What are the places or parts/regions of your native country that you’d like to visit, but you think it won’t happen at least in the next 5 years or ever?
As an example, I’d like to have a water travel up the Yenisey river with lots of stops along the way, exploring taiga and then opened areas too, but doubt it will ever happen in my life.
What are your dream plans?
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Probably travel to all 50 states in the USA but that seems unreasonable. Lol! Also I would really love to visit Puerto Rico.
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I highly recommend a visit to Puerto Rico, although I haven’t been there in 20 years. I would love to visit India, but there are so many other places to visit. Trying to get all 50 US states and all the Canadian Provinces.
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I live in a small country, visited most of it already, none of the rest seems unrealistic.
Of course, the Faroe Islands and Greenland are also part of the Danish realm and while neither of these seem unrealistic either, the more remote parts of Greenland (which is, of course, by far most of the island) do seem at the very least implausible.
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Close enough to this plant to be certain of what it is. It’s behind a derelict former military base(?) with many “no trespassing” signs.
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Limited to my own country, per the original post:
Deep in the Olympic National Forest, on the Border of Olympic National Park, is the Wonder Mountain Wilderness. The few descriptions I have found sound amazing – they mention pinnacles in the alpine zone.
No trails lead into it. The only access is by off-trail navigation. Some years ago, I made an attempt via the southern approach. After walking up a steady 45-degree incline, I became increasinly damp as the persistent drizzle began to penetrate my raingear, and I could feel that hypothermia would set in if I stayed up there, so I beat a hasty retreat.
If I ever have the chance to try again, I will go later in the year – Memorial Day weekend is too early – and invest in better gear.
Lessons learned:
- “Breathable” raingear is not completely waterproof
- Check the labels on all clothing – I never would have guessed anyone would be so foolish as to make a sweater out of cotton, but now I know that such travesties do exist
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Watched a documentary on the Kamchatka Peninsula in far eastern Russia recently, I’m sure it’d be surreal for an amateur botanist like myself to explore all those beautiful valleys and ravines in spring and summer, but since there’s almost no roads there and bears lurking behind every bush, I’d probably expire quite quickly 
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Yeah, most spots there have no road, but if you go for a trip, usually you will be on 4x4 style cars, and on them you just drive through the coast and then walk into where you like it, especially on the western edge. The Far East is one of the best parts of the country, whenever I want to be amused by stuff that lives there, I check iNat observations or my own “to see” list: https://www.inaturalist.org/lists/4362612----------
If you want to see more documentaries, check this channel https://www.youtube.com/@ARTDOC/videos, it somehow has all the major country parts videos, but not for Kamchatka, though there’re two shorter vids about it.
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To be fair, 5 years ago I didn’t see myself permanently moving to Germany from Poland, which I did last year, so… ;)
Before I moved, I really wanted to go to those few secluded spots where Rubroboletus satanas and Hygrophorus marzuolus grow in Poland. Currently I don’t think it will happen, and I will rather look for those species closer to my current home.
I’d love to make a several-day-long hike through some mountainy-forest trail in Germany one day. There is so much to see it makes my head spin! To name a few… I would love to visit Iceland, Yellowstone Park, Thailand, Borneo, Madagascar, New Zealand… One day, maybe. In the next five years… I don’t think so.
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Do you have any favorite parks in Puerto Rico?
Brazil (and the rest of the tropicals)
The number of taxa seem huge there, and I’d love to try how many personal species I can find in a week. Probably around 2000, considering 1000 insects+500 plants (bryophytes and lichen included)+500 others, as I’ll be light trapping every night!
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I’ve been to all the states, and most of them I’ve been to more than once. But most of it was work and I usually never really got to see anything other than a building, typically old ones too, and a gas station or two. And a lot of the time I was only in a state to drive through it and only stopped once, twice or perhaps thrice. Luckily I usually did take pictures of whenever I stopped somewhere for work so I try to make things usable.
Since using iNaturalist my outlook during work travel has changed a lot. It’s really amazing how different it all feels when you’re looking at the world from a new perspective. I’m saying this though because it often feels like those travels were wasted, for a couple of reasons, but the inability to actually see the places I was in during my past employment made it all feel like a drag. I feel like I need to do it again and actually take it all in. Work looks very different for me lately so it’s given me time to go places and actually enjoy going. Slowly but surely. I think it’s certainly possible and I intend on doing it, even if it just means going for walks rather than sitting in the bus when I’m traveling for work.
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I know that feeling! I had a car ride through all the Yaroslav Oblast, from North to South, and now I have a total of 0 observations from it! Maybe I took some photos on a gas station, but even if so, that phone was lost.
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St Helena and the surrounding islands have some fascinating organisms that I’d love to see someday. Unfortunately it’s a very remote area and considering I haven’t been outside of my own country yet let alone to another continent, my odds of getting there are low for the foreseeable future.
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Oh, there are even interesting places in the city where I live, that are largely inaccessible to me, but would be very appealing from an iNatting perspective
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Could you give us some examples? Are those enclosed territories?
Yes, e.g. Palais Schwarzenberg near Belvedere. It is even a cultural heritage, with many old trees, but is not well maintained and might get finally sold → destruction incoming…
Then there is the Theresianum acadamy, now a private school (there are even some observations, possibly from a school project). It contains some rarely found plants (in Vienna) with interesting habitats
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Internationally, I’d love to visit Annobón, an island off the coast of Equatorial Guinea. There’s only 1 observation on iNat, and I’m sure it’s full of unrecorded endemics. Though, it seems quite inaccessible.
Though after some research, it looks like I could get a flight from Sao Tome to Annobón, but is it really worth it?
As for here in Florida, a kayaking/camping trip into an isolated part of the Everglades would be fun. Though a lot of planning would be required.
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There are tons of places i’d love to go but can’t because they aren’t safe due to human factors - wars, crime, things my country has done that pissed people off, things other countries have done that pissed people off. Obviously these are problems well beyond iNaturalisting, and need to be fixed for reasons beyond that, but it just makes me sad.
Within the US, i used to live in California and can never live there again for a variety of reasons, but now that i have iNat and am a better ecologist i’d love to scour a bunch of the Sierra foothills, central coast range, etc for neat plants and such. Especially private land that is inaccessible, because there is so much of it.
The really inaccessible goal that would be beyond a dream would be to see what is now California, in 1491.Or even 1791 for that matter. It’s changed so, so, so much, at the expense of nature and indigenous cultures, and what it used to be, would just be so amazing to see.
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There’s a place called “Red Mountain” that’s actually only a few hours drive from me, and has the most incredible and unique serpentine ecosystems full of rare endemic plants.
Unfortunately it is in one of the most dangerous areas of the state, and is mostly private property. The area has lots of methamphetamine use and manufacturing, marijuana growing operations, and all the other kind of criminality that comes along with those things, and it’s simply not safe to even drive along the roads out there if you aren’t a local.
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