Smithsonian.com

Don't forget Grand Canyon. There are a number of commercial rafting companies that can take you through a really big chunk of the history of Earth from the Triassic to the Precambrian. Evotourists can also hike down and through side canyons, seeing the evidence of erosion and sedimentation that took place over millenia. It's fabulous. (And this isn't just because the National Center for Science Education offers its own Grand Canyon raft trip, where we explore the reasons why Grand Canyon wasn't formed, as "creation science" claims, during Noah's flood....)

I would walk in Darwin footsteps at Downe in the London borough of Bromley. To be in his study is to breath in 'I think' , to walk in his garden is to hear a thousand 'what if's'. To go further afield-to Keston Common and Downe bank is to sit in the places where he reflected, questioned and theorised-40 years of questions, experiments and critical observations. The Beagle was just the beginning-at Down House Darwin hypothesised, wrote, walked and played with his children.Much of the landscape retains its 19th century aspects. Sit on Downe bank and read the last page of origin aloud and then listen to the life of that 'entangled bank'

Great program! I work for the Museum of Western Colorado and we run public dinosaur digs (late Jurassic, Morrison Formation) where people can participate, or just watch, a active dinosaur dig. We work on BLM land so the fossils are collected and kept at the museum, no fossils are given away or sold. We also offer a variety of other tours through our local Mesozoic geological history and visit other nearby fossil localities. You do not have to publish this comment, but I was wondering if you could pass my information along to your program coordinator. (https://www.museumofwesternco.com/dino-digs/)

The Klamath/Siskiyou mountains in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon. The geology is amazingly complex and the plant communities are just as amazing. The mountains are lower than the Sierras and didn't receive the extreme glaciation that the Sierras and Cascades further north did, which allowed many plants to survive repeated glaciations. The complex geology influences the species and their distribution. This is a generally little known/visited area of the country.

I would recommend Southern Utah, namely Deushane/Vernal area, There have been many full dinosaur fossles found there. Then again there is Nine Mile Canyon,a short drive from there where remenents of the Filmore Indians can be found with Pictoglieves (? spelling). I grew up running around in these areas photographing and documenting these pictures. Recently a great cache of indian artifacts has been found in a cave there. It is protected by the national park and wildlife agency

The Morrison Formation in Utah, the Green River Shales and the Burgess Shales. Also the stromatolites in Shark Bay, Australia. The Flaming Cliffs in China. Perhaps the Solnhofen Quarries in Germany. Several of these would require special permissions that a private person could not get (Burgess Shales in particular) but the Smithsonian could probably arrange.

Nice

I have read so much about Costa Rica, and it is so close to the USA. I would love to take my grand children to see the jungles and the volcano.

Dinosaur ridge and garden of the gods started me thinking how the world was created when I was little and pointed me in the direction in wanting to discover the history of the past as I grew older and helped me decide to work towards in becoming a forensic anthropologist later. I think they would be great places as an example of evolution right here in the states plus the mountains of Colorado are an every day reminder of the world changing.

Drumheller Alberta, The home of the dinosaur museum, , the dinosaur trail and the most interesting desert area of Canada complete with cactus and oil wells so far north we couldn't believe it. While driving north to find this small town we also saw miles of yellow ( mustard flower fields ) It turned out that they were Rape seed crops. From which Canolla Oil is made, because who would buy Rape Oil. We learned so much by taking this excursion North of Calgery while we were driving across Canada on Highway 1

Pocono mountians

I would reccommend the floating Uros Islands on Lake Titicaca Peru as a significant ecotourism destination. The architectural structures built on layers of floating reeds and balsa boats are fabricated from Totora(Schoenoplectus californicus ssp. tatora) plant material, a subspecies of the giantbulrush sedge cultivated in Lake Titicaca. The origin of totora reeds extends back to prehistoric Peru while the practice of weaving them into boats, mats and shelters by the ancient Uros on Lake Titicaca predates the Inca culture.

Joggins Fossil Cliffs on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada. From the website http://jogginsfossilcliffs.net/

"These magnificently exposed layers of rock reveal the world’s most complete fossil record of life in the “Coal Age” when lush forests covered Joggins and much of the world's tropics, 300 million years ago.

The swamp forests produced massive quantities of organic matter that, over millions of years, created the coal deposits for which this period of history is named.

Embedded in 15 kilometres of accessible coastal cliffs, rare fossils reveal details of life in the “Coal Age”.

Statement of Outstanding Universal Value

The classic coastal section at Joggins, Nova Scotia, is of outstanding universal value. It contains an unrivalled fossil record preserved in its environmental context, which represents the finest example in the world of the terrestrial tropical environment and ecosystems of the Pennsylvanian 'Coal Age' of the Earth's history."

Easy.......Galopagos Islands

Australia! The whole continent, with it's amazing marsupials and monotremes, drives home the reality of evolution as well or better than the Galapagos. From the Sydney zoo to far north Queensland to the outback, the wallabies, kangaroos and even tiny mouse-like marsupials demonstrate how evolution works in extreme and isolated conditions. (After exploring Australia, ponder how Noah brought the ark to Australia, picked up the hundreds of endemic species, then brought them back to this single location after the flood.)

