Scenic Splendours
lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, and the opportunity to get much closer to nature. Fringed with vineyards, the Finger
Lakes of Upstate New York are just one example of this abundant natural beauty. This northeast region is renowned
for its spectacular fall foliage and if that happens to coincide with the first snow falls of the season, then Moonlight In Vermont becomes a truly romantic spectacle.
The oldest attraction The mountains in these parts don’t mimic the sheer grandeur of the Rockies way out west but they are breathtaking, nonetheless, and in an occasional display of nature at its wildest, the planet’s highest ever recorded wind-speed – a frightening 231 mph was clocked atop New Hampshire’s Mount Washington. Opened in 1861, the giddyingly
steep road up to the 6,288 ft summit is claimed as North America’s oldest man-made tourist attraction, or you can take the cog railway. High winds can also sweep the
> Lakes and rivers
In West Virginia, the only state to have been forged out of the Civil War, forests, criss-crossed by more than 2,000 miles of streams and rivers, cover 80 per cent of the land, providing 36 states and seven state forests – with the spectacular New River Gorge spanned by the world’s largest single-span bridge, an 876- feet high modern wonder, standing amid primeval wilderness. Water – some 200,000 cubic feet
per second of it when in full spate – also draws the hordes to New York State’s mighty Niagara Falls, right on the Canadian border. From the famed Great Lakes to the
swamplands of Louisiana, America is a country copiously sprinkled with
"This northeast region is
renowned for its spectacular fall foliage and if that happens to coincide with the fi rst snow falls of the season, then Moonlight In Vermont becomes a
truly romantic spectacle."
rolling prairies and endless plains of the mid-west but at gentler times there are few experiences to beat horse riding, western-style, through the Flint Hills’ Sawgrass National Park of Kansas, especially when the day ends with a sundown Kansas City Symphony Orchestra concert in a spectacular natural amphitheatre. Across Texas you can follow the trails of the old-time cow-herders and bring the era of cowboys and Indians back to life amid truly mouth- dropping scenery while far to the north, in Alaska, you can marvel at the nation’s highest peak, 20,327 ft tall Mount McKinley. From there, a spine of imposing mountains reaches south through British Columbia, in Canada and on
down to the Mexican Border endowing Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona with a plethora of outstanding natural beauty. Straddling the lofty Continental Divide, you’ll be glad you followed the time-honoured and sound advice to 'Head West'. The East Coast also has a north to south mountain spine – the fabled Appalachian Mountains. In these backwoods the Chattahoochee National Forest, in North Georgia, was, in 1828, the site of America’s first gold rush. It was the quest for instant wealth
that drew many pioneers to the country from England, Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Italy and all parts beyond during the great expansion years of the 19th Century but while man – from the first American Indians, many thousands of years ago, to the present – has left an indelible footnote, it is nature that remains the star of the show.
Left, Mount Helen in Washington State contrasting with a vibrant New York, above
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