If you blink crossing the bridge from the mainland onto Pine Island, you’ll miss it. But that would be a mistake. Matlacha, Florida — pronounced “mat-la-SHAY” — occupies a sliver of land so narrow that the Gulf of Mexico laps at one side of the road while the back bay bleeds into the other. It … Read more
The ferry from San Pedro takes exactly one hour. Sixty minutes where the smog thins, the Pacific turns from slate to sapphire, and the mainland shrinks into something you stop thinking about. I stood at the rail watching Catalina grow on the horizon — a craggy silhouette rising from the channel — and felt that … Read more
There’s a specific moment during every coastal road trip where the chaos melts away. For me, it usually happens around mile 40 of a two-hour drive — the GPS stops barking, the highway opens up, and that first sliver of blue appears on the horizon between the dunes. That’s when the vacation actually begins. Everything … Read more
Last summer I watched a guy spend twenty minutes hand-pumping his paddle board at a put-in on the Delaware River while his friends were already a quarter mile downstream. By the time he launched, he was dripping sweat, visibly annoyed, and the group’s whole morning rhythm was shot. I handed him a cold water bottle … Read more
I’ve stood at the edge of a lot of overlooks in this country, but nothing prepared me for that first glimpse of Crater Lake. You pull into the Rim Village parking lot, walk about thirty seconds toward the edge, and suddenly the ground just drops away beneath you — and there it is. This impossibly … Read more
I almost didn’t go. A friend mentioned Block Island offhandedly at a barbecue last summer — something about “the Hamptons without the attitude” — and I filed it away under “places I’ll eventually forget.” But a cancelled ferry to Martha’s Vineyard in late June left me stranded at the dock in Point Judith with a … Read more
I’ve spent the last three summers chasing sunscreen-stained horizons along the Gulf of Mexico, and I’m going to let you in on something the resort brochures won’t tell you: the best beach towns on this coast aren’t the ones with the high-rise condos and swim-up bars. They’re the ones where the shrimp boats still come … Read more
Every summer, millions of Americans flock to the same stretch of coastline. Myrtle Beach. Ocean City. Virginia Beach. The Outer Banks bottleneck. I’ve done them all, and I’ll be honest — there’s a reason they’re popular. But there’s also a point where popularity becomes its own punishment, where you spend more time looking for parking … Read more
There’s a stretch of highway in the American South where the air changes. Somewhere around mile forty on US-17, between Charleston and Savannah, the Spanish moss thickens, the marsh grass turns impossibly green, and you realize you’ve entered a part of the country that doesn’t need to try hard to be beautiful. It just is. … Read more
I’ve chased swimming holes across more states than I care to count, and I’ll tell you this: nothing — and I mean nothing — beats the feeling of finding that perfect natural pool on a scorching July afternoon when the asphalt is soft and your car’s A/C gave up two hours ago. Hotel pools are … Read more