United States
Watkins Glen
Nineteen waterfalls crash through a chasm as stone steps thread over, under and through the spray.
The air inside the glen stays cool even in August, thick with mist and the smell of wet stone. Water sheets down moss-covered walls at every turn, and the path keeps doing the improbable thing: climbing over one waterfall, ducking beneath the next, walking you straight through the spray of Cavern Cascade.
Watkins Glen State Park protects a gorge at the southern tip of Seneca Lake where the stream drops 400 feet past 200-foot cliffs, generating nineteen waterfalls along a walk of well under two miles. The stone gorge path, cut in the 1930s, winds over and under the falls on staircases and bridges that have made this the most famous walk in the Finger Lakes. The gorge trail runs roughly mid May to mid October, while the rim trails above stay open all year. Seneca Lake itself is the deepest of the eleven Finger Lakes, and dozens of wineries ring its shores in a region that has built its name on Riesling.
Couple
The gorge walks you single file through mist-filled corridors and hands you a shared view at every bridge; afterwards the lake's tasting rooms absorb what's left of the day.
Friends
Climb the gorge in the morning while the light drops into the chasm, then spend the afternoon working along the Seneca wineries with a designated driver and no schedule.
Family
Children old enough for a mile and a half of stone steps get a waterfall every few minutes, and the seasonal pool below the campground absorbs whatever energy is left.
- The stream drops 400 feet past 200-foot cliffs inside the glen, generating nineteen separate waterfalls along one short gorge walk.
- The gorge path winds over and under the waterfalls and straight through the spray of Cavern Cascade.
- Seneca Lake is the deepest of the Finger Lakes and hosts the National Lake Trout Derby; locals call it the lake trout capital of the world.
- Dozens of wineries ring Seneca Lake within a short drive, in a region whose cool-climate Rieslings carry its reputation.
Dry Riesling in the tasting rooms of the forty wineries and vineyards that ring Seneca Lake.
Dinner at Seneca Harbor Station, on the water where the lake cruise boats tie up.
Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route
Japan
A road cut through snow walls twenty metres high, towering above the bus roof.
Jeongseon
South Korea
A rail bike hurtles down the old coal line through pitch-dark mountain tunnels.
Rocca Calascio
Italy
Among the highest fortresses in the Apennines, alone on a ridge with only wind for company.
Orrido di Bellano
Italy
Catwalks bolted to the rock carry you through a slot gorge with water roaring beneath.
Sleeping Bear Dunes
United States
Sand bluffs four hundred and fifty feet tall plunging into Lake Michigan's turquoise shallows.
Yellowstone
United States
Earth exhaling through turquoise pools while bison block the only road ahead.
Great Sand Dunes
United States
The tallest dunes in North America rising against snow-streaked fourteen-thousand-foot peaks.
Acadia National Park
United States
Winter's first American sunrise strikes Cadillac's pink granite before the country below wakes.