When someone says the word, “Alabama,” what do you imagine? For most, the melody of “Sweet Home Alabama” pops into their head, or scenes from the movie by the same name. For me, most of what I pictured stemmed from the popular television show “Hart of Dixie” about a young doctor moving to the state in search of a mystery father – not exactly based on reality. What I didn’t know until I moved into the next-door Florida Panhandle was that Alabama is an ecologically diverse, beautiful state, stretching from sugar-sand coastline to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

It's not easy to visit Kobuk Valley National Park in Alaska -- you need to take a small plane or river boat to reach it -- but the trek is well worth it if you enjoy sand dunes.

When I designed the itinerary for my road trip move from Texas to Washington, last summer, I worked on several different routes to take me to national parks I’d never photographed but which are still within a relatively straight shot to central Washington. No matter which route I planned, they all had one thing in common: a stop at Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. Considered an “open-air geologic textbook” in a past Traveler article, Petrified Forest is a less-visited gem filled with all sorts of colorful photographic possibilities, right off Interstate 40.

Kids of all ages love dinosaurs. As a six-year-old, I remember playing with plastic dinosaurs with names like Brontosaurus, Triceratops, and Tyrannosaurus Rex and imagining about 100 million years ago when those big reptiles walked the earth. It kept me occupied for hours. A recent visit to Fossil Butte National Monument in Wyoming and Dinosaur National Monument in Utah rekindled my childhood dinosaur interest.