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In August 2013, we visited Iowa while coming back from a conference in Chicago. We mainly drove along scenic byways in Iowa.

Iowa byways map was really helpful for us to get the information and plan the trip. We planned our drive covering Great river road, Grant wood and Lincoln highway. Most of the time there were huge corn fields besides roads.

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Mount Rainier which is an active volcano is situated in Washington state. The upper part of the volcano is covered with snow. Also, there are beautiful waterfalls in the park.

We took the drive up to the visitor's center and climbed to a small peak there. This is the view from the peak.

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Lake Chelan is a really nice lake to visit because of it's blue clear water and Chelan's sunny weather.

It's a clean and nice place to swim and enjoy.

We spent several hours enjoying the blue waters and the fresh breeze. 
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We took a cruise tour in Lake Washington the next day of visiting Snoqualmie Falls.

The tour takes about 1 1/2 hours and the ticket costs around $30. Fortunately it was a sunny day so that we could see the nice surrounding. The mansions along the shore were really beautiful. One of them was famous Bill Gates' house. 

Another interesting fact that you can see during the tour is the floating bridge. They made it "floating" because the lake is very deep and it would cost much more for concrete beams otherwise. 

The tour is narrated and therefore you get to know all these details. 
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We visited Seattle again in June, 2013 (first time visit was in 2011).

This time we planned to visit few different places.

Snoqualmie Falls is located in Snoqualmie, WA. It is easily accessible and the entrance is free. The fall is really attractive too. However the trail to the bottom of the fall was closed at the time when we visited. It would have been more attractive if we could watch from there.

Anyway, the look from the top was not bad at all.
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Colorado National Monument is located near Utah border in Colorado. It took around 4 hours to drive there from the hotel we stayed in.

The environmental change we observed, is amazing while we were approaching Utah border. It was so cool and greenish around Denver and it became really dry and reddish as we proceed. We passed red colored hills made by only rocks and sands. The sights were really beautiful and interesting.

Finally we entered the park and took Rim Rock drive which is a scenic drive in Colorado national monument. It is easy to post some pictures than describing the beauty of the scenery.

Then we drove back to Denver and spent the night there hoping to fly back home next day.
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Seven Falls is located in Colorado Springs, CO. It is kind of a tall waterfall formed by seven other small falls.

This is beautiful at night because they have flash lights in different colors for seven water falls. We went there in the evening but left before it gets much dark. So we couldn't see the real beauty of it.

We had plans to stay the night in Colorado Springs but changed the plan as we wanted to visit Colorado National Monument next day. So we booked a hotel (Quality inn) in Silverthorne and drove there.