I try to travel a lot! It is a deep passion of mine. And when I travel I have a smaller daypack that I tote around.

Over the years of travel I have been puchasing country patches and attaching them to my backpack. You can see a bit of this in the picture of me.

My current count is 25 different countries and 48 US states.

Anyway, one day I was waiting at a bus stop and a couple, also waiting for the bus, struck up a conversation with me about travel. They started the conversation by commenting about my backpack.

And they ended up asking me a question:

"Of all the countries that I have visited, which is the most beautiful?"

I never really thought about travel in this way. Every country has it's unique beauty.

But the answer immediately and easily came to me and the couple seemed surprised when I said "America".

As American's I think we take our country for granted. And we tend to romanticize Europe and Asia.

Those places have their own beauty.

But the big thing about America Is that it literally has everything right in one country. Each of the 50 states is unique - as if they were all different countries.

Let me make my case... (Buckle your seat Belt! I am going to blow your socks off!)

(All of the following pictures are real pictures taken by me on my adventures around America - Except for the eruption of Mount Saint Helen's. I got that picture off of Wikipedia.)

Let's start with some natural resources

Looking for mountain ranges? We have the Rocky Mountains in the west and the Appalachians in the East. Those are the two biggest. And there are 17 different mountain ranges in the USA including the White mountains, the Sierra Madres, the Grand Tetons, the Blue Ridge Mountains and well, you get the idea. I took this next picture somewhere in Utah.

And I took this next picture somehwere in Arizona. Snow capped mountain in Arizona :)

How about a desert? We have that too. (The Mojave Desert!) And nearby to the Mojave desert is the world famous Death Valley where the hottest temperatures on all of the Earth are achieved.

I took this picture of the Mojave desert. I didn't travel into it though! There is a highway that runs along the north edge of the desert (I-15). And another that runs along the south edge (I-40). They each have rest stops where you can get out, get some refreshments and look out on the Mojave. That strange looking tree is called a Joshua tree. And there is a whole national park in California devoted to them. It is called, of course, Joshua Tree National Park, and it is approximately 1200 square miles in size (3200 square kilometers). You can visit the park, adventure through it and even camp there.

How about a volcano? We have Mount Saint Helens which actually erupted in 1980.

The picture at left is of the actual eruption.(picture courtesy of Wikipedia)

Just to give you a little bit of a sense of how varied America is we have enormous prairies with lots of prairie dogs and farm crops that go on for miles and miles. We have the everglades with crocodiles, and the Redwood forest which is unique in all the world.

(A prairie in South Dakota)

(A picture I took in the Redwood Forest)

We have two oceans, the great lakes, Niagara Falls and the mighty mississippi river which cuts right through the middle of the country.

(Niagara Falls)

The Mississippi River - somewhere in Mississippi. And on the left bank you can see some actual river boats. (Paddlewheel boats)

And of Course, I couldn't talk about all these things without mentioning "The Grand Canyon".

You probably have heard of all those things. Yet they only scratch the surface. Let me give you some more that are less famous but no less spectacular.

This is Bryce Canyon in Utah.

And this is the Badlands in South Dakota. Give some credit for this badlands photo! The Sunflower just makes it look almost like a professionally taken photo!

(White Sands New Mexico) That's my car there in the foreground. The structures are picnic tables with wind/sun screens.

The Garden of the Gods in Colorado

The Devil's Tower in Wyoming

Yellowstone National Park

Zion National Park

All of that gives you the smallest sliver of what America has to offer. But you get the idea. Let's move on.

Some of the Man-Made Wonders in America

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco

The Arch in St. Louis

Mount Rushmore

The Space needle in Seattle

Route 66 - It spans multiple states - This picture was taken in Arizona near Kingman

The Bean in Chicago

The Washington Monument in Washington D.C.

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

What about Culture and the Arts?

Orchestras - There are five World class top-tier Orchestras in the US. THey are often referred to as the big five and they are The New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and The Cleveland Orchestra.

In addition to this there are more than 70 major orchestras serving large cities and regions all across America.

And... there are actually more than a thousand ensembles of varying size serving many towns, cities and regions of America.

Museums: There are more than 33,000 museums in America. Yes, Americans love museums. And we have them of all different kinds. You can find a museum about just about anything. And do we have world class museums? YEs, We have 24 of them. Among them:

• The Smithsonian in Washington DC.
• The Metropolitan Museum (The MET) in New York
• The Getty Center in Lose Angeles
• The Art Institute of Chicago
• The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston
• The Museum of Modern Art (The MOMA) in New York
• The Philadelphia Museum of Art
• The American Museum of Natural History (New York)
• The Brooklyn Museum (New York)
• The Dallas Museum of Art (Texas)
• Denver Art Museum (Colorado)
• de Young Museum (San Francisco)
• The Guggenheim (New York)
• Los Angeles county Museum of Art (Lose Angeles)

I have visited the MFA in Boston. The picture below is the exterior. Learn more and see some of the pictures I took right here: the MFA in Boston