How the United States Forms It’s Travels: A Coast to Coast Guide
The USA spans almost 4 million square miles of geography, culture, history and personality. From one region of this country to the next, nothing sounds the same, tastes the same, looks the same or feels the same. The Pacific Northwest and the Gulf Coast have a flag and a currency in common and precious little else. The Appalachian Mountains are incredible and the Sonoran Desert is amazing, but both belong to completely different realms of existence. New Orleans and Minneapolis are just as American cities as a river is an American landform, or a mountain range: true in some strictly definitional sense, without any practically useful meaning.
FSI BLOGS US was created to inspire you to discover it all. Not by the PR department of a tourism board, not by press trips with an agenda to create a headline, and not by parroting what is found written on any American travel website. In the words of writers who have done that drive, hiked that trail, sat at that counter and lingered long enough somewhere to understand what makes a place worth visiting and what makes it worth returning.
This is the frank, full reporting on American travel that it has long needed.
Sweeping From National Parks to Neighborhood Streets
America is always an about contrast, and our stories are that too. At one end of the scale are the parks that really, really need no introduction — Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Zion, Great Smoky Mountains — places so naturally stunning and photographed to such an incredible extent that images of them have become shorthand for wilderness itself in America. We cover these parks because they are worth some serious coverage. Not the “here are the five spots you must stop at” that fill Google search results but practical down-to-earth, honest guides with actual tips on how to really experience these places in a good way.
When you can enjoy the landscapes, without ‘parked lot’ conditions. Where the crowds are completely absent at the trailheads. Camping Inside the Park vs. Nearby Which permits you need, how early you need to get them and what happens if you did not plan that part right The kind of thing that you only read about on the official websites once, and that every seasoned visitor wishes they had known beforehand.
Then there are the places that never make it into any sort of roundup, those small town rest stops on old highway routes with numbers more relevant than population counts and diners on the main street serving virtually unchanged morning meals since before your parents were born. The state parks that get a fraction of the attention that their national brethren do but offer nearly identical scenic quality in utter silence. The regional food traditions that have never needed a James Beard award to convince the people who grew up eating them of their importance.
All of this is covered and more on FSI BLOGS US. The famous and the overlooked. The urban and the untamed. The unmistakable and the subtly exceptional.
Every Region, Covered With Depth
The American West gets a vast amount of travel play, and rightfully so. But the rest of the country has just as much — scratch that, more — to offer the traveler inclined to search.” We serve the entire United States with equal commitment in every direction.
The Northeast, which manages to pack together colonial history, dramatic fall foliage, a rugged coastline and cities that embody almost the entirety of American literature and culture in every save-the-date Marty Markowitz postcard-worthy street name and brownstone facade. New England road trips that cross Vermont in the fall or pursue summer along the Maine shore. Cape Cod National Seashore, Delaware Water Gap and upstate New York mountains
The South with its messiness that media often overlooks and ignores. Visual from the series of articles that examine culinary traditions in the Carolinas and Louisiana. The Civil Rights History of Alabama and Mississippi October 2023Edited with a selection of your data. The barrier islands that line the Georgia Coast, and the bayous of interior Louisiana.
The Midwest, endlessly underrated, but bountiful for a traveler willing to wander Trager through it slowly. The Great Lakes shorelines. River Towns of the Mississippi. Late summer miles of Iowa farmland. Chicago, which requires no argument.
The Mountain West — where the elevation changes everything, and the landscapes are so enormous that photographs never do them justice. Mountain and Worland and Colorado Springs, Colorado? And the connecting roadways like they are separated by terrain that makes you appreciate for the first time why people have always been prepared to cross large expanses of earth just to soak this part of planet into their bones.
And the South and Southwest, where the desert is not void but vibrant — packed with 3 billion years of geological history, indigenous culture, fabulous food and a quality of light that has been the subject of painters’ canvasses and photographers’ prints for more than a century.
Practical, Personal, and Worth Bookmarking
All the guides on FSI BLOGS US is created to be truly useful many years after their date of publication. We carry forward details that are relevant to a traveler of now — where to stay, what the honest tradeoffs are between different options of “saving money,” how much time is about right somewhere to feel like you have actually visited it rather than having whizzed through, what to pack for incongruous conditions at an enviro-typical place, what can be skipped because it looks good on a website and underwhelms in real life once all the tourists head home and no article I read ever mentions but every visitor arrives wishing they knew this too.
With every piece of content, we aim to give you the half-raw coffee-fueled information a globe-trotting friend would in advance of your trip Apologies if some posts touch on this point as fundamentally our task is to be an honest friend who wants your experience to sing and has zero financial incentive other than telling you what they see.
Chances are you have heard America is one of the most colorful and eclectic nations to traverse on earth. It establishes a relationship between the curious, the patient and the willing, in astonishingly unpredictable ways that can never be unlearned. FSI BLOGS US is here to help you locate those rewards whereever they are in this country.
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