A ranger at the Washington Monument ticket booth is busy. It’s early October, the sky over the Mall is doing that flat, high-pressure blue that only shows up a few weeks a year, and the line of people rearranging their afternoon around a fifteen-minute window is short enough that you can actually hear the conversation. In July, this same booth runs a different kind of crowd: bigger, slower, sweating through shirts by nine in the …
Browsing: United States of America
At Mountain Crossings, the outfitter built into the trail itself at Neel Gap, Georgia, there’s a rhododendron tree strung with boots. Thru-hikers who quit within the first thirty miles — and a startling number do, somewhere around fifteen to twenty percent by most counts kept at the shop — sometimes leave their footwear behind as a kind of offering, or a warning, depending on how you read it. I watched a man in his fifties …
A woman in a blue plastic poncho is screaming with delight eleven feet from a curtain of water falling fifty-seven meters onto rock, and nobody around her finds this strange. This is Table Rock, on the Canadian side, where the mist comes up off Horseshoe Falls in cold gusts strong enough to soak you through a poncho that was, until about ninety seconds ago, doing its job. Somewhere behind her, a busker plays “Can’t Help …
The drums start before the light is fully gone. On Kauai’s north shore, dusk does not so much fall as get absorbed; the sky over Kilauea falls dark while a line of torches gets lit along a gravel path. Somewhere behind the stage, dark and enormous against what’s left of the light, sits a mountain the old Hawaiians called Makana and the movies renamed Bali Hai. Nobody on stage mentions the second name. They don’t …
The road into Bath County narrows as the mountains close in. You pass through Warm Springs, the county seat with a population of 121, and something in your blood pressure drops before you even stop the car. The air here carries the scent of pine and cold stream water, and the light falls differently at 2,270 feet. Then the valley opens, and there it is: a colonnaded red-brick structure sitting against the wooded hillside like …
Lexington, Virginia, asks very little of you on arrival. What it gives you in return is considerably more complicated. The setting for the small town of 7,000 inhabitants is both beautiful and strangely captivating. You first come for the history. Lexington is a town that rewards the visitor who slows down enough to feel what is unresolved about it. Few towns of Lexington’s size have asked so much of, or given so much to, American …
Located easily within the Puerto Rican capital’s wider urban map, the barrio neighborhood of Santurce might still be missed by some travelers focused on the more commercial or oceanfront districts of San Juan. But including some time for Santurce on any trip to the island can certainly provide its own distinct and immersive encounter with this city.
In fact, Santurce’s present-day urban profile has its origins in a variety of historic, cultural and economic factors. …
Eight minutes. That is all that separates the roar of Manhattan from one of the most improbably pastoral escapes. Governor’s Island, a 172-acre jewel anchored in New York Harbor, has outlasted centuries of history, and emerged as the city’s most quietly extraordinary day trip, a place where the skyline just 800 yards away looks like a movie set. The pace of life on Governor’s Island, by way of contrast, is nearly surreal, a best-kept secret …
Cape Cod begins with a curve on the map and a change in mood. One hour south of Boston, the city gives way to a 400-square-mile hook of dunes, harbours and cedar-shingled towns where life still moves to the pull of tide and season. Bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay, the peninsula gathers 15 distinct towns into one of New England’s most enduring coastal escapes.…
Inside the vibrant district of style, art, and food, expanding Miami’s travel landscape
In just over two decades, the Miami district of Wynwood has been making its own distinctive mark on the city’s wider landscape thanks to a growing arts and lifestyle presence here – and all inside what was once an unknown industrial and warehouse neighborhood. That transformation into a forward-thinking, creative, and small-business community includes a significant number of Afro-American and African-Caribbean entrepreneurs …
Hotels, mansions, and museums from an opulent era
A tropical landscape of inland waterways, lagoons,.and abundant natural foliage along south Florida’s eastern coastline would become the wider canvas for the emergence of the opulent architecture and lifestyle of the early twentieth century. Within this southernmost American state, figures of industry and finance and their families from the Gilded Age created residences to reflect the grandeur of distant pasts and faraway, ancient cultures. This region would …
It could be said that Capitol Reef National Park is the most underrated of Utah’s incredible bounty of national parks. For some reason it doesn’t attract the attention that the remainder of the ‘Big Five’ do. Canyonlands, Arches, Bryce and Zion statistically receive more visitors, probably due to their proximity to each other or easy access from nearby towns. However, a park that’s brimming with stunning scenery, but attracts a fraction of the crowds, is …
Last month, I sailed the Mississippi River with my friend Maddy aboard American Cruise Lines’ American Symphony. I’ve sailed with American before, so I knew what to expect – friendly service, comfortable accommodations and a well-organized trip where we always know what’s happening and where to be. It’s a fool proof vacation.
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Route 66 embodies the American Dream. From Chicago to Los Angeles, from wide-open plains to scorching deserts and pine forests, this iconic road is integral to the history of the USA. Established in 1926, Route 66 played an essential part in the westward migration of the 1930s. A couple of decades later, the road became famous for its mom n’ pop diners, neon signs, and quirky roadside attractions.
In 1995, the road was decommissioned and …