Alex Mercer 
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
There’s a number that should scare anyone planning a Salem trip this year more than any haunted house on Derby Street: October 31, 2026 falls on a Saturday. Combine that with a full month of Haunted Happenings programming — the festival runs October 1 through 31 this year — and you get the single most … Read more
The first time fall genuinely ambushed me, I was a mile below a Blue Ridge overlook with twenty minutes of usable light left and a headlamp that had been in my pack, untouched, since spring. It clicked on at quarter power, blinked its little death pulse twice, and quit somewhere around the second switchback. I … Read more
There’s a moment on every trip when the vacation haze lifts and you realize you’re hungry, not for another restaurant, but for food that tastes like somewhere. On Florida’s Gulf Coast, that moment usually arrives somewhere along Pine Island Road, the four-lane ribbon that stitches Cape Coral to the mainland and eventually to the fishing … Read more
The clock in the rental read 5:41 a.m. when I pulled out of Lincoln, New Hampshire, with a thermos hissing in the cupholder and my headlights the only ones pointed east on Route 112. My photographer was still assembling her tripod in the passenger seat, and neither of us said a word, because there was … Read more
There is a specific sound a knee makes when it decides it is done cooperating, and I heard mine make it last October, about 400 vertical feet above the parking lot at the bottom of a gorge trail. Wet maple leaves had glued themselves to granite slabs. My shoes were fine. My balance was fine. … Read more
Three summers in a row, I drove Highway 1 through Big Sur and saw absolutely nothing. That’s not an exaggeration. The marine layer in July sits on that coast like a wet blanket someone forgot to take off — you get 400 feet of visibility, a gray Bixby Bridge, and a souvenir shop’s worth of … Read more
Some drives earn their keep with mileage. The loop out of Stuart, Florida — across the St. Lucie River, over the Sewall’s Point peninsula, up the spine of Hutchinson Island, and back to the mainland at Jensen Beach — barely covers a dozen miles of actual road. You could finish it in half an hour … Read more
5:41 a.m. on Cadillac Mountain, and my hands are too cold to feel the coffee cup I’m gripping like a lifeline. The wind coming off the Gulf of Maine has teeth in early October, even when the valleys below are still sleeping in fifty-degree air. My photographer had scouted the Blue Hill Overlot two evenings … Read more
Every September, my inbox fills with the same question from friends who should know better: “Should I finally do Munich?” And every September I give the same answer. If what you actually want is steins, brass bands, pretzels the size of hubcaps, and a crowd that polkas like it means it, you don’t need a … Read more