Cody Medina
Road trips are having a genuine moment. Research shows that travel habits shifted significantly in 2024, with almost twice as many Americans choosing to drive instead of fly, and the classic road trip claimed the top spot as the favorite travel style of the year. With millions of people packing coolers, cueing up playlists, and
There’s a particular kind of traveler you’ve probably encountered at least once. They’re sitting across from you on an overnight train, and within twenty minutes they know your name, your hometown, and your favorite kind of food. By the time the journey ends, they’ve invited you to join their plans for the next day. That
There’s a version of the Gulf Coast that doesn’t show up on the travel agency brochures. It has no neon signs, no souvenir shops shaped like dolphins, and no DJ set at 2 p.m. on the beach. It’s the version that locals quietly protect, the kind of place you only find by slowing down and
There’s a quiet ritual that plays out across Alabama every March and April. Families load up the car, coolers in the trunk, kids in the back seat, and point themselves south toward the shimmer of the Gulf. The destination, almost always, is Gulf Shores. For Alabamians who grew up in the state, heading to the
There’s something subtle happening in the way people are choosing to travel again. The frantic pace of post-pandemic “revenge travel” has lost much of its appeal, and in its place, a quieter, more intentional way of moving through the world is gaining ground. It doesn’t look entirely new – because it isn’t. Revenge travel is
Most tourists book a fishing charter with a single goal: catch something worth photographing. What they don’t realize is that the hour they choose to be on the water matters more than almost any other decision they’ll make. Captains who run charters week after week know this well. They’ve watched guests snooze through the prime
There’s a particular kind of travel that doesn’t require a large savings account or a willingness to rough it. Across the Philippine archipelago, one island stands out as the rare place where a $50 daily budget genuinely covers a full life – good food, a decent bed, boat trips, and the sort of slow unhurried
There’s something almost ritualistic about the way Southern Californians head for the coast each weekend. Not the wide, flat, crowded beaches of summer postcards, but the quieter pockets: the coves, the hidden stairwells, the tide-washed rock shelves that require a little effort to reach. These places don’t announce themselves. They reward those who seek them.
There’s a particular moment that veteran historic site interpreters know well. A visitor asks something small and specific, a question that sounds almost too simple, and suddenly the conversation shifts. Dates and facts fall away. What rises in their place is something alive: a story about a real person, a decision made under pressure, a
There is something particular about the way light falls over Hallstatt in the early morning, before the first ferry crosses the lake. The pastel facades catch the mountain glow, the water turns pale gold, and for a few minutes the village of fewer than 800 people looks exactly like the idea of a perfect place
There’s a corner of Catalonia, Spain, where the hillsides are so steep and the landscape so dramatic that first-time visitors routinely reach for words they normally reserve for California. It’s not the marketing. It’s the view from the terraced vineyards of Priorat, a pocket-sized wine region about two hours southwest of Barcelona, that keeps drawing
When June arrives in Tucson, the city doesn’t just get warm. It gets serious. In the summer of 2024, Tucson logged 78 days with temperatures reaching at least 100 degrees, a full 23 days more than normal. For families with kids underfoot and no tolerance for the kind of heat that bakes the sidewalk through