United States

Bryce Canyon is the smallest of Utah’s five national parks and the easiest to do properly in one day. That’s not a consolation prize — it’s the actual reason to go. You can see the best of it before dinner, which is not something anyone says about Zion. It’s also not a canyon. It’s a […]

Seattle is a great city that people quietly get bored of after about three days. Pike Place, the Space Needle, a coffee, some rain, done. Meanwhile there’s a 4,392-metre volcano an hour and a half away that most visitors never bother with. Washington state might have the best day-trip radius of anywhere in America. Within

Two things happen when you google Antelope Canyon. First, you see a photo so absurdly beautiful you assume it’s been edited into another dimension. Second, you find out you can’t just walk in, and the whole thing gets complicated fast. Let’s untangle it. Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend sit within about 15 minutes of each

Yellowstone gets around 4 million visitors a year and the overwhelming majority of them come between June and August. The park was designed in 1872 for horses. The roads, the car parks and the boardwalks have not scaled with the crowds, and summer is where that collides. None of this means don’t go. It means

Almost everyone who comes to Moab does the same thing: Arches National Park, Delicate Arch, a photo, and back to the hotel. Arches is wonderful. It’s also 3 percent of what’s within half an hour of this town, and it now requires timed entry reservations while everything else on this list does not. Moab sits

Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America, sitting at 1,900 metres on the California and Nevada border, and it is one of very few places that is genuinely a headline destination in two completely different seasons. Most places have an obvious best time. Tahoe doesn’t. It has two, and they suit different

Hawaii is the most photographed place a lot of people never quite understand before they arrive. The pictures show beaches and waterfalls. They don’t show the drive times, the prices, or the fact that it rains. None of this is a reason not to go. It’s the most extraordinary place in the United States and

Philadelphia sits between New York and Washington and gets treated as a stop rather than a destination, which is a mistake that works in your favour. It’s the birthplace of the country, it has the best food market in America, an art museum in the top rank, and prices roughly half what you’d pay ninety

Glacier is up against the Canadian border in northern Montana, and it is the most consistently spectacular national park in the lower 48. That’s a claim, and I’ll defend it. What it has that the others don’t: peaks that go straight up out of lakes, water in colours that look edited, and a road cut

Key West is closer to Havana than to Miami, four miles long by two wide, and has spent most of its history being a slightly lawless island that happens to belong to the United States. It briefly declared independence in 1982 as the Conch Republic, surrendered after one minute, and applied for foreign aid. That