Breakaway Destination Guides (International)

Zion National Park is a national park located in the Southwestern United States, near Springdale, Utah

A prominent feature of the park is Zion Canyon, 15miles (24km) long and up to half a mile (800m) deep, cut through the reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone by the North Fork of the Virgin River.

Human habitation of the area started about 8,000 years ago with small family groups of Native Americans; the semi-nomadic Basketmaker Anasazi

The canyon was discovered by Mormons in 1858 and was settled by that same group in the early 1860s. In 1909, U.S. President William Howard Taft named the area a National Monument to protect the canyon, under the name of Mukuntuweap National Monument.

The Giant Sequoia National Monument is a 328,000acre U.S. National Monument located in the southern Sierra Nevada in eastern central California.

The forest covers 824 square miles and including one of the ten largest Giant Sequoias, the Boole Tree currently in existence

The Giant Sequoia National Monument was Proclamation 7295 by President Bill Clinton on April 15, 2000. The monument is in two sections. The northern section surrounds Grant Grove and other parts of Kings Canyon National Park and is administered by the Hume Lake Ranger District.

In 1776, the Spanish established a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission named for Francis of Assisi. The California Gold Rush in 1848 propelled the city into a period of rapid growth, transforming it into the largest city on the West Coast at the time.

San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean.

Today, San Francisco is a popular international tourist destination renowned for its chilly summer fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of Victorian and modern architecture and its famous landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, the cable cars, and Chinatown.

After being devastated by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. During World War II, San Francisco was the port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.

The earliest archaeological evidence of inhabitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. People of the Ohlone language group occupied Northern California from at least the 6th century

The bridge-opening celebration began on 27 May 1937 and lasted for one week. The day before vehicle traffic was allowed, 200,000 people crossed by foot and roller skate.

The Golden Gate Bridge also had the world's tallest suspension towers at the time of construction and retained that record until more recently. The weight of the roadway is hung off of two cables that pass through the two main towers and are fixed in concrete at each end.

The Golden Gate Bridge, as part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, it connects the city of San Francisco on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County.

Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. Ferry service began as early as 1820, with regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s

The Golden Gate Bridge was the longest suspension bridge span in the world when it was completed during the year 1937, and has become an internationally recognized symbol of San Francisco and California.

Death Valley is the lowest, driest, and hottest location in North America. Death Valley holds the record for the highest reliably reported temperature in the Western hemisphere.

Death Valley is home to the Timbisha tribe of Native Americans, formerly known as the Panamint Shoshone, who have inhabited the valley for at least the past 1000 years. The Timbisha name for the valley, tümpisa, means "rock paint" and refers to the red ochre paint that can be made from a type of clay found in the valley

Located near the border of California and Nevada, in the Great Basin, southeast of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Death Valley constitutes much of Death Valley National Park and is the principal feature of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve.

It is located mostly in Inyo County, California. It runs from north to south between the Amargosa Range on the east and the Panamint Range on the west; the Sylvania Mountains and the Owlshead Mountains form its northern and southern boundaries

The depth and shape of Death Valley influence its summer temperatures. The valley is a long, narrow basin below sea level, yet is walled by high, steep mountain ranges.

Death Valley National Monument was proclaimed on February 11, 1933 by President Hoover, placing the area under federal protection. In 1994, the monument was redesignated as Death Valley National Park, as well as being substantially expanded to include Saline and Eureka Valleys.

The valley received its English name in 1849 during the California Gold Rush. It was called Death Valley by prospectors and others who sought to cross the valley on their way to the gold fields, even though only one death in the area was recorded during the Rush.

In 2005, Death Valley received 4 times its average annual rainfall of 1.5 inches. As it has done before for hundreds of years, the lowest spot in the valley filled with a wide, shallow lake, but the extreme heat and aridity immediately began sucking the ephemeral lake dry.

During the Pleistocene ice age, which ended roughly 10,000–12,000 years ago, the Sierra Nevada ranges were much wetter. During that time, Death Valley was filled with a huge lake, called Glacial Lake Manly, that was nearly 100 miles long and 600 feet deep.

The John F. Kennedy Space Center is the NASA space vehicle launch facility and Launch Control Center (spaceport) on Merritt Island, Brevard County, Florida

The site is near Cape Canaveral, midway between Miami and Jacksonville. Originally called the Launch Operations Center, KSC was authorized in 1958 during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower and completed in 1962 during the administration of John F. Kennedy.

Because much of KSC is a restricted area and only nine percent of the land is developed, the site also serves as an important wildlife sanctuary; Mosquito Lagoon, Indian River, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore are also features of this area.

In 1963, the facility received its current name following the latter President's assassination. The adjacent Cape Canaveral was also renamed Cape Kennedy, but this change was unpopular with local residents and the cape reverted to its original name by a legislative act of the State of Florida in 1973.

Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States, boasts rare and endangered species. It has been designated a World Heritage Site, International Biosphere Reserve, and Wetland of International Importance, significant to all people of the world.

The Everglades and the Ten Thousand Islands is a rare and beautiful place. It is one of North America's unsung wild places - a beautiful, rugged, subtropical landscape experienced by a relatively few adventurous souls each year.

The Everglades face an ongoing threat from the melaleuca tree, because they take water in greater amounts than other trees. Melaleucas grow taller and more densely in the Everglades than in their native Australia, making them unsuitable as nesting areas for birds with wide wingspans.

The first written record of the Everglads was on Spanish maps made by cartographers who had not seen the land. They named the unknown area between the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of Florida Laguna del Espíritu Santo ("Lake of the Holy Spirit").

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States.

Founded on July 16, 1790. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the Territory of Columbia until an act of Congress in 1871 effectively merged the City and the Territory into a single entity called the District of Columbia.

The city is located on the north bank of the Potomac River and is bordered by the states of Virginia to the southwest and Maryland to the other sides.

The centers of all three branches of the federal government of the United States are located in the District, as are many of the nation's monuments and museums.

The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the Federal government of the United States. The United States Congress has supreme authority over Washington, D.C., residents of the city therefore have less self-governance than residents of the states.

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States. Built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the late Georgian style and has been the residence of every U.S. President since John Adams.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial is a presidential memorial dedicated to Thomas Jefferson, an American Founding Father and the third president of the United States.

The Smithsonian Institution. Most of its facilities are located in Washington, D.C., but its 19 museums, zoo, and nine research centers include sites in New York City, Virginia, Panama, and elsewhere

The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall, built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George Washington. The monument, made of marble, granite, and sandstone, is both the world's tallest stone structure and the world's tallest obelisk

Standing apart from the somewhat triumphal and Roman manner of most of Washington, the The Lincoln Memorial memorial takes the severe form of a Greek Doric temple. Built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.