There’s a particular moment on the Multnomah Falls viewpoint bridge when the mist hits your face and the 620-foot cascade drowns out every other sound. I’ve stood there in July, shoulder-to-shoulder with two hundred strangers all jostling for the same selfie angle. But last September, I had it to myself for nearly ten minutes. Just … Read more
There’s a moment on Minnesota’s Highway 61 — somewhere past Two Harbors, when the birch trees thin out and the lake opens up on your left like an inland sea — where you stop checking your phone. Not because you lost signal (though you will). Because there’s nothing on a screen that competes with 31,000 … Read more
There’s a moment on the Million Dollar Highway where your passenger goes quiet, your knuckles tighten on the steering wheel, and the road ahead seems to carve itself into the face of a cliff that drops hundreds of feet into nothing. I’ve driven a lot of roads in this country — the Blue Ridge, the … Read more
There’s a stretch of highway in northern New Mexico where the sky does something unfair. It starts out the regular blue you get everywhere else in America, and then somewhere around Questa — elevation 7,400 feet — it deepens into a shade of turquoise that doesn’t quite look real. I had to pull over and … Read more
I’ve stood in a lot of places that claim to have it all. Most of them are lying. But Olympic National Park? It might be the only spot in North America where you can walk through a temperate rainforest in the morning, stand on a glacier-carved ridge after lunch, and watch the sun melt into … Read more