Wind River Canyon
US-20/WY-789 threads the Wind River, railroad, and highway through an Owl Creek Mountain gorge where the exposed rock record runs back about 2.9 billion years.
United States: places and wildlife — page 42
Browse the published Explore collection for United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Cascade Canyon Trail
From Jenny Lake, the route climbs past Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point before entering a broad glacial canyon beneath steep Teton walls.
Taggart Lake Trail
Taggart Lake offers a relatively moderate route through forest, moraine, and open views to a glacial lake beneath the Tetons.
Fairy Falls Trail
The trail crosses lodgepole forest to slender Fairy Falls, with an optional continuation toward Imperial Geyser.
Medicine Bow Peak Trail
Routes from Lake Marie and West Lake Marie climb talus and tundra to Medicine Bow Peak, with broad views across the Snowy Range.
Cirque of the Towers Trail
The Big Sandy approach leads into one of the Wind River Range’s most celebrated granite cirques, passing forests, lakes, and Jackass Pass.
Popo Agie Falls Trail
From Bruce’s Bridge in Sinks Canyon, this trail follows the Middle Fork Popo Agie through forest and granite toward a series of falls and cascades.
Cheyenne Botanic Gardens
The conservatory, themed gardens, community spaces, and children’s village show how plants can thrive under Cheyenne’s cold, wind, altitude, and short growing season.
Wyoming Toad
The Wyoming Toad is among North America’s rarest amphibians and is not a casual roadside find.
Wyoming Pocket Gopher
This species is identified more reliably through range, soil, skull, and genetic work than a fleeting glimpse.
Kendall Warm Springs Dace
Kendall Warm Springs Dace survives in one exceptionally small natural range. Its importance lies less in showy appearance than in adaptation to stable warm water and the extreme vulnerability created by having every wild individual in one system.
Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout
Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout connect lake, river, tributary, bear, bird, and human food webs.
Desert Yellowhead
Desert Yellowhead lives on pale, harsh soils where bare ground is part of the habitat rather than an empty walking surface.
Laramie Columbine
Laramie Columbine is smaller and less theatrical than many garden columbines. Pale flowers, short spurs, divided leaves, limestone crevices, and the restricted Laramie Range together support identification; any single trait is insufficient.
Wyoming Indian Paintbrush
The brilliant color belongs mostly to bracts, while the true flowers are smaller and tucked among them.
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry
Experiment halls, a Cold War submarine, a planetarium, and rotating science exhibitions make OMSI a place to test ideas rather than merely read about them.
Portland Art Museum
Northwest and Native art provide a regional spine for collections that range across Asia, Europe, the Americas, photography, and contemporary practice.
High Desert Museum
Wildlife, living-history spaces, Indigenous perspectives, art, and ecology explain the High Desert as a connected human and natural system.
North American Aerospace Museum
The Spruce Goose anchors two immense halls where aircraft and spacecraft reveal engineering compromises, industrial scale, and the people behind flight.
Oregon Historical Society
Objects, archives, oral histories, and contested interpretation make Oregon history broader—and less comfortable—than a pioneer narrative.
Columbia River Maritime Museum
Shipwrecks, bar pilots, rescue crews, fishing fleets, trade, and a retired lightship explain why the Columbia River Bar is called the Graveyard of the Pacific.
Hallie Ford Museum of Art
A compact university museum pairs Pacific Northwest and Native art with historical collections and focused temporary exhibitions.
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
Asian collections, Northwest art, and changing exhibitions inhabit an Ellis Lawrence building whose courtyards and ornament are part of the visit.
Museum of Natural and Cultural History
Fossils, archaeology, Indigenous knowledge, and living cultural relationships connect Oregon’s deep time with its human present.
Tamástslikt Cultural Institute
Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla people tell their own histories—from homeland and treaty pressure to persistence, adaptation, and sovereignty.
Favell Museum
Native material culture and western art share close, object-dense galleries that reward careful attention to maker, material, and collecting history.
Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals
Crystals, meteorites, fossils, lapidary work, and a room organized by color turn mineral science into close visual comparison.
World Forestry Center Discovery Museum
Interactive exhibits frame forests as ecological, cultural, industrial, and climate systems—then place those choices beside Washington Park’s living trees.
Oregon Rail Heritage Center
Three city-owned locomotives, an active restoration shop, and volunteer expertise make Portland rail history mechanical, noisy, and alive.
Fort Clatsop
Fort Clatsop focuses the visit on the Lewis and the reconstructed fort is interpretation.
Pittock Mansion
A grand 1914 house turns Portland’s rise, domestic technology, and changing skyline into one tightly focused hilltop visit.
Timberline Lodge
Timberline Lodge focuses the visit on Depression-era public works and handmade furnishings.
Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site
Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site focuses the visit on Chinese immigrant life and herbalist Ing Hay.
Vista House at Crown Point
Vista House at Crown Point focuses the visit on an Arts and the octagonal interior.
National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center
migration examined through terrain, wagons, diaries, Indigenous homelands, and difficult choices defines the visit to National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center.
Fort Dalles Museum and Anderson Homestead
Fort Dalles Museum and Anderson Homestead focuses the visit on military and the Anderson collection broadens the story beyond the fort.
Historic Jacksonville
Historic Jacksonville focuses the visit on a Gold Rush town whose street plan and brick commercial blocks.
Crater Lake National Park
a caldera lake created by Mount Mazama’s collapse and transformed by snow, water, and time defines the visit to Crater Lake National Park.
Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area
a river corridor shaped by floods, basalt, waterfalls, transportation, communities, and wind defines the visit to Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.
Smith Rock State Park
Smith Rock State Park focuses the visit on towering volcanic tuff and Monkey Face.
Silver Falls State Park
Silver Falls State Park focuses the visit on temperate forest and South Falls introduces the geology.
Ecola State Park
A winding Sitka-spruce approach opens onto sea stacks, surf, and nine miles of headland wrapped around Tillamook Head.
Shore Acres State Park
Shore Acres State Park focuses the visit on formal gardens and the ocean overlook can turn distant storms into immense.
Cape Lookout State Park
A spruce-covered headland reaches into the Pacific, but the lower day-use area, campground, and hiker-biker camp are closed for major infrastructure work.
Fort Stevens State Park
Fort Stevens State Park focuses the visit on military earthworks and the park spans several separated areas rather than one.
Newberry National Volcanic Monument
a vast volcano expressed through lava flows, cinder cones, lakes, obsidian, and geothermal features defines the visit to Newberry National Volcanic Monument.
John Day Fossil Beds National Monument
world-class fossil sequences distributed among Sheep Rock, Painted Hills, and Clarno defines the visit to John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.
Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve
Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve focuses the visit on marble cave passages and guided cave tours reveal water’s work in metamorphosed limestone.