WASHINGTON STATE SCENERY HOW TO
WASHINGTON STATE SCENERY PLUS

Look, the Golden State isn’t for everybody-but as far as sheer diversity of natural beauty is concerned, nothing else comes close. Or the wine country that stretches from Napa Valley in the north to Temecula in the south.

Or any of the many underrated national parks. Oh, and lest we forget Yosemite National Park. There’s the drive along the PCH and Big Sur, leading in the wine country of the Central Coast and up into San Francisco, a city that owes its aesthetic to cliffside views and curlicues of fog. Then move inland to the moon-like desertscapes in the Mojave. Start in the south with the expansive, natural beaches set against towering cliffs. But how many beautiful things do you know that don’t? For a moment, let’s drop the talk of climate change and traffic and talk for a minute about how California has EVERY SINGLE KIND OF BEAUTY you could possibly want. You don't think it can be true until you get there, but Hawaii is one of the few destinations that, if anything, manages to exceed its perfect-10 reputation. Between them: Oahu, with heart-stopping beaches and jungles and cliffs under constant assault by rainbows Maui, a sheaf of vacation postcards that unionized and formed an island tourist-light Molokai, where some of the world's steepest cliffs plunge into deep blue oceans and Lanai, which looks like the love child of Ireland and a Caribbean isle.

WASHINGTON STATE SCENERY PLUS

The Hawaiian islands-seven larger islands, plus 130 smaller, uninhabited islets-hold such an array of landscapes because of their vast age gaps: for example, forested, canyoned Kauai is 6 million years older than the broad, dark, raw Big Island, which is still growing, fed by the glowing volcanic vent that birthed the lot. Pound-for-pound, acre-for-acre, this archipelago is the most spectacularly diverse and diversely spectacular place you can get to without a passport-and maybe even with one.

Few people venture into Wyoming to see just how the light shimmers off gold Aspen trees on a limitless mountain prairie-and folks in the Cowboy State like that just fine. That's not to mention Red Canyon, the Red Desert, Devils Tower, or the wildlife, including elk, moose, bison, and pronghorn populations that number in the hundreds of thousands. But if all you've ever seen of Wyoming is Jackson Hole and I-80, you're missing out on the other-worldly high plains outside of Laramie and Cheyenne, the ghostly rocks of Vedauwoo, the mountains of the Front Range (the very same mountains you saw on your trip to Denver), the Wind River Range, the Bighorns, and the brightest Milky Way views in the lower 48. Wyoming is so rich with beauty that even the Grand Tetons- quite possibly the single most dramatic vista in the country-somehow get overshadowed by Yellowstone National Park right next door.

Everyone in the top quarter of the list has some singular, majestic facet that can make a case for being the best in the land. Here marks the start of the truly elite, best-of-the-best portion of this list.

How do you pick, after all, between desert vs. We independently ranked the states, then came together around a table to debate the discrepancies and to plead for the divisive cases, of which there were several. We assembled a crew of writers who combined has visited every state, and then set about arguing, weighing the variety, quantity, concentration, highlights, and lowlights of every state's physique. States who think their granite mountains are better than someone else's red-rock deserts, or whose bone-white beaches surely beat out thousand-year-old redwoods. Few other places on earth have the same geographic range as the fifty states, where you can find everything from sweltering deserts to mossy rainforests to unending tundras from coast to coast, it isn’t hard to find a vista that’ll leave you in total reverence of what Mother Nature can do.Īmong the states, naturally, there's bound to be some sibling rivalry.

WASHINGTON STATE SCENERY HOW TO

If America knows how to do one thing, it’s sweep the international competition when it comes to absolutely breathtaking, awe-inspiring landscapes.

Washington state scenery