticing them. And for nature experiences, the best place in my town was the wetlands around Humboldt Bay, which had a lot more diversity in the animals and plants I found there.
Even in an urban area, an observant person can probably reach a natural park where they can observe 100 different species in a day. Some of those might not seem as spectacular, but that is a subjective thing. Of course it is thrilling to see a bald eagle, but you might find an obscure hover fly sitting on a dandelion in your garden.
So for me, I get nature where I can. Of course, I would love to take a trip around the world and see things that I have never seen before, but the nature around me doesn’t lack in interest.
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I made the decision about 10 years ago to not take the plane unless it was for important professionnal matters, so my traveling bucket list is pretty short and centered around the Atlantic provinces of Canada. I would like to go back in the serpentine areas around the Bay of Islands in Newfoundland that I have not hiked yet and Grand Manan. The Earth already gave my a lot, including a career in natural science. These days I am more of the mindset ‘‘to live simply so others can simply live’’ and instead to document my neighbourghood with the hope this will eventually further conservation goals.
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@mnharris Humboldt is a pretty special place, especially for redwoods! But, it has a lot going for it on the nature front in many ways. I like exploring the local stuff, too. I was quite enthralled to watch insects hatching out of the pupa this summer on my patio.
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Absolutely! I’ve been to Redwoods National Park a couple of times now. The Redwoods are definitely the star of the show the first time you go, but the second time, I had only a few Redwood pictures and over 100 pictures of fungi! The beaches are great, too. There are a lot of pretty flowers on the pebble beach near the visitors center at the right time of the year. I also hiked to the mouth of the Klamath River and watched the seals and sea lions for hours. Inland, watching the elk herds is pretty enjoyable, too. There’s a so much to see as long as you’re not just looking in one place.
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Going outside of Ontario will likely be something my wife and I will do after the kids have grown up. My wife wants to go east and that location is a quite good one for the east coast, although there are others. In the mean time, the outings in Ontario are more achievable …
Usually for our holidays we visit the Parkers in Peterborough and they take us to Pres’quile PP, or other destination nearby. We have joined them on outings they have hosted to the Bruce (twice) and Pelee Island.
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This is an interesting video I found while looking for the answer to your question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1BFb_uYlFQ It includes the flooding from Lake Bonneville. I’m glad you asked–I’ve been to some of the places and seen some of the effects, but I don’t think I ever got the big picture of the events before.
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I’ve never been farther west than Utah - just seeing the Pacific Ocean would be cool. I also would love to visit California, and the Grand Canyon, and the Burgess Shale, and the McAbee fossil bed and the dinosaur fossil beds in Alberta (also I wish I had gone to the University of Alberta sometimes just because they have an entomology museum on campus and an entire department of entomology and if I apply to grad school for entomology that school is top of my list), and if I’m thinking like “to do before I die” then I would love to visit New Zealand and Australia (I was looking at the Wikipedia list of localities known for fossils and now I really really would like to visit the Denmark Hill Insect Bed) and Iceland to see the volcanoes, and the Keyes Botanical Garden is also another place I want to visit. If I tried I could think of more but considering right now even the learn to drive item on my bucket list feels really far fetched I’m getting kind of sad thinking about where I wanna go.
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I finally watched the video and I am glad I did . Some years ago, I visited the Columbia River Gorge and Snake Rivers. We heard a lecture about the massive flooding that helpEd carve the Gorge, which were remembered in the oral histories of the local early people in the area! Amazing world!
Thank you for the link to the video.
( ps. I liked that the narrator was speeded up; which is unusual,. Often, I get a bit bored listening to lectures. I’d rather read, as I can read faster than the typical narrator. This pace was really good… energetic and efficient.)
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I’d say everything is on my Bucket List! Cliche, but its true. If the opportunity arises then I’ll do my best to grab it. I am realistically limited by time and my economic situation.
Of course I would love to explore more of the nature in the places I live. So for Atlanta, it would be to visit the state parks more often. For Hong Kong, the biodiversity is much more rich than what one would expect, so I’d like to grab the opportunity to explore as many different ecosystems as possible.
That being said, there are a load of other things I’d like to do. Here are some off the top of my head:
- Visiting a foreign country and going to its nature to look for small critters (insects, spiders, etc.)
- Mothing/Herping in a foreign country
- Watching the animals in the African Savannah
- Witnessing a feeding frenzy in the open ocean (like the ones you see in documentaries)
- Visiting Antarctica
- Exploring the shoreline and tidepools
- Scuba diving in a coral reef (tbh I have done that but I didn’t have as much enthusiasm for nature then as I do now!)
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Definitely! A rainforest mountain in the middle of the city (Victoria Peak).
Interestingly, Singapore has that, too (Bukit Timah Hill).
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