10405 Best Sights in USA

Four habitats across 6,000 acres make up this underwater park and ecological reserve. When the water is clear, this is a diver's paradise with reefs, kelp beds, sand flats, and a submarine canyon reaching depths up to 600 feet. Plunge to see guitarfish rays, perch, sea bass, anchovies, squid, and hammerhead sharks. Snorkelers, kayakers, and stand-up paddleboarders are likely to spot sea lions, seals, and leopard sharks. The Seven La Jolla Sea Caves, 75-million-year-old sandstone caves, are at the park's edge.

Although you can explore the park on your own, the best way to view it is with a professional guide.

The park maintains several hiking and walking trails in the Escondido area. These are part of an intended 70-mile-long Coast to Crest Trail that will eventually link the San Dieguito Lagoon near Del Mar with the river's source on Volcan Mountain, north of Julian. Among the existing trails are three that circle Lake Hodges: the North Shore Lake Hodges Trail; the Piedras Pintadas Trail, which informs about native American Kumeyaay lifestyles and uses for native plants; and the Highland Valley Trail, the first mile of which is the Ruth Merrill Children's Walk. Three trails in Clevenger Canyon lead to sweeping views of the San Pasqual Valley.

Visit the website for a list of upcoming free guided hikes and pay attention to signs warning against leaving valuables in your car.

One of the best picnic spots in a very picnic-friendly park, the 55-acre arboretum specializes in plants from areas with climates similar to that of the Bay Area. Walk the Eastern Australian garden to see tough, pokey shrubs and plants with cartoon-like names, such as the lilly-pilly tree. You don't have to go to Muir Woods to see the largest living things on earth: the botanical garden boasts a 4-acre redwood grove in the heart of the city. Kids gravitate toward the large, shallow fountain and the pond with ducks, turtles, and egrets.  Free public tours are given Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at 1:30, with an additional tour Saturday at 10:30. No reservations are required.

Night and day, the center hosts many social activities, from mixers and youth game nights to holiday parties and slam poetry performances.

You'll feel as if you're out to sea when you step inside this sturdy, ship-shape (literally), Streamline-Moderne structure, dubbed the Bathhouse Building and built in 1939 as part of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration. The first floor of the museum, part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, has stunningly restored undersea dreamscape murals and some of the museum's intricate ship models. The first-floor balcony overlooks the beach and has lovely WPA-era tile designs. A short walk from the museum (past the cable car turnaround) is the national historical park's Visitor Center ( 499 Jefferson St.), whose fun, large-scale exhibits make it an engaging stop for learning more about San Francisco's fascinating maritime past in a building that was a Del Monte cannery warehouse. If you've got young kids in tow, the museum makes a great quick, free stop. Then pick up ice cream at Ghirardelli Square across the street and enjoy it on the beach or next door in the grassy Maritime Garden, where you can watch the cable cars turn around.

Topped with a swirl like an art-deco nautilus, the library's seven-level glass atrium fills the building with light. Local researchers take advantage of centers dedicated to gay and lesbian, African American, Chinese, and Filipino history. The sixth-floor San Francisco History Center has fun exhibits of city ephemera, including a treat for fans of noir fiction: novelist Dashiell Hammett's typewriter.

A labor of love from the same vintage-transit enthusiasts responsible for the F-line's revival, this one-room museum and store celebrates the city's streetcars and cable cars with photographs, models, and artifacts. The permanent exhibit includes the replicated end of a streetcar with a working cab—complete with controls and a bell—for kids to explore; the cool, antique Wiley birdcage traffic signal; and models and display cases to view. Right on the F-line track, just across from the Ferry Building, this is a great quick stop.

