Vermont offers visitors not just postcard-perfect views, but a state shaped by independence, craftsmanship, and deep-rooted community traditions. That independent streak is still felt in small towns like Montpelier, the nation’s smallest state capital, and in villages like Grafton and Woodstock, where restored 19th-century buildings now house general stores, cheese shops, and local galleries.

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park occupies a large area of southeastern California, extending across the Colorado Desert east of San Diego County. It is California’s largest state park and contains a varied desert landscape of broad valleys, badlands, rocky mountains, palm oases, dry washes, and sandy plains. The park takes its name from Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza and the Spanish word for bighorn sheep.

Athabasca Glacier is one of the most accessible glaciers in the Canadian Rockies, located in Jasper National Park along the Columbia Icefield Parkway in Alberta. It forms part of the Columbia Icefield, a vast area of ice and snow that feeds several major river systems. The glacier extends down from the icefield between rugged mountain peaks, with its lower section visible from a marked viewpoint and trail.

Nogales is a border city in Santa Cruz County in southern Arizona, directly adjoining Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. Its setting in the Santa Cruz River Valley gives the city a distinctive landscape of rolling hills, desert vegetation, and mountain ranges. As one of the principal border crossings between Arizona and Mexico, Nogales has long served as a center for trade, transportation, and cross-border commerce.

Dramatic and otherworldly, Deadvlei in Namibia is one of the most surreal landscapes on the planet. Located within the Namib-Naukluft National Park, Deadvlei is a white clay pan that was once an oasis filled with acacia trees. Over 900 years ago, a shift in climate and the encroachment of the towering red sand dunes cut off the river that fed the pan, leaving behind a hauntingly beautiful scene of dead trees that have been perfectly preserved in the arid environment.