For five centuries, travelers have
brought their hopes and dreams to
America. For the earliest pioneers,
it was a virgin wilderness ready to
be shaped into a "New
World," a potential paradise
wasted on its native peoples.
Millions of immigrants followed, to
share in the building of the new
nation and to better their lives,
far from the hidebound societies of
Europe and Asia. Eventually, slaves,
who had been shipped over from
Africa and the Caribbean, joined
them as free citizens. As the United
States expanded to fill the
continent, something genuinely new
was created: a vast country that
took pride in defining itself in the
eyes of the world.
Every traveler in the United
States - be they foreigners on a
coast-to-coast road trip or locals
exploring their extraordinarily
diverse land - has some idea of what
to expect. American culture has
become so thoroughly shared
throughout the globe that one of the
principal joys of getting to know
the country is the repeated,
delicious shock of the familiar.
Yellow taxis on busy city streets;
roadside mailboxes straight out of Peanuts
cartoons; wooden porches overlooking
the cottonfields; tumbleweed
skittering across the desert;
endless highways dotted with pick-up
trucks and chrome-plated diners; the
first sight of the Grand Canyon, or
the Manhattan skyline - now more
than ever an indelibly iconic image.
In this guide, we've picked out
the highlights across the entire
USA, from Maine to Hawaii, and
Alaska to Florida. We've divided the
country region by region and state
by state, and covered every area of
every state. As well as the big
cities and national parks, we've
explored the highways and byways,
singling out detours worth making,
and places to avoid. For every area
covered, we've done more than simply
provide up-to-date practicalities:
we've delved into the history and
provided background on the people
who have made America what it is.
Our hope is to inform and entertain
travelers, and to point in
unexpected directions as well as to
the obvious landmarks, no matter
whether you've lived here all your
life or are seeing it all for the
first time.
Where to go
Traveling in the United States is
extremely easy; in a country where
everyone seems to be forever on the
move, there's rarely any problem
finding a room for the night, and
you can almost invariably depend on
being able to eat well and
inexpensively. The...
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