Ten spots to revel in America - Yahoo! News

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1) Olympic National Park, Washington

Sprawling over a huge swath of Washington's wild Olympic Peninsula, this lush, temperate rainforest feels a world away from Seattle (and the rest of the country).  I first visited at age 17, and watching the sun go down over the roaring waves of Ruby Beach redefined my notions of majesty and splendor.  Later, when I was attending college in the Pacific Northwest, I made annual solo backpacking pilgrimages into the Olympic wilderness, where clover-leafs grow as big as your hand, and remote forest hiking trails lead up to glaciated mountain peaks.

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2) Big Sur, California

Here's a recipe for one of the most beautiful drives in America:  Enjoy an early seafood supper in the classic seaside town of Monterey, then head south on California Highway 1 in the late afternoon.  By the time the sun is nearing the horizon, you'll be in the heart of Big Sur — a dramatic sprawl of more coastal wilderness than you thought was possible between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  When the feeling grabs you, pull off to the side of the road, hike a ways down the coastal slope, and watch the light change across the landscape as the sun sinks its way into the sea. There's not much else to distract you in Big Sur at day's end: just earth, ocean, and a small highway carved into the curves where the elements crash against one another. 

3) U.S. Highway 50, Between Maryland and California

Forget Route 66; in my book, America's classic east-west thoroughfare is U.S. 50, which starts in Ocean City, Maryland, and ends 3,000 miles later in Sacramento.  The most legendary stretch of this road is found along the stunning desert basins of Nevada (where it's called "The Loneliest Road in America"), but many portions of this highway — from to the classic monuments of Washington, D.C. to the small towns of Ohio — make this a great excuse to leave the interstates and wander. 

4) Pike National Forest, Colorado

Pikes Peak is the first mountain I ever saw, at age six, and the sight of it still fills me with a sense of grandeur.  Beneath the eponymous mountain, Pike National Forest hugs the Front Range of the Rockies between Colorado Springs and Denver.  Here, in the summers of my childhood, I learned how to sleep under the stars, build campfires, read topographical maps, and rock climb.  Other national forests in the U.S. may be bigger or more remote, but I'll always remember the contours of Pike Forest like they were those of a first love.  Moreover, it was in these foothills that I spent my finest July 4 ever, watching the Air Force Academy fireworks from above as they bloomed out over the plains.

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