I have been to all continents and about 45 countries, starting 1972 and ending 2002. I got old. I am 87. Some close relatives have traveled more than I have. crossed Russia from St.Petersburg to Moscow and Minsk to Warwsaw and Berlin. Not so glum. Farm homes had bright painted shutters and nice outside workplaces. South Africa, hills and seacapes and misty waters where warm east coastal waters met cold southern waters. Getting up early and walking around city streets in Dublin, Limerick and Cork, before Breakfast seeing what early risers are doing. Visiting sheep stations, south island New Zealand. Learing about market for meat from 70 million sheep. Small plane ride, with skis, landing on vast glacier on mountain near Mount Cook. What a tourist can see & do in Japan, with day trips out of Tokyo. How Shanghai has changed in past 15 years. I have been there 3 times. Some of these have been covered too much maybe. I am a new subscriber and an immediate fan.

The Dead Sea. Go to the bottom, and dig through the silt and the salt deposits. Find Sodom and Gomorrah. They're there. Evolution, as the source of our origin, is a horrible excuse for science, considering it defies the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and claims that nothingness produced something (indeed supposedly everything we physically experience), as well as that life came from non-life. We all recognize that Haeckel was lying, but it is evolution that gave us the truly enlightening teaching that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

Don't forget the sites in our states. We just discovered one near us when our son came home for a visit. Never knew about the Beneski Museum of Natural History at Amherst College.

Try to come to Komodo Island in Indonesia... The only island with komodo from the ancient time...

The tidal pools at Montara, CA, near Half Moon Bay. On a good low tide you can appreciate the enormous diversity of life in a simple tidal pool and how each plant or animal carves its own little niche in which to survive and propagate. I first went there as a high school biology student in the late 50's and never lost my fascination for this marine ecosystem.

Dinasaur footprints trail near Denver Colorado. I believe the town is Littleton. A great place to visit with family and get thekids excited about nature and evolution.

I would love to stand were our earliest known ancestors stood.

There are two fascinating sites in central and southeaster Colorado that contain remarkable fossilized evidence that I would like to call your attention to:

1) Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. This area contains one of the richest and most diverse fossil deposits in the world, including petrified Sequoia stumps 34 million years old.

2) Picket Wire Canyonlands in the Comanche National Grasslands, near La Junta, Colorado. This area is home to the largest known set of dinosaur tracks in North America.

Visit the Waugh Quarry outside of Hulett Wyoming, not far from Devils Tower. I volunteered for one week 3 summers in a row with the Black Hills Institute of Geology Research. Paleontologist Pete Larson was heading the quarry. We were excavating an early Jurassic site filled with dino bones and allosaurus teeth! The quarry is on private property of the Waugh Ranch. The family collaborates with BHIGR every month of July! Paleontologist from all over the world visit! You never know who will show up and share their stories and knowledge at the chuck wagon for lunch or dinner! Go dig a dino! Call Pete at the BHIGR for more info! http://www.bhigr.com/

One place that is incomparable for a number of reasons is the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve on the southeast tip of Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula( http://www.env.gov.nl.ca/env/parks/wer/r_mpe/index.html) The Ediacara biota (575-560 million years old) is amazing and easily viewed. This is one of 9 sites on the Canadian Tentative list of potential UNESCO World Heritage sties. More than this, this is Newfoundland, the setting is spectacular. The fossils are on cliffs on the coast and it is near large seabird colonies (e.g., Cape St. Mary's, Witless Bay), plus at the right time of year there is excellent whale watching and, in a good year, icebergs. There is a direct flight from Newark to St. John's. While one is at it - for more evotourism - one can head to Gross Morne National Park on the west side of the island.

Right here in Ottawa, where I live, there is a treasure that not many people know about: one of the best displays of stromatolites (the oldest known fossils on Earth) in any urban area. They can be easily seen along the Ottawa river shoreline near the Champlain Bridge.

As Dorothy said, there's no place like home.

When I was growing up in Illinois, we knew that our front yard was the neighborhood's best sledding hill. But only years later did I discover we'd been living on a terminal moraine of the Wisconsin glacier. Some of the "weeds" in the vacant lot next door had strange and exquisite adaptations. They were actually rare native, tallgrass prairie plants (whose seeds were used in the beautiful prairie restoration at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois.)

Before you take off for the Galapagos, please, sit at home and read about evolution; visit to your local museums; find out about the resources in your own area. In the Central Valley of California where I now live, there's a site just off of Highway 99 near Madera with bones of extinct mammals older than those at the La Brea tarpits. The site was discovered when it was used for a landfill!

If you never get to the Galapagos, you can still enrich your own life, and perhaps your family's as well, by understanding your local area. And if you do get to the Galapagos, you'll have a far richer experience than just ticking off one more item on a bucket list.

A very accessible "extinction beach" is at Joggins, near Parrsboro Nova Scotia. We came across the area quite by chance in 1989, spending some time with a Mr. Reid at a small museum which he had developed (and stocked )above the cliffs on the Bay of Fundy. He urged us to spend some time on the beach below, noting that anything we found there was ours to keep. And he would like to see what we found. We hauled some wonderful pieces up the stairs, and left most of them with him.... we were traveling by train at the time! I was still asked, "What do you have in this bag? Rocks!?"
Then in 1995 we found a new museum, which was now offering "Fossil Tours". Guess he finally had received more official and financial help. Joggins is a great place to learn, explore and collect for children and adults alike.

The of badlands South Dakota, the deserts of Arizona, Nebraska's ashland’s, the tar pits in California, the national forests in the panhandle of Florida, the abandoned coal mines in Pennsylvania, Fairy Stone park in Virginia, the salt mines below the great lakes in Michigan or just go sit by a large body of water for a while - all have recorded historic events and show ongoing changes that have and still affect life from the smallest organism to the largest mammals - our earth is a magnificent place with a history and future beyond our wildest dreams. I want to see and expierence as much as my short life can, there is just not enough time to appreciate it all.