The 38 Best Travel Experiences in The United States

Yellowstone is the world's first national park and still its strangest, sitting atop a supervolcano that surfaces as thousands of geysers, hot springs, and mudpots.

Old Faithful erupts on a near-hourly schedule, while the Grand Prismatic Spring's rainbow colours come from heat-loving bacteria.

Beyond the geothermal basins, the park holds free-roaming bison, elk, wolves, and grizzly bears across nearly 9,000 square kilometres of forest and canyon.

A slot canyon on Navajo land near Page, carved by flash floods into smooth, fluted sandstone walls that narrow to a few feet apart overhead.

Around midday, shafts of sunlight drop through the openings above and light the orange rock from within.

Access is only with a Navajo guide on a timed walk through either Upper or Lower Antelope, and the canyon closes without warning whenever rain threatens upstream.

The Maroon Bells are two peaks — Maroon Peak and North Maroon Peak — in the Elk Mountains of Colorado, rising to 4,317 and 4,273 metres respectively.

The reflection of the burgundy-coloured peaks in the still waters of Maroon Lake, particularly in autumn when the surrounding aspen trees turn gold, is one of the classic sights of the American Rockies.

Yosemite Valley is a granite gorge cut by glaciers, with El Capitan and Half Dome rising thousands of feet above the valley floor and waterfalls dropping straight off the rim.

Beyond the valley, the park holds giant sequoia groves, alpine meadows, and high-country lakes reached by the seasonal Tioga Road.

It's one of the birthplaces of American rock climbing, and climbers on El Capitan's face are visible from the valley floor with binoculars.

The Grand Canyon is one of the world's great natural wonders — 446 kilometres long, up to 29 kilometres wide, and over 1,800 metres deep, carved over millions of years by the Colorado River.

The layered bands of red rock reveal two billion years of geological history and glow with extraordinary colour at sunrise and sunset.

The Wave is a sandstone rock formation in the Coyote Buttes area of the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness in Arizona, famous for its colourful, undulating forms created by 190-million-year-old Jurassic sand dunes.

The swirling bands of red, orange, and pink sandstone make it one of the world's most extraordinary geological formations.

Highway 1 clings to sheer cliffs for 90 miles along this stretch of California coast, with the Pacific crashing against rock hundreds of feet below the road's edge.

Bixby Creek Bridge, one of the most recognisable bridges in the US, arcs across a canyon right beside the highway.

Redwood groves grow almost to the ocean's edge in places, an unusual pairing within a short drive.

Horseshoe Bend is the Colorado River's most famous U-turn: a sheer 300-metre drop to an emerald river looping around a sandstone butte.

The overlook delivers one of the American Southwest's great views for a 15-minute walk from the car park.

There's no railing along most of the rim, which keeps the vertigo, and the adrenaline, honest.

The Teton Range rises abruptly and without foothills from the flat valley floor of Jackson Hole, creating one of the most dramatic mountain frontages in the Americas.

Below it, the Snake River, a chain of glacial lakes and open sagebrush flats hold moose, elk, bison and both black and grizzly bears.

Trails range from flat lakeshore loops to serious alpine climbs within the same few miles of road.

The Golden Gate Bridge has been San Francisco's calling card since 1937: 2.

7km of International Orange suspension bridge strung between the city and the Marin Headlands.

It's that rare landmark that looks better in bad weather - the towers rising out of rolling fog are the classic view.

Walk or cycle the deck, then take it in from Baker Beach, Fort Point or Battery Spencer.

Coachella turned a polo field in the California desert into the most talked-about music festival on the planet, mixing headline pop and rock sets with large-scale art installations that dominate social media each spring.

It runs across two identical weekends, letting the same lineup reach twice the audience.

The desert heat and the festival's fashion culture are as much a part of the experience as the music.

Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur is a dramatic California coastline beach famous for its purple-tinged sand, caused by manganese garnet washed down from the surrounding hillsides, and for Keyhole Rock — a sea arch through which the setting sun shines in spectacular alignment during November and December.

North America's tallest waterfall drops in three tiers down a granite cliff face in Yosemite Valley, at its thunderous peak each spring when snowmelt sends it roaring.

By late summer it can slow to a trickle or vanish entirely, so timing genuinely changes what you see.

