I've made several trips to Philadelphia, but it's been years, so I'll focus on a more contemporary trip: Pittsburgh. I stayed downtown, near the baseball stadium, with a day trip to a factory in Mount Pleasant. Pittsburgh is the second-largest city after Philadelphia,
Chicago is a lovely town - I visited in 2006 and liked it, and was pleasantly surprised in 2025 to find it was even more majestic than I remembered. It's built on a huge scale, and the architecture, interesting multilevel
This was our first really ambitious winter road trip - several thousand miles, two countries and multiple states, temperatures dropping to below 15F, and quite a few ski resorts. It was wonderful, and has inspired a pattern of Christmas-time travel. Map
Bend is charming - an outdoorsy high desert paradise packed with brewpubs, antique stores, and cheerful fleece-wearing families. I’ve spent a lot of time in Sunriver, the large vacation community south of town, and as a child in nearby Black
I’ve been to Maui once in recent memory, and several times as a child (much more blurry). It’s not my favorite island, more for people that like big resorts, calm and lovely beaches, less rugged scenery. Good for families. A