Another List of Must-See Places

1,000 Places to See Before You Die is an intimidating number, especially for travelers getting on in years who may be confronting their mortality before making too much progress on the list. Now from Smithsonian comes a shorter list, the 28 must-see's on "The Smithsonian Life List."

We all love checklists, don't we?, so I've checked off the ones I have visited. Even this modest list tells me that I still have a lot of traveling ahead of me just for these must-see places:

√Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellings (Colorado)
Pompeii (Italy)
Tikal (Guatemala)
Petra (Jordan)
Pyramids of Giza (Egypt)
Taj Mahal (India)
√Easter Island (off the coast of Chile, right)
√The Great Wall (China)
√Aurora Borealis (northern latitudes)
√Serengeti Plains-Wildlife (Tanzania, Kenya et al.)
Iguazu Falls (Brazil)
Machu Picchu (Peru)
√The Louvre Museum (France)
Zen Garden of Kyoto (Japan)
√Uffizi Gallery (Italy)
Fallingwater (Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home; Pennsylvania)
√Yangtze River (China)
√Antarctica
√Mount Kilimanjaro (Tanzania)
√Grand Canyon of Arizona
Pagan (ancient temple site; Myanmar, formerly Burma)
The Parthenon of Athens (Greece)
Angkor Wat (Cambodia)
√Ephesus (Turkey)
√Venice (Italy)
Amazon Rain Forest (Brazil and seven other South American countries)
√Great Barrier Reef (Australia)
√Galapagos Islands (off the coast of Ecuador)

That's 15, a hair more than half. And I haven't just seen them. When feasible, I've experienced them in some way: Climbing Kilimanjaro via one of the more difficult routes. Hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, wilderness camping on the other side and hiking back out, and on another trip, rafting it. Renting a car on Easter Island and seeing the moai at sunrise. Visiting the Galapagos on a small sailboat and Antarctica on a small passenger ship. Taking a boat up the Yangtze before the Three Gorges Dam was completed and returning once it had been. What about you?