The valley floor meadow below offers an open, unobstructed view, with El Capitan and Half Dome in sight at the same time.

Zion's main canyon is a half-mile-deep slot of red and cream sandstone carved by the Virgin River, with the Narrows letting visitors wade upriver between walls that close in overhead.

The valley floor is reached only by a free shuttle in peak season, keeping the canyon quieter than the crowded parking lots suggest.

Angels Landing's chained final pitch is the park's signature scramble, but most of the canyon is accessible on flat paved trails.

Highway 1 traces roughly 650 miles of California's Pacific edge, from Orange County's beach towns through the cliffs and redwood-backed switchbacks of Big Sur to the rugged Mendocino coast.

Bixby Bridge, McWay Falls, and pullouts over crashing surf make nearly every mile worth slowing for.

The road narrows to a single lane clinging to cliffside in Big Sur, and landslide closures are common enough that checking conditions beforehand is routine.

Haleakala's summit on Maui sits at 3,055 metres above sea level, placing it above the clouds for one of the world's most famous sunrise experiences.

The volcanic crater contains a moonlike landscape of cinder cones and lava flows extending 11 kilometres across and 800 metres deep.

For one week every year, Nevada's Black Rock Desert hosts Black Rock City, a temporary metropolis of over 70,000 people built from scratch and dismantled without trace afterward.

Towering art installations, mutant art cars and elaborate theme camps fill the white playa, leading to the ceremonial burning of a giant wooden effigy on the penultimate night.

The Valley of Fire State Park is Nevada's oldest and largest state park, containing extraordinary formations of bright red Aztec sandstone created from sand dunes 150 million years ago.

The intensely coloured rock glows with particular brilliance at sunrise and sunset when it appears almost to be lit from within.

A week-long sail through Southeast Alaska's fjords, where tidewater glaciers calve into the sea and humpback whales breach beside the ship.

Ports like Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan mix gold-rush history with float-plane flightseeing over ice fields.

Bald eagles, sea otters, and porpoises are common sightings from the open deck.

Weather shifts fast, turning misty mornings into golden evening light on snow-capped peaks.

One of the world's most active volcanoes, its summit caldera in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park glowing orange against the night sky whenever the current eruption cycle is active.

Well-maintained overlooks and short walking trails let visitors watch the lava lake safely from a respectful distance, while the surrounding park holds steaming vents, lava tube caves, and stark black rock deserts.

Activity is unpredictable, so what's visible changes from month to month, and current status is checked constantly by staff and visitors alike.

Mount Rainier is an active stratovolcano rising 4,392 metres above the Puget Sound lowlands of Washington State, making it the most topographically prominent peak in the contiguous United States.

In summer, its slopes are carpeted with wildflower meadows and it is reflected in the lakes of Paradise and Reflection Lakes.

The Brooklyn Bridge was the world's longest suspension bridge when it opened in 1883, and its stone Gothic towers and web of steel cables remain New York's most distinctive crossing.

An elevated timber boardwalk runs above the traffic for the full 1.

8km span, with Lower Manhattan directly ahead the whole way from the Brooklyn side.

It is free, open at any hour, and takes about half an hour to walk.

An hour north of San Francisco, Napa Valley packs over 400 wineries into a 30-mile stretch of the Mayacamas and Vaca mountain ranges, from grand chateau-style estates to small family vineyards.

Cabernet Sauvignon put the valley on the world wine map after it beat top French labels at the 1976 Judgment of Paris blind tasting.

A steep 2.

5-mile round trip up Zion Canyon's sandstone spine, finishing on a knife-edge ridge with chain handholds and 1,200-foot drops on both sides.

The switchbacking approach up Walter's Wiggles gives way to an exposed scramble that rewards climbers with a sweeping view down Zion Canyon.

A permit lottery now limits how many hikers tackle the chains at once, since it's not for anyone uneasy with heights.

Death Valley National Park in California and Nevada is the lowest, driest, and hottest place in North America, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 50 degrees Celsius.

Yet within its 13,600 square kilometres lies extraordinary scenery — from the salt flats of Badwater Basin to the colourful Artist's Palette hills and the vast sand dunes of Mesquite Flat.

New Orleans' Mardi Gras builds for weeks through parades run by dozens of krewes, social clubs that design elaborate floats and toss beads, cups and doubloons to crowds along St Charles Avenue and through the French Quarter.

