[ALAMOSA, COLORADO] — Here’s an overview of the Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado. A little bit of the Sahara in Colorado. What to do Great Sand Dunes National Park. ________________________ The U.S. has lots of natural wonders, but few compare to the incredible Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado. Here in a sparsely populated agricultural valley, flat as a pancake with mountain ranges ringing on all sides, these dunes are one of the coolest natural wonders in the United States. It was thankfully quarried away as a national monument in the 1930s by Herbert Hoover and later turned into a national park. Despite its remote location in the middle of nowhere, over 400,000 people make their way here each year to ooooh
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[MANHATTAN, NEW YORK]– There are over 715 hotels in New York City, some grand, some giant, some dumps, some humble. Some cost a fortune. Some cost a lot and are dumps. I’ve stayed in a LOT of them, in every category, but these are my favorite hotels in New York, the best boutique hotels in New York City. And the best design hotels in New York. Bear with me, this is a long post with lots of photos from lots of trips, but I wanted to show you as much as I can to give you a real feel for each of my favorites. And point out things I love about each. Sorry, this is a giant post. These are my favorite boutique hotels in
[CANYON POINT, ARIZONA] — About 30 minutes outside of Page, Arizona — home of the Lake Powell dam — is the second Aman Resorts property in the United States. Amangiri, the best luxury adventure resort in the US. Here’s a review of the Amangiri hotel in Canyon Point, Utah, the best luxury hotel in the United States. And what to do at Amangiri resort. Based in Asia, Aman is the best of the best hotel chains on the planet and they’ve been rapidly expanding to dream destinations all over the world, almost always in distant and spectacular locations like this one. Aman Resorts are known for their understated Zen architecture and vibe and this one fits right into that. The location and buildings are the
[PORTAL, ARIZONA] — Chiricahua National Monument is one of the least visited national parks in the United States. When I heard that fact I said “I am definitely in.” Here’s an overview of hiking in the Chiricahua National Monument near Portal Arizona. Photos of Portal Peak Lodge and Portal Arizona. You can see why, tucked into this vast, barren southwestern corner of the US, you’re not “going through” here on the way to somewhere else, you came here for a reason. And so did we. This is the high desert down here, with elevations starting around 5,000 feet and going up to 7500 ft inside the park, so it’s a lot cooler than the surrounding flat desert. The Quaint Town of Portal Arizona–The Gateway
[RODEO, NEW MEXICO] — A review of the Painted Pony Resort a private rental ranch in the New Mexico desert that you can rent on VRBO. It’s a great base for star-gazing as it’s right in the middle of a Dark Sky Reserve in New Mexico. Also, an overview of bird-watching Patagonia Arizona. _________________________________ I went with my best college buddies on a bird-watching road trip along the southern Arizona and New Mexico border. Three were into birding, two of us were along for the beer. We flew into Tucson and headed straight south, stopping at popular birding spots along the way to Nogales and the Mexican border. Then we dog-legged left and skirted the border the whole way until we crossed in New Mexico and
[GATEWAY, COLORADO] — Gateway Canyons resort, located in Colorado’s remote western edge, is one of the best resorts in Colorado and one of the best adventure hotels in Colorado. Once the private ranch of the founder of the Discovery Channel, he slowly built Gateway Canyons resort from a small, in-the-know conference center with a handful of rooms into a full-on resort, adding chunks of rooms and facilities each year until it is now one of the best resorts I’ve been to in the U.S. Its one of the best adventure resorts in Colorado. This is Colorado?? I thought it was all about mountains and skiing? Yup. But then there’s here. Western Colorado is a blurred line into the canyony parts of Utah. An hour south
[TABERNASH, COLORADO] — If you’re looking for a Colorado ranch getaway, away from the slopes, but close enough, Devil’s Thumb Ranch is what you’re looking for. Outside the ski resort of Winter Park and just past the little town of Tabernash, Devil’s Thumb is setup to be its own self-contained year-round mountain resort. Focused in winter on the 100km of groomed cross-country ski trails, spa and other cold activities. There’s 100km of groomed cross-country ski trails like this at Devil’s Thumb Ranch, weaving in and around 6,000 glorious acres on a big ranch not far from the Continental Divide* in Colorado. At 8,500ft (2,600m) elevation you not only see your breath, but breathlessly feel it too, under the big bluebird sky. You can scoot and
[KEARNEY, NEBRASKA] — I’ve come to Kearney to see the great migration of the sandhill cranes twice now, once in Mid March 2016 and again in the first week of April in 2023, which was the tail end of the migration. Here’s an overview of what to see and how to plan your visit to see the great migration of of sandhill cranes in Kearney Nebraska. These amazing ancient and magnificent birds. _______________________________________ When you first get to the river, it’s 6am and pitch black. You feel your way down a path, heading toward The Noise. The purring, cooing a fluttering or hundreds of thousands of cranes, sleep-standing in the shallow river. Slowly, the shrieks get louder and louder as the first light slowly begins to
[STRONG CITY, KANSAS] — Here’s a post about a fantastic visit to the National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Thousands of acres of rolling green grasslands in Strong City, Kansas. And a review of the excellent Clover Cliff Ranch B&B, you should stay here. ____________________________________ What Are The Flint Hills? Out in the middle of Kansas lies the astounding Flint Hills, hundreds of thousands of acres of treeless, rolling hills with few fences and even fewer people. For generations these hills have remained the same, the soil so thick with rocks and limestone, they’ve never been plowed. You can read more on The Nature Conservancy website. Some of those thousands of acres have been preserved in the National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, owned by the Nature Conservancy and co-managed
[KANSAS FLINT HILLS] — In the middle of Kansas, the breadbasket of the US, lies the Flint Hills — hundreds of thousands of acres of tallgrass prairies, open rangeland with very few trees, even less fences and the best grazing land in the country. The Flying W Ranch and the Clover Cliff Ranch in Chase County, Kansas has put on this cool shindig with their cousins and neighbors since ’96. Called Flames in the Flint Hills, they attract a couple of hundred people from all over the country every year. [EDITOR’S NOTE: The post was from a visit in 2015. During the pandemic Flying W shut down their guest ranch and are now solely focused on their sustainably-raised grass-fed beef business. You can read about it here. ]
[WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA] — Here’s my review of the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood, one of the best boutique hotels in Los Angeles. And my nomination for the best luxury hotel in Los Angeles. __________________________________ Sunset Tower–The Best Boutique Hotel in Los Angeles On a quick business trip to Los Angeles way back in 2013, I booked a cool hotel I’d always read about and featured often in Vanity Fair: the Sunset Tower Hotel. Famed for its rockstar clientele and celebrities in the Tower Bar restaurant and the amazing skills of Jeff Klein, a legendary hotelier, everyone always raves about the amazing star treatment everyone gets. Luckily, I booked it on my favorite go-to hotel booking site, TabletHotels.com which isn’t your typical booking site, each
[CHICAGO]– I’ve stayed now a half-dozen times at this hotel, originally designed by famous hotelier Ian Schrager and opened as the PUBLIC hotel, it’s now called The Ambassador “Chicago’s original boutique hotel”. It still ranks as one of my favorite places to stay in Chicago and certainly my favorite Ian Schrager hotel. It’s now run This is one of my favorite lobby designs I’ve seen — that great combination of classic architecture and modern design — and everything was white-on-white, with good looking people dressed in black as props. It still feels as fresh as when it opened more than a decade ago. It’s now a Hyatt boutique brand and they’ve added a little more color, but still retained a lot of the same core