A Texas Panhandle town spent six years and $350,000 fixing a 47-foot cowboy statue many tourists have never heard of. That isn’t about tourism. It’s about refusing to let go of something the town calls its own. These are the Texas roadside attractions locals defend, not just what tourists photograph once and drive on. 1….
New York’s roughly 600 commercial apple growers work about 55,000 acres of orchards. Almost every one has their own rules for visitors. A rule that’s second nature at one orchard can get a visitor turned around at the next one over. These are the fruit picking rules at some New York farms that some visitors…
California’s coastline runs about 840 miles, and on Labor Day weekend, drivers along nearly every mile of it end up circling for the same parking spot. Locals figured out the workaround years ago: They skip the sand. These are the day trips Californians take over Labor Day weekend that have nothing to do with the…
Virginia has handed the governor’s Century Farm certificate to more than 1,600 families across the state. A lot of those farms sit along a road you’ve probably driven. These are the Virginia roadside stands tourists drive straight past without ever knowing what they missed. Critzer Family Farm Critzer Family Farm sits on Route 151 in…
Think New York’s small towns are already jammed with leaf-peeping tour buses in September? Newcomers would say so. But the Hudson Valley doesn’t hit peak color until the third week of October, and Long Island waits until mid-November, so a Labor Day weekend day trip beats the rush by weeks. These are the New York…
September 2015 sent more than 1 million people through Great Smoky Mountains National Park in a single month, one of the highest Septembers the park has ever recorded. Tennessee visitors picturing empty trails once school starts back are picturing the wrong month. These are the Great Smoky Mountains mistakes Tennessee visitors keep making once the…
Coronado’s beachfront hotel rates start easing the same week Labor Day weekend ends, and they keep sliding into fall. That’s one island in one county. Multiply that pattern up the length of California’s coastline, and locals get back a version of their towns that summer’s tourists never see. These are the California beach towns where…
Reserving a Tennessee cabin for October is the easy part. Getting your trip right is the harder part. A signed confirmation says nothing about the gravel driveway behind it, the kind more than one rental company requires four-wheel drive to reach. These are the Tennessee cabin booking mistakes that ruin an October trip. 1. Ignoring…
An Ohio orchard that normally pulls nine bushels of apples off one tree may get lucky to get one bushel this year, after an 11-degree freeze hit in March. That kind of loss changes what a simple family trip to pick apples looks like. These are the apple orchard mistakes Ohio families are making this…
A driver eases onto the Blue Ridge Parkway at Rockfish Gap, sets the cruise control, and expects the same conveniences as every other highway in Virginia. That expectation gets tested fast. This is what Virginians wish every tourist knew before merging onto the Blue Ridge Parkway. 1. The Parkway Isn’t a Shortcut More than 16…
