This post is an answer to a question posed to me by Brandon during the WebLogPoMoAKA Challenge. He asked: “What’s the one place you haven’t traveled but would love to?”
Well, Brandon, I’ll give you 25 places, not just one.
A few caveats first though. These are on my list right now, but that list is generally in flux. That’s especially true for international destinations, as I just don’t have nearly as much experience with all the options. Jen has a long list of places she wants to go overseas, so I generally default to letting her choose. And we also choose trips strategically, so we will very likely take as many trips that aren’t on this list as are.
My top destination
New Zealand
New Zealand remains my top destination, a position it’s held for a number of years. We have planned trips here for the last, what…four years now? Covid killed the first plan, then again the second, then it was my dad’s health, then Jen’s health, and now it’s our 100-Day trip taking precedence.
You’d have thought that we’d have just added it to the 100-day trip—I mean, we have the whole three week itinerary all laid out—but we decided to approach that trip much differently. We’ve penciled New Zealand in for December 2025, which would be our five-year anniversary, but I could see it slipping another year once again.
My dad emigrated to the US from Northern Ireland when he was 18, choosing it over New Zealand the night before he departed. So I’ve always wanted to go visit for that reason, but also because it looks so incredibly gorgeous. I can’t wait to campervan across both islands.
The original question was asking for just “the one place” and New Zealand would be my answer. But…here are a bunch more:
The rest of my top 10
Galapagos
Similarly, we’ve had multiple cancellations to the Galapagos and Ecuador. Originally planned as our honeymoon trip, it’s also gotten postponed due to covid more than once. The last time was last year when Jen unexpectedly (and asymptomatically) tested positive just hours before our flight left (forcing us to quickly cancel), only to test negative on 6 additional tests over the following 42 hours. We didn’t want to sacrifice the itinerary we had planned, so postponed yet again due to the delayed start, quickly arranging a road trip through the Northeast and Maritime provinces instead.
Two of our close friends were getting married the same year as us, and decided they liked the Galapagos as a honeymoon destination too. We gave them our itinerary, which Jen had designed herself (for half the cost of using a tour service), and they had planned following nearly all of it. We joked that we’d just do a joint honeymoon, and well, perhaps we end up doing a joint trip there in the coming years after all.
Africa (read: wildlife safari)
Ok, I’m cheating a bit here because we’ll be getting a taste of this quite soon—we already have a visit booked and paid for. I’ve always wanted to do an African safari, seeing animals like elephants, zebras, lions, cheetahs, wildebeest, hippos, and so forth in the wild. We’ll spend 5 weeks in Africa on our trip, including a 24-day “safari” tour (read: essentially a roadtrip from South Africa up to Zanzibar). It won’t all be wildlife stuff along the way, but we’ll get a good primer on that part of the continent and what it’s like that will help us focus in on what we want to do on future trips. I expect we’ll be back very soon for more targeted excursions focused exclusively on wildlife.
Norway
Norway wasn’t on my “must see” list until earlier this year when Jen offered it as a trip suggestion for September. She described it as a cross between Iceland (perhaps my favorite overseas destination so far) and the fjords of Alaska. Sign me up!! We had an entire three-week campervan trip booked for September, but had to cancel it to be able to pull off our 100-day trip.
The Amazon Rainforest
Back in 3rd grade, we did a short unit on “the rainforest,” which mostly meant learning about some weird animals (piranhas sounded like the scariest animals on the planet!), astounding facts (the Amazon is how big?), and crazy rainforest habitat (wait, we discover new species there all the damn time?). I also learned that the Amazon River’s headwaters is a place called Lake Titicaca, which I still giggle at even today.
The teacher ended the unit by remarking that deforestation was a serious and growing problem, and that she really, really hoped that it’d still be around for us to see it when we were adults. I went home and busted open my piggybank and mailed all the dollar bills I had to the Rainforest Action Network (I was a member all the way through high school). And no, I don’t remember how I found the address for the group; I just knew that it had been formed to help in some way. Years later, my grandparents gifted me a copy of this Time Life book on the Amazon, which I treasured for several decades.
Canadian Rockies
It is an absolute tragedy that I have not yet made it to the national parks of the Canadian Rockies. Borderline criminal. I’ve had a number of trips planned—including the honeymoon of my first marriage—but each has been canceled or postponed. It’s never quite gotten the attention it deserves, probably because I was too focused on completing my US national parks quest; and while Canada is a different country, we don’t really see it as an “international” trip. So until recently, it has sort of occupied a weird status in our travel priorities. Unfortunately, I don’t think we can get to this until summer 2026 at the earliest.
Netherlands canal boat convoy
This is a group trip with a number of friends where we all rent canal boats and make our way through the Netherlands. Originally scheduled for May 2025, our friends graciously agreed to punt it to 2026 because of our big trip. This is on the list not because I’m dying to see canal-adjacent parts of Netherlands, but because I want to try out this type of travel—a linear, somewhat restricted way of slowly working one’s way through a country. And I think it’d be a blast to do it using “live-aboard” canal boats with a bunch of good friends.
Kauai
I’ve been to Maui, Oahu, Hawaii (aka, the Big Island), and even Molokai, but we haven’t made it to what might be the most scenic island: Kauai. We very, very nearly booked a trip there in February of this year, but decided against it at the last minute. It was intended to be a cheap trip (we camp on the beach there, so with a good flight deal, it can be a bargain trip) but we started adding a bunch of additional tours that we wanted to do, including visiting two additional islands, and suddenly it wasn’t the cheap trip we had intended. I expect we’ll either stick with a cheap Kauai-only trip, or do the larger trip we nearly booked, probably in conjunction with one of the federal holidays in January or February 2026. I’d love to backpack the Na Pali Coast, but I don’t expect that to be on the itinerary this time unless I stay longer than Jen to do it with a friend.