Occupying prime oceanfront property, the San Francisco Zoo touts itself as a wildlife-focused recreation center that inspires visitors to become conservationists. The zoo was last accredited in 2022, though recent reports have criticized it as outdated and potentially unsafe for its animals. Integrated exhibits group different species of animals from the same geographic areas together in enclosures that don't look like cages. More than 2,000 animals and 250 species reside here, including endangered species such as the snow leopard, Sumatran tiger, and grizzly bear. The zoo's superstar exhibit is Grizzly Gulch, where orphaned grizzly bear sisters Kachina and Kiona enchant visitors with their frolicking and swimming. The Mexican Gray Wolf grotto houses the smallest gray wolf and the most endangered wolf subspecies in the world. The Lemur Forest has seven varieties of the bug-eyed, long-tailed primates from Madagascar and is the country's largest outdoor lemur habitat. African kikuyu grass carpets the circular outer area of the Jones Family Gorilla Preserve, one of the most natural gorilla habitats of any zoo in the world. Other popular exhibits include Penguin Island, Koala Crossing, and the African Savanna exhibit. The 6-acre Children's Zoo has about 300 mammals, birds, and reptiles, plus a huge playground, a restored 1921 Dentzel carousel, and a mini–steam train.

As you approach Cuchara Pass, several switchbacks snake through rolling grasslands and dance in and out of spruce stands whose clearings afford views of Monument Lake. You can camp, fish, and hike throughout this tranquil part of the San Isabel National Forest, which in spring and summer is emblazoned with a color wheel of wildflowers. Four corkscrewing miles later you'll reach a dirt road that leads to Bear Lake and Blue Lake. The resort town of Cuchara is about 4 miles from the Route 12 turnoff to the lakes.

Alfred Finn, a Houston architect, designed this 570-foot-tall monument, which rises over the site (in nearby La Porte) where Sam Houston triumphed over General Antonio López de Santa Anna in the final battle of the Texas Revolution of 1836. The cenotaph, built between 1936 and 1939, is made of concrete and 100-million-year-old Cordova shellstone quarried north of Austin. At its top rests a nine-point, 35-foot-tall star weighing 220 tons. The park also includes the San Jacinto Museum of History; The Jesse H. Jones Theater for Texas Studies, which shows a movie about the battle called Texas Forever!; the Battleship Texas; and the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Library, covering Texas history.

With the low-slung, colonnaded Mission San Juan Bautista as its drawing card, this park 20 miles northeast of Salinas is about as close to early-19th-century California as you can get. Historic buildings ring the wide green plaza, among them an adobe home furnished with Spanish-colonial antiques, a hotel frozen in the 1860s, a blacksmith shop, a pioneer cabin, and a jailhouse. The mission's cemetery contains the unmarked graves of more than 4,300 Native American converts.  On the first Saturday of the month, costumed volunteers engage in quilting bees, tortilla making, and other frontier activities, and sarsaparilla and other nonalcoholic drinks are served in the saloon.

You'll find a wide gravel beachfront at this park 10 miles west of Friday Harbor, overlooking waters where orcas often frolic in summer, plus grassy lawns with picnic tables and a small campground.

This museum in an old farmhouse presents island life at the turn of the 20th century through historic photography, documents, and buildings.

Housed in a sleek, contemporary building, SJIMA presents rotating art shows and exhibits with an emphasis on island and Northwest artists, including the highly touted Artists' Registry Show in winter, which features works by nearly 100 San Juan Islands artists.

At this serene 20-acre park near Roche Harbor, you can stroll along five winding trails to view more than 150 colorful—and in many cases, large-scale—sculptures spread amid freshwater and saltwater wetlands, open woods, blossoming fields, and rugged terrain. The park is also a haven for birds; more than 120 species nest and breed here. It's a great spot for picnicking, and dogs are welcome.

A remodeled 1895 schoolhouse serving estate-grown wines, this picturesque winery is worth a visit for the scenery and its award-winning Siegerrebe and Madeleine Angevine varietals (the winery belongs to the Puget Sound AVA, the coolest-climate growing region in Washington). The vineyard's wines show up on many local menus.

Founded in 1851, San Luis is the oldest incorporated town in Colorado. Murals depicting famous stories and legends of the area adorn several buildings in the town. A latter-day masterpiece is the Stations of the Cross Shrine, created by renowned local sculptor Huberto Maestas. The shrine is formally known as La Mesa de la Piedad y de la Misericordia (Hill of Piety and Mercy), and its 15 stations with bronze statues illustrate the last hours of Christ's life. The trail leads up to a chapel called La Capilla de Todos Los Santos.

Activities at this facility geared to children under age 10 include an "imagination-powered" elevator that transports visitors to a series of underground caverns. Kids can pick rubber fruit at a farmers' market and race in a fire engine to fight a fire.