By Fat Tuesday the city is in full costume, with the Krewe of Zulu and Krewe of Rex parades considered the day's centrepiece events.

Each October, the skies above New Mexico's high desert fill with hundreds of hot air balloons at once, launched in a mass dawn ascension that's become the most photographed hot air balloon event on Earth.

The valley's unique wind pattern, known locally as the Albuquerque Box, lets balloons rise, drift, and return to nearly the same spot, making the display more predictable and repeatable than almost anywhere else.

Lake Tahoe straddles the border between California and Nevada in the Sierra Nevada mountains, its remarkable clarity allowing visibility to a depth of over 20 metres.

Surrounded by ski resorts, pine forests, and granite peaks, it offers spectacular hiking and water sports in summer and world-class skiing in winter.

A limestone system under the New Mexico desert whose Big Room is among the largest cave chambers on earth, roofed by a ceiling of stalactites.

You can descend 230 metres on foot through the Natural Entrance or drop straight down by lift.

On summer evenings, hundreds of thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats spiral out of the mouth at dusk.

A long, wide stretch of soft white sand on Oahu's windward coast, with the Ko'olau mountain range rising green and jagged directly behind it.

It's popular with locals rather than tour buses, so it stays uncrowded even close to Honolulu, and the water is generally calmer than the island's surf-famous North Shore.

Bellows Beach next door adds a second, quieter option within the same bay.

An 11-mile coastal trail along Kauai's Na Pali Coast, climbing in and out of fluted, jungle-green valleys with the Pacific breaking against sea cliffs far below.

The route crosses Hanakapiai Stream, skirts the exposed Crawler's Ledge, and ends at the remote Kalalau Valley and beach.

Permits are required past the two-mile mark and are famously hard to secure, often selling out within seconds of release.

Operating continuously since 1907, Seattle's Pike Place Market is best known for the fishmongers at Pike Place Fish Market who throw whole salmon across the counter to each other before customers, a bit of theatre that's become one of the city's signature spectacles.

The market spans multiple levels of produce stalls and quirky curio shops above the waterfront.

Tucked into the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts, Jacob's Pillow has hosted a summer dance festival on the same rural farmstead since 1933, making it the longest-running dance festival in the United States.

Companies spanning ballet, contemporary, and world dance perform across an intimate wooden theatre and outdoor stages, with free daily talks and showings that make top-tier dance accessible without a ticket.

Palm Springs is a desert resort city in the Coachella Valley in southern California, set against the dramatic backdrop of the San Jacinto Mountains.

Famous for its concentration of mid-century modern architecture, the city's pastel-coloured bungalows, extravagant swimming pools, and surrounding date palm groves create a uniquely Californian aesthetic.

Route 66 is America's original cross-country highway, and its Arizona stretch preserves the longest unbroken original section still open to traffic.

Neon-lit diners, vintage motor courts, and hand-painted signs line the road through Seligman, Kingman, and Oatman, where wild burros wander the main street.

The 191-bend Oatman Highway climbs through the Black Mountains into the Mojave Desert - a rolling time capsule of mid-century road culture.

The paved Vine Trail runs 12.

5 miles between downtown Napa and Yountville, weaving past manicured vineyard rows, stone wineries and oak-dotted hills.

Quieter backroads through Carneros add rolling, sheep-grazed vistas that turn yellow with wild mustard flowers each spring.

The route is flat enough for casual riders, with tasting rooms, bakeries and picnic stops built into most itineraries.

Home to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, split across two immersive lands connected by a genuine steam-hauled Hogwarts Express, alongside Jurassic Park, Minions, and Nintendo-themed areas across two parks and a water park.

The Harry Potter areas are widely regarded as the most detailed, book-accurate theme park recreation ever built, right down to shop window displays on Diagon Alley.

It sits directly across from Orlando's other major parks, making a multi-day theme-park-only trip easy to plan.

Walt Disney World's Orlando resort spans four theme parks, two water parks and dozens of hotels across an area the size of a small city.

Magic Kingdom's castle, the parades and the character meets are the classic draw for younger families, while Epcot and Animal Kingdom skew older.

Ride queues, the distances between parks and the cost of a multi-day ticket all reward planning rather than improvisation.