It’s a nation so blessed with sights — natural and man-made — that you could ask all 300 million residents for their favorites and expect 300 million different answers. So how do you go about picking the country’s 10 most beautiful spots?
Well, for starters, you go about it very boldly. You solicit opinions from travel writers and photographers, poll your colleagues, and talk to outdoor enthusiasts, historic preservationists and relatives who, every time you see them, seem to have just returned from another fabulous trip. USA Today did all that. To help frame the unenviable — all right, nearly impossible — task of limiting America’s most beautiful attractions to a mere 10, they also offered a few guidelines. Nominees had to be publicly accessible and reasonably well-known. Iconic stature wouldn’t hurt a place’s chances, and, given the want of any objective way to measure beauty, sentimental favoritism was an acceptable tiebreaker. In other words, they instructed their experts to follow their hearts. After reading the top 10 list they produced, we hope you’ll do the same.
- Red Rock Country (Sedona, Ariz.)
- Nighttime view from Mount Washington in Pittsburgh
- The upper Mississippi River
- Hawaii’s Na Pali Coast
- Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco
- Grafton, Vt.
- Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
- From Key Largo to Key West in Florida
- Clingmans Dome along the Appalachian Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park
- The squares of Savannah, Ga.
Source: USA Today, Click here to view the full article.