Alex Mercer 
Las Vegas runs out of buildings about forty minutes after you leave it. The slot machines give way to Joshua trees, the radio gives way to static, and then the road tips down into Eldorado Canyon and there it is: Nelson, Nevada, population small enough that the welcome sign seems optimistic. We had loaded the … Read more
The forecast said the high country around Crested Butte was flipping, so my crew and I pointed the truck west out of town before sunrise, thermoses full, headlamps still in our pockets. By the time the sun cleared the ridgeline above Kebler Pass, we understood why people drive a thousand miles for this. An entire … Read more
The envelope sat on my desk for two weeks before I opened it. Inside: every receipt from a twelve-day assignment across Portugal and Spain, saved out of a stubborn habit my team has ribbed me about for years. My editor and I spread them across the table one Friday afternoon with a calculator and a … Read more
Most visitors to Milwaukee see the lake the way they see it from a car window: a bright blue band on the eastern edge of everything, there and gone between buildings. Locals know better. The city’s lakefront is its front porch, and nowhere is that more true than in Bay View, the leafy south-side neighborhood … Read more
Every late September, my crew and I spread maps across the same scratched dining table and argue about October. This year the argument ended early. The vote was unanimous: Hocking Hills, the pocket of sandstone gorges an hour southeast of Columbus, Ohio, that somehow still flies under the radar of leaf-season travelers who assume New … Read more
Somewhere around the second week of October, the American travel machine points itself at New England, lets the national parks empty out, and starts drafting gift guides. Death Valley National Park spends that same week quietly turning its lights back on. The Inn at Furnace Creek, dark through the worst of the heat, reopens for … Read more
The parking lot at Lake of the Clouds was full by 8:40 on a Saturday morning, and nobody in it seemed to mind waiting. We stood three deep at the rail in light gloves and September breath, watching a valley the size of a small city burn quietly in every direction — maple red, birch … Read more
There’s a spot on the north side of Champaign, Illinois, wedged between two interstates, where roughly half a million sunflowers show up for a few weeks each summer and then vanish. No ticket booth. No parking fee. No gift shop funneling you toward the exit. Just a field planted in the shape of something — … Read more
Here’s a number that stopped me cold while planning our first cruise last winter: 37.2 million. That’s how many people sailed in 2025, a record according to CLIA’s State of the Cruise Industry report, up from 34.6 million the year before. The trade group projects 42 million of us a year by 2028, spread across … Read more
There is a marble monument on a hillside in the Poconos holding the remains of a man who never once set foot in the town that carries his name. I stood in front of it last October, coffee going cold in my hand, while one of my researchers read aloud from a pamphlet she’d grabbed … Read more