Great American West and the Pacific Coast: from Denver to Seattle

Founded in 1859 by gold seekers from Kansas and Georgia, Denver marks the boundary between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains that provide a splendid backdrop. A university town and the capital of American craft beer, it is called the 'Mile High City' because it is located exactly one mile (about 1600 meters) high, as noted on the 13th step of its Capitol building. Modern and youthful, it has trendy neighborhoods for all tastes and is pleasant to explore on foot, featuring diverse architectures ranging from Victorian to postmodern, along with art, history, culture, shopping, and a vibrant nightlife.

Vail, approximately 200 km west of Denver, was created out of nothing as a ski resort in 1952. The skiing is excellent, perhaps the best in the USA, with a wide variety of slopes. Along with Aspen, it is the most famous and fashionable ski resort in the Elk Mountains, set in a picturesque landscape. It is highly frequented by the wealthy and famous, and is a resort town centered around Vail Village, with top-notch shops and restaurants.

Grand Junction is the main town in western Colorado and an excellent starting point for exploring the vast and spectacular canyon region with the pinnacles of the Colorado National Monument; here the Green River merges into the Colorado River.

Say "Vernal" to most Utahns and the word that most often comes to mind is "dinosaurs." Vernal is close to Dinosaur National Monument and downtown Vernal offers the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum.

Rock Springs is a transit town in the middle of the desert, which developed in the late 1800s with the coal mining boom of the Union Pacific and a large number of immigrants looking for work. An interesting fact: the outlaw "Butch" Cassidy worked here as a butcher when he was young, hence the nickname Butch.

Jackson is the typical base-camp for visiting Yellowstone and Grand Teton. This lovely, Old Western town has turned into a popular winter and summer resort for hipster youth; it offers several sushi bars and fashionable clubs.

The landscape between Jackson Hole and Yellowstone is marked by the magnificent Teton mountains, rising sheer from the flat, large prairie, amidst lakes, waterfalls and forests where moose and bison roam free. The tallest peak of the range is Grand Teton, with a height of more than 4,000 m. Yellowstone is one of the largest parks in the USA, and the oldest national park in the world (it was opened in 1872). What truly makes it unique, though, is its enormous central area, which is in fact the huge caldera of a dormant volcano (the last eruption dates back to 640,000 years ago). Thousands of geysers outburst in the caldera, and several other geothermal features can be seen there – hot springs, mudpots, acid lakes. The area is also home to many animal species, including bears, wolves, bison, moose, deer, cougars and coyotes.

Bozeman, the "queen city of the Rockies" for its strategic location among mountains, canyons, valleys, lakes, and rivers, is also an important university town. Always culturally vibrant, it offers museums, art galleries, festivals, and in recent years trendy bars and hotels.

Two thousand lakes, rivers, forests, majestic mountains, here is Glacier National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a paradise also for wild animals, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, brown bears and grizzly bears, wolves and cougars. The name does not derive so much from the existing glaciers, few, small and retreating, but from the enormous expanse of ice that created its valleys during the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago. Only one road crosses it, Going-to-the-Sun Road, an 80 km long road, one of the most picturesque in the country, with stunning views at every turn.

The largest city in Oregon, famous for rose cultivation, is surrounded by spectacular landscapes: the Columbia River Gorge, Mount Hood, waterfalls, forests, ski slopes, and streams. It is also a vibrant city, rich in culture and art, with excellent bars, microbreweries, restaurants, and many green areas.

The hometown of Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana, of films like Sleepless in Seattle and series like Grey's Anatomy, Seattle has a picturesque skyline, between the sea and the mountains, with the imposing peak of Mt Rainier dominating the horizon. The Space Needle, a symbol of the city, was built for the 1962 World's Fair, but it was mainly the Boeing factory that was crucial for the city's economic development, to which Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon have been added.