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Travel / Best of Lists

Mount McKinley

Visit These Ten Sites Celebrating Major Anniversaries in 2017

From Jane Austen’s 200th anniversary to the founding of Denali National Park, there are plenty of events to fill your calendar

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The Best Places to See and Celebrate the Winter Solstice

Many temples and monuments were intentionally built to face, frame or otherwise “welcome” the rising winter solstice sun

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Where to Watch the Biggest Waves Break

From Waimea Bay to “Mavericks,” here are some superb sites to watch surfers catch the biggest breakers in the world this winter

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The Haunted and the Haunting: Best Places to Visit on Halloween

This Halloween, indulge in the the electric, nerve-zapping thrill of fear, and consider visiting real destinations of creepy history and ghostly legends

Hot, handmade corn tortillas may be among the simplest and tastiest staple food items of the world. Here, the author presses out a batch.

Best Vegetarian Foods of the World

Traveling and eating abroad, many diners discover that the world is a vegetarian’s oyster

A list of more great books to read while traveling

More Great Books and Where Best to Read Them

A continuation of last week’s list of the author’s favorite reads

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Great Books—and the Best Places to Read Them

Reading while traveling can serve as a sensory supplement to one’s surrounding environment. Here are some of my favorite books and where to read them

The narrow-gauge Durango & Silverton train steams through history above the Animas River.

Smithsonian Best Small Towns 2012

The 20 Best Small Towns in America of 2012

From the Berkshires to the Cascades, we’ve crunched the numbers and pulled a list some of the most interesting spots around the country

The Great Blue Hole of Belize was named by Jacques Cousteau as one of the world's top diving sites.

The Greatest Diving Sites in the World

The vertiginous void of the Great Blue Hole offers divers the feeling of facing off with the edge of the world

If you figure out a way to politely turn down baijiu, China's favorite hard liquor, please let us know.

Booze Cruise: The Best Local Liquors to Try While Traveling

Fermentation has been replicated independently in nearly every region of earth, and many of the drinks various cultures brew are well worth a journey

The author and his bike stand about 850 feet above San Francisco on Conzelman Road. Repeated 10 times, this little hill amounts to a world classic of climbing.

The World’s Best Uphill Bike Rides

Long, steady climbs on a bicycle are the holy grail of athletic conquests. We hill climbers measure the worth of a landscape by its rise over run

17,000 feet

More Great Walks of the World

Which hikes are the best in the world, and which ones did we miss?

Meadows, lakes, snow and granite are the enduring elements of California's John Muir Trail, which leads through 211 miles of some of the world's most beautiful alpine wilderness.

Great Walks of the World

The fact that people opt to walk today tells us there is something virtuous and irresistible in the plodding of one foot forward after the other

Washington, D.C.

The 20 Best Food Trucks in the United States

The food truck revolution is in full force as mobile restaurants around the country dish out tacos, BBQ and other great eats

The mountain lion is one of the most common large cats but also one of the hardest to see.

Best Bets to See a Big Predator

Get your grizzlies, polar bears, big cats, wolves and crocs here