YOU WANT TO GO THERE AND DO WHAT : #Hive Creative Contest - Bucket List

I love history and learning about ancient civilizations. I'm also tackling my ancestry. From a young age, I've been fascinated with pyramids and monoliths. There are many wonderful antiquities on this Earth that I would love to visit. However, here are my top five places:

Niagara Falls

Located in the U.S. in the state of New York, Niagara Falls is comprised of three waterfalls that span the borders of the U.S. and Canada. I visited New York several years ago for business but didn't get a chance to tour any sites.

Niagara Falls is famous both for its beauty and a valuable source of hydroelectric power. The challenge has been balancing recreational, commercial, and industrial uses since the 19th century.¹

The Great Pyramids of Giza

In my love of all things ancient, I would like to visit the Great Pyramids of Giza, in Egypt. There are three of them that comprise the pyramid complex. The Pyramid of Kfuhu is largest and oldest of the three.²

They are part of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.² I'm in awe of the beauty of these magnificent structures. I can't imagine the manpower it took to construct them.

The Nazca Lines

In southern Peru, hundreds of large geoglyphs were made in the soil of the Nazca Desert. They were created between 500 BCE and 500 CE by people making depressions or shallow incisions in the desert floor, removing pebbles and leaving differently colored dirt exposed. ³

Archaeologists, anthropologists, and other scientists have studied the ancient Nazca culture to try to determine the purpose of the lines and figures. Studies are continuing.

Easter Island

This is one amazing place to be in the presence of. It's an island, but also a special territory of Chile. Discoverers named the island. At the southeastern most point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania lies Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. It's one of the most remote islands in the world that's inhabited.⁴ It's most famous for its nearly 1,000 monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. ⁴

Various U.S. State Historical Libraries

As part of my genealogical research, I would like to visit several of the southern states in the U.S. Most of these have yet to place their genealogical information online. I've been researching my family's history for over 10 years.

There is only so much information you can obtain from census records. Even then, currently the only free census records are two or three of them. The remaining ones must be paid for through online subscriptions.

I found out this information when I joined the free site Ancestry.com. The company promotes and advertises the cite as this wonderful repository of information, which it is. They advertise average individuals just clicking on leaves called "hints" and all this amazing information about your ancestor pops up.

The problem with this is that if the information is contained in a database that isn't free, you will receive another "hint" from the company advising you that in order to view the information you must first pay for a subscription.

In fact, over 95% of the information available is not free. Also, what's really heartbreaking for average individuals attempting to locate their lost ancestors, is that subscription are expensive.