What’s the most mind blowing place you’ve ever been to?

Lake Louise, Alberta

ANTARCTICA, NO CONTEST.

Seriously, it's as close as I'll ever get to a visit to another planet, a strange and beautiful one where everything is different than it is on Earth. The colors are different, the light is different, the wild things are all different, the landforms are different, and the places where the humans stay are so cramped and unnatural that they remind me of space stations.

The wierdest thing about it was that, well, the way the ice dominated the entire world. I mean even the scientists there call it "the living ice", because it really did seem to be alive - a massive, dominating, inescapable presence. The whole continent and most of the islands are covered in a massive glacial cap with only a few bits of rock visible, and the ice *moves*. You can see how the glaciers creep, I filmed a massive glacier calving event, creating new icebergs, which move and change. It's a strange and beautiful place, and if you ever want to take a vacation from planet Earth, this is as good as it gets.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlsbad_Caverns_National_Park

The Great Smokey Mountains are a gem. I intend to go this fall for the autumn leaf change. The foothills link opened a few years ago. It's breathtaking. I'm so lucky to live in the same state the Smokies are in.


https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g143031-d3320053-Reviews-Foothills_Parkway-Great_Smoky_Mountains_National_Park_Tennessee.html#/media-atf/3320053/?albumid=-160&type=0&category=-160

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Tourism-g143031-Great_Smoky_Mountains_National_Park_Tennessee-Vacations.html#/media/143031/'483391883':p/?focusedIndex=1

England. There wasn't any specific landmark or tourist attraction that blew my mind, but I experienced the strongest sense of hiraeth once I left there that I still feel all the time now. (Hiraeth is a Welsh noun meaning a homesickness for a home that you can’t return to or that never was.)

Grand Canyon. I came back with a t-shirt saying I hiked it. No one believed me!

Amsterdam

I visited St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle several years ago with my Dad when I was quite young and seemed to ‘accidentally bump’ into one interred king or significant historical figure after another.

Both myself and my dad are huge history buffs (he used to read to me about kings and queens to get me to go to sleep as a kid). I know it’s silly but seeing the tombs of these historical figures was a huge reality shock to me. They were suddenly transported from legend/mystery to cold reality.