USA

We had fun (but a little scary) UTV tour in Arizona a while back, but it was an experience that stayed on my mind. When I saw there was a Leadville UTV tour available, I knew off-roading/backroads deserved a second chance. The Leadville route was billed as family-friendly, so...

Some experiences you book because they’re objectively fine-dining perfection. Others you book because they’re unique, atmospheric, and you’re willing to pay a premium for the memory. The Tennessee Pass Cookhouse, just outside Leadville, Colorado, falls firmly into the second...

We had our sights set on a full week away. Savannah, Georgia. Nova Scotia. The Oregon Coast. We batted around all three before the flight and hotel prices talked us out of it. So instead of a week far from home, we scaled back to a three-day long weekend in Leadville; a place...

If you’ve scrolled past the ads for one of these “immersive art experiences” and wondered whether they’re actually worth your money, you’re not alone. I’ve now done two — the Titanic immersive exhibit in New York earlier this year, and most...

My sister was in the middle of a big road trip and made sure to stop in Denver to see me before heading home. We signed up for a class together, caught up, and honestly spent most of the visit just resting after two weeks of her being on the go. But on Saturday, after hitting...

There are places you visit as a child and write off entirely — dismissed somewhere between a long car ride and the desperate boredom of being twelve. For me, West Point was one of those places. My parents loaded my sister and me into the car, drove us up the Hudson Valley, and...

I was so excited when my sister told me about a Llama and Alpaca hike at Clover Brooke Farm in Pawling that she wanted to get tickets for. This is the only activity I knew about in advance. Truth be, that she was hoping to do the Baby Goat hike, but this is the one that fit...

Every trip has one stop that splits the group right down the middle. On our 3 day adventure up in Duchess and the greater Albany area, that stop was Secret Caverns. I came out of it grinning, ready to talk about the underground waterfall for the rest of the week. My niece came...

Not every stop on a road trip needs to be lighthearted. Titanic: An Immersive Voyage in Albany was a planned stop on a two-day road trip my sister, niece, and I took together — and it turned out to be one of the more memorable, if heavier, parts of the trip. The Basics Where:...

Opus 40 has been on my list for about a decade now. It’s a massive outdoor sculpture park near Saugerties, and every single time I’m in the area, I mean to finally go — and every single time, something gets in the way. This trip, the something was 100-degree heat...

I have to give my sister credit here — she remembered a bucket list item I mentioned ages ago, I wanted to sleep in a castle, and quietly built our whole overnight stop around it. As we came off the highway exit, I pointed and said, “oh look, there’s a little castle,...

If you’d told me a decade ago that a Revolutionary War-era house museum would hold a 12-year-old’s attention for a full hour, I’m not sure I would’ve believed you. But that’s exactly what happened at the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site in Albany,...

Originally, my sister and her family were coming to Colorado to see me. But airfare and gas prices shot up this summer, and suddenly it made a lot more sense for me to fly to them instead. Whenever I go “home,” it’s usually a whole lot of family time — eating,...

If your mental image of Kansas is entirely flat, golden wheat fields, the Gypsum Hills Scenic Byway will completely shatter that stereotype. Spanning 42 miles along U.S. Highway 160 between Medicine Lodge and Coldwater, this route drops you into an otherworldly landscape of vibrant...

When most people think of a road trip through Kansas, they picture endless miles of flat highways and wheat fields. But if you know exactly where to turn off the interstate, Western Kansas completely shatters that stereotype. From towering chalk pyramids rising out of the prairie...

If there is one town in the Midwest that completely embodies the lawless, gun-slinging heritage of the American Old West, it’s Dodge City, Kansas. Known in the late 1800s as the “Beautiful, Bibulous Babylon of the Frontier,” it was a bustling hub for buffalo hunters,...

A Manhattan Walk from Inwood’s fields to the harbor’s edge — one perfect Friday, two pairs of tired feet We were in New York for a wedding and had an extra three days. We knew we wanted to venture into the City, but wasn’t sure what to do. Then Justin remembered...

It had been on my Colorado bucket list since it opened in September 2021, but somehow I kept forgetting about it. When my sister came to visit, we finally made it happen—a Sunday morning trip to Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver. I’ll be honest: I had no...

San Francisco has a way of mixing the historic with the whimsical, the educational with the indulgent. Our weekend in the city was exactly that kind of experience—a perfect blend of San Francisco’s past and present: touring the working machinery that powers the iconic cable...

When Justin and I decided to extend our San Francisco work trip by a day, there was one destination that immediately came to mind: Alcatraz. I’d visited the infamous island prison back when I was about 20, but Justin had never been, so we booked tickets through City Experiences,...

Some of our earliest adventures together truly set the stage for our shared love of exploration. One of those memorable firsts was a long weekend trip in May 2016, venturing south into the unique landscapes of Colorado and New Mexico. Our itinerary was wonderfully eclectic: the...

On our recent Florida escape, I dropped Justin off for a couple of hours of seaside bliss at the Palm Beach Par 3 Golf Course while I ran off for a lunch date with a friend. What started as a simple plan to squeeze in some golf turned into one of the most memorable stops of our...

There’s something almost magical about driving from Key Largo to Key West along the famous Overseas Highway. In December 2025, we experienced this iconic 113-mile stretch of U.S. Route 1, and it lived up to every bit of its reputation as one of America’s most scenic...

In late January 2025, I stumbled upon The 52 Book Club’s 2025 Reading Challenge, and on a whim, I decided to give it a try. Some years I devour books by the dozen; other years, life gets in the way and my reading habit dwindles to nearly nothing. But this year was different....

Holiday time is all around us, but when traveling to a warmer region, I find it harder to get into the holiday spirit when I’m wearing shorts and looking at palm trees. Sometimes, the best travel moments are found serendipitously. This particular adventure started not...