Rafting the Grand Canyon
This has been on my list since my first river trip more than fifteen years ago, but it’s yet to happen—even though we came close a couple of years. We’ll make sure to do it in the next five years, possibly organizing a group to join us.
New national monuments and national park units
I seem to be the only known person to have visited every national park unit, national monument, and national conservation area in the US (a total of 491 of our nation’s best public lands). Of course, there’s a chance that several new national monuments may be designated in the waning days of the Biden Administration, while we’re gone on our big trip. So when we return, it’ll be a priority to visit any that get designated that we have already been to.
The rest of the top 25
Baja California
Baja is intriguing, but only on a slow road trip, and only with some good friends who have guided a number of trips there. We had this penciled in before covid struck, but some life changes means the timeline is now much murkier.
Costa Rica
This has been on our list for a number of years now too. It’s relatively easy to get to, so we’ve kept it as an option when we have more limited time for an international trip. I expect we’ll do it in conjunction with one of the Jan/Feb holidays in the next few years.
Tour du Mont Blanc
A friend invited me to join her on a group trek along the route, but it didn’t quite work out. But it looks like a great trip—hiking from backcountry hut to backcountry hut along the gorgeous Alps—and I think I’d arrange my own small group trip there in the not-too-distant future.
Madagascar
We very nearly included this in our 100-Day trip itinerary, but we decided that we should hold off for another time. One of my close friends is visiting there right now though, and hot damn it looks like a cool place! I could see combining a visit here with a safari trip.
Vancouver
And I mean both the island and the city. Like the Canadian Rockies, it’s also ridiculous that I haven’t made it to either yet. I think it stems from a similar calculus as well. We’ll likely visit for an extended weekend in the next few years, probably in conjunction with revisit to Olympic National Park.
Southern Caribbean
The southern stretch of Caribbean Islands is on our list primarily because we’ve committed to doing them with a group of friends that joined us for seven other Caribbean Islands last year. We had a blast together, and both Jen and I have a quest to visit each of the major islands in the Caribbean, so this would get us pretty close to finishing.
Antarctica
When we got word that our big trip could be exactly 100 days long, the very first thought we had was “All 7 Continents in 100 Days.” And we nearly went for it. The lynchpin for such a trip is a visit to Antarctica, and we came within seconds of booking it—but it wasn’t quite the tour we wanted (those were already fully booked), and we would have to pay a premium price for this not-quite-right tour, too. So we decided to take the night to think about it, and the next day decided to take a bigger step back and think about what we really wanted from the trip in general. All 7 Continents in 100 Days makes for a great story—and one I’d never get tired of telling—but a good story wasn’t the point of this big adventure.
Jen visited Antarctica more than a decade ago, and it remains the best trip she has ever taken. I’ll get there at some point, likely in the next five years, but I’m not in a rush. Yet, at least.
Indiana
So, I have somehow adopted a quest to visit all 3144 counties and county-equivalents in the US (I’m about 63% done so far). I know I’ve passed through the middle of Indiana before, including a stop in Indianapolis—I have vivid memories of the experience. But dammit, I can’t figure out when that was or what route I took. So my county visit map has a big ol’ blank spot in the state, which frustrates me since I have indeed been there. I need to fix this, and have tentative plans to do so in August 2025.
Churchill, Manitoba
Churchill is the most accessible (and cheapest) way to see polar bears in the wild, and well, seeing them is on our list. We don’t have any current plans for this, but we know that we’d better go soon given the climate peril they’re facing.
Greece
Another destination born from my schooling. We nearly popped over last December when we messed up the second half of our Portugal/Spain trip and looked for some last minute alternatives (we opted to stay longer in Portugal instead). I’d like to see Athens, and also bounce around some of the islands, probably via some sort of small cruise.
Idaho Panhandle
This is the biggest “blank spot” I haven’t been to in the West, so I’d love to road trip up there and check out the mountains. We had a road trip planned last year (which included several days north of the border), but ended up canceling it due to a health scare Jen had. Not sure we’ll get to it in 2025, so it’s penciled in for summer 2026.
Tierra del Fuego & Southern Andes
What a gorgeous part of the world! It makes the most sense to do this in conjunction with an Antarctica tour, so I’ll likely wait to do both on the same trip. The big question here is if I’ll be able to get in some backpacking, or if we’ll just explore via day hikes; the answer to that may change how and/or when we go.
Alaska
I’ve already seen much of the state over the course of three recent trips, including some crazy remote spots. But a few places are still on the list: Sitka (with a rail trip into the Yukon), Kodiak Island, Barrow, and Unalaska—and I’d eventually like to get to Attu, as well. That said, I don’t expect to return for at least a half dozen years, given our other travel priorities.
Machu Picchu & Central Andes
I fell in love with the idea of hiking Machu Picchu back in high school, not long after I picked up hiking. It’s remained on the list since then, though the over-tourism has continually dwindled my excitement level. But I still need to see it one day, along with more of the Andes.
Prague, Czech Republic
I’m not a big city guy, but I figured I should put at least one on the list. One of my good friends is from Prague, and it seems like an interesting city to see; I know Jen really enjoyed her visit there.
What’s your list?
I’d love to see your answer to Brandon’s question—whether that’s just one top destination or a whole list of them like me. If you write anything along these lines, please let me know.