The permanent collection here focuses on the artistic legacy of the Central Coast. Temporary exhibits include traditional and cutting-edge arts and crafts by Central Coast, national, and international artists.

The San Pedro River, partially rerouted underground by an 1887 earthquake, may not look like much, but it sustains an impressive array of flora and fauna and makes for great hiking and birding. To maintain this fragile creekside ecosystem, 56,000 acres along the river were designated a protected riparian area in 1988. More than 350 species of birds come here, as well as 82 mammal species and 45 reptiles and amphibians. Animals from long ago—including woolly mammoths and mastodons—also make their former presence here known through the area's massive fossil pits; in fact, many of the huge skeletons in Washington's Smithsonian Institute and New York's Museum of Natural History came from here. As evidenced by a number of small, unexcavated ruins, the migratory tribes who passed through thousands of years later also found this valley hospitable, in part because of its many useful plants. Information, guided tours and bird walks, books, and gifts are available from the volunteer staff at San Pedro House, a visitor center operated by Friends of the San Pedro River ( sanpedroriver.org).

There is something for everyone at this longtime Downtown favorite. Dating back to 1972, it’s technically still a market (there are a handful of boutiques), but it’s really a lively, vast food hall with more than a dozen tempting choices and plenty of places to sit and watch sports on TVs or enjoy live music outside. Voyager Craft Coffee's espresso drinks and the unique Hawaiian mochi (rice flour) doughnuts by Mochinut are just two of the many must-try vendors here.

One of Vermont's best swimming beaches is at Sand Bar State Park, where a 2,000-foot stretch of sand leads into shallow water perfect for wading in gently. Amenities: food and drink; parking (fee); toilets; water sports. Best for: swimming

Most of the park's caves lie within its hundreds of feet of limestone strata, but atop that limestone sits a layer of sandstone and shale. Sandstone caves can be found in this ridgetop layer, which often lead to greater limestone caverns farther down. In hope of making such a discovery, explorer Floyd Collins entered Sand Cave in 1925 … but never left. His entrapment, and attempted rescue, made headlines across the nation and caused a near-carnival of activity outside the cave entrance. That entrance is visible close at hand from the overlook at the end of Sand Cave Trail. A series of outdoor exhibit panels along the trail explain the historic events. Note: Sand Cave is closed to public entry.

You may return to the car with shoes full of bright-red sand from this giant sandbox in the desert—it's fun exploring in and around the rock. Set aside 15 minutes for this shady, ½-mile walk and plenty of time if you have kids, who will love playing amid this dramatic landscape. Never climb on this or any other arch in the park, no matter how tempting—it's illegal, and it could lead to damage to the fragile geology or even someone getting hurt. The trail intersects with the Broken Arch Trail—you can visit both arches with an easy 1.2-mile round-trip walk. Easy.

Three miles southwest of Bluff you'll find a large panel of Ancestral Puebloan rock art. The panel includes several large images of Kokopelli, the mischief-maker from Puebloan lore.

In addition to a lovely beach (a mellow alternative to the often-crowded Clearwater Beach to the north), this 95-acre park has plenty of green space, a playground, and a picnic area. Parking is a flat $5. Amenities: food and drink; lifeguards; parking (fee) showers; toilets. Best for: solitude; sunset; swimming.

For awesome views of Albuquerque and half of New Mexico, take NM 536 up the back side of the Sandia Mountains through Cibola National Forest to Sandia Crest. At the 10,378-foot summit, explore the dramatic but relatively level and easy trails along the rim. Always bring an extra layer of clothing, even in summer—the temperature at the crest can be anywhere from 15 to 25 degrees cooler than down in Albuquerque. This is also the route to the popular Sandia Peak Ski Area.

Overlooking Long Island Sound, this 216-acre preserve, once part of a Gold Coast estate, occupies the tip of the Port Washington Peninsula. The grounds include natural and landscaped areas, with forests, meadows, freshwater ponds, and shore cliffs. Also here are three castlelike mansions. The 1904 Castlegould, the visitor center, houses changing exhibits on natural history. Falaise is a Normandy-style manor house built for Harry F. Guggenheim in 1923; the home is notable for its medieval and Renaissance style and artwork. The Tudor-style Hempstead House, used for various exhibits, overlooks the harbor. Tours through Falaise and nature walks are available.