1291. "Each year more than three million visitors navigate the treacherous turns of Highway 1 and cross its soaring arch-span bridges, its narrow passes, and the unique curiosities, which artists have called ‘the greatest meeting of land and water in the world.‘"
　　(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Big Sur: California‘s Elemental Coast," May 1998, National Geographic magazine)
　　
　　

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　1290.The Sydney Harbour Bridge arches across the skyline behind the sail-like structure of the Sydney Opera House.
　　(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, Wild Shores of Australia, 1996, National Geographic books)
　　

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　1289. Also known as the brown bear, the Kodiak grizzly bear is the world‘s largest land carnivore.
　　(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "In the Wake of the Spill: Ten Years After Exxon Valdez," March 1999, National Geographic magazine)
　　

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　1288. This 76-mile-long (122-kilometer-long), 15-mile-wide (24-kilometer-wide) piece of land is the largest sand island in the world.
　　(Text adapted from the National Geographic book Wild Shores of Australia, 1996)
　　

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　1287. By law, Nenets children spend much of the year in boarding school, while their families move with their reindeer herds. Once they are educated and bilingual in Nenets and Russian, children must make a decision between rejoining their nomadic roots or entering the Russian mainstream.
　　
　　(Text adapted from "Nenets: Surviving on the Siberian Tundra," March 1998, National Geographic magazine)
　　

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1286. "Riga‘s Town Hall Square showcases a variety of architectural gems, some original and some rebuilt."
　　—From "Riga, Latvia: A Baltic Masterpiece Born Again," October 2004, National Geographic Traveler magazine
　　

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　1285. This valley of wildflowers belies a region of intense tectonic activity. "Iceland [is located] astride the mid-Atlantic ridge, a seafloor mountain range where two of the colossal slabs of rock that make up earth‘s crust, the North American plate and the Eurasian plate, part company," said a 1997 National Geographic article.
　　(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "In Search of Vikings," May 2000, National Geographic magazine)

　1284. Seagulls perch with a Victorian-era boathouse in the background.
　　(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, the National Geographic book Wild Shores of Australia, 1996)
　　

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　1283. "Teaching scripture with art, the 15th-century monastery church of Voronet bears frescoes inside and out that illustrate Romanian folklore and stories from the Bible. Once teaching aids for the illiterate, the remarkably preserved painted churches of Moldavia represent a striking regional adaptation of Byzantine art."
　　—From "The Byzantine Empire: Rome of the East," December 1983, National Geographic magazine
　　

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　1282. A jackal makes a quick meal of an impala killed by a wild dog in the Okavango Delta.
　　(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in,"Africa‘s Wild Dogs," May 1999, National Geographic magazine)
　　

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