United States

Salt Lake City has an international airport, four world-class ski resorts within an hour, five national parks within a day’s drive, and hotel prices well below Denver or Jackson. As a base for the American West it’s arguably the best-positioned city in the country. It’s also a genuinely odd place, and the odd bits are […]

Ninety-five percent of the world’s bourbon is made in Kentucky, and there are more barrels ageing in the state than there are people living in it — roughly 14 million barrels to 4.5 million residents. The Bourbon Trail is the tourism programme built around that, and it’s genuinely well organised. It’s also easy to do

Portland has about 68,000 people and a restaurant scene that regularly gets compared to cities ten times its size. It’s a working fishing port that turned into a food destination without turning into a theme park, which is a harder trick than it sounds. It’s also the right base for the Maine coast, which is

Alaska is a fifth the size of the rest of the United States combined and has about 730,000 people in it. There are more coastline miles than every other state put together, and roughly 80% of the place has no road access at all. Which means the first decision isn’t where to go. It’s how

Denver gets the flights and the breweries. An hour south, Colorado Springs sits at the foot of a 4,302-metre mountain with a free park full of 90-metre red sandstone fins at its edge, and it’s cheaper in every respect. If you want the Rockies without the Denver-to-Vail traffic, this is where to point yourself. Garden

Nashville gets the country music tourists and the bachelorette parties. Memphis, three hours west, is where blues, soul and rock and roll actually came from, and it has a fraction of the visitors. It’s also a poorer, rougher, more complicated city than Nashville, and pretending otherwise would be doing you no favours. Both things are

The Outer Banks are a chain of barrier islands running about 320km off the North Carolina coast, in places only a few hundred metres wide, with the Atlantic on one side and sounds on the other. They move. Storms cut new inlets and close old ones, and the map is genuinely not permanent. It’s also

Michigan touches four of the five Great Lakes and has more freshwater coastline than any other US state — about 5,300km of it. That’s more shoreline than California, Florida or Hawaii. Most people outside the Midwest have no idea. It also has an island where cars have been banned since 1898. Mackinac Island runs on

Short version: the Canadian side has the better view, the American side has the better experience, and if you can do both, do both. Longer version follows, because the difference matters more than people expect and the border crossing is a real consideration. Why the Canadian side wins on views There are three falls: the

The Everglades is not a swamp. It’s a river — 60 miles wide, a few inches deep, moving so slowly you can’t see it happen. The Seminole called it Pa-hay-okee, grassy water, and that’s a better description than anything on a park sign. It’s also the only place on Earth where alligators and crocodiles live