Looking back on all your travels, there are a lot of the “Big Wows” . . . sights and sounds and incidents that stop you in your tracks and cause you to grab for your camera. The interesting thing is—what’s a Big Wow for me, may go unnoticed by you.
Here are some that have evoked a “Big Wow!” from me.
The moment when you first walk up to the edge of the Grand Canyon, for example. That’s a Big Wow for just about everyone.A Big Wow for me was waking up on a beautiful morning in Tahiti—our plane had arrived close to midnight the night before—pulling back the curtain in my hotel room and literally gasping at the sight of Moorea, another of the islands of French Polynesia, shimmering in the morning sunshine seven miles away across Matavai Bay.And then there’s the glimpse into the day-to-day lives of people living on the opposite side of the world . . . a Mongolian mother leaving their traditional home, a yurt. After dropping her daughter off at school, she’s headed for a desk job in downtown Ulaanbaatar. Realizing we all have so much in common? A Big Wow.And I picture a town meeting a thousand years ago in the medieval French town of Carcassonne. One of the residents, Luke-the-Fed-Up, raises his hand and said “I’m sick and tired of our town constantly being pillaged. I make a motion that we build the biggest damn wall around the town the world has ever seen!” The mayor said, “All in favor?” And the rest is this Big Wow.Finally, it may be just a train to most people, but it’s a Big Wow for those of us into train travel. This photo was taken from one of the rear coaches on Amtrak’s northbound Coast Starlight as it climbs through the famous horseshoe curve just north of San Luis Obispo.
