There’s a moment when the ferry pulls away from Mackinaw City and the engine noise fades into the wind off Lake Huron — that’s when it hits you. No cars. No traffic lights. No honking. Just water, limestone bluffs, and the distant clip-clop of horses on a dirt road. I’ve traveled to a lot of … Read more
I’ve been to a lot of national parks. I’ve driven the Going-to-the-Sun Road, hiked into the Grand Canyon, and watched Old Faithful from a bench surrounded by three hundred strangers. But nothing prepared me for a park where you can’t actually go anywhere without a boat. That’s Voyageurs National Park — 218,000 acres of northern … 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’ve been to a lot of mountain lakes. Living out of a van for the better part of two years means I’ve dipped my toes in alpine water from Glacier to Banff, and most of them blur together after a while. But Lake Tahoe is different. The first time I crested the ridge on Highway … Read more
I almost didn’t write this article. Not because the Catskills didn’t deserve it — but because I was halfway hoping nobody else would discover what I found during ten days last June, driving through Greene and Ulster Counties with no plan beyond “find water and follow it.” What I found was a mountain region two … Read more
I didn’t expect to fall for a place quite this hard. I rolled into Bend, Oregon on a Tuesday afternoon last June, windows down, the Deschutes River glinting through pine trees on my left, and by the time I hit downtown I was already recalculating my return trip. There’s something about this high-desert mountain town … Read more
Why Door County’s Coastal Loop Captivated My Heart This Spring Let me be honest with you – I never expected Wisconsin to steal my heart like it did. I’ve driven coastal highways from California’s Highway 1 to Maine’s Acadia Loop, but there’s something utterly magical about Door County’s 70-mile peninsula that juts into Lake Michigan … Read more