I’ve lived more than 40 years in California.

• Alabama: Downtown Montgomery. Walk from the spot where country radio legend Hank Williams debuted, a few feet from where Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus, and up to Martin Luther King’s old church.
  
•  Alaska: Peace of Selby, Selby Lake. A ruggedly pretty fly-in lodge beside a lake in the Gates of the Arctic National Park, where the sun never sets in the middle of summer.
  
• Arizona: Meteor Crater, Winslow. When worlds collide. The lack of water in the desert has slowed erosion, leaving the cosmic hole near Winslow one of the few clear examples of the battering Earth has taken from space over the eons.
  
• Arkansas: Hope. Bill Clinton’s hometown is a sweet and slightly sad town that is proud of its favorite son.
  
•  California: Avenue of the Giants. The two-lane meandering drive near Garberville takes visitors on a route through giant redwoods.
  
• Colorado: Lily Sopris. After a grueling day of travel, I checked into the Hotel Monaco in Denver. Up ran Lily Sopris, a Jack Russell terrier who serves as the hotel’s pet concierge, wagging her tail.
  
• Connecticut: Yale. One of America’s great universities, in New Haven.
  
• Delaware: Rehoboth Beach. Go into town for a table full of blue crabs you’d smash open with a wooden mallet.
  
• Florida: Pool at the Biltmore, Coral Gables. The 700,000-gallon blue colossus is the largest hotel pool in the continental U.S.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Georgia: A President in Plains. Here my family and I ran into Jimmy Carter, who was working on the rehabilitation of an old building in the downtown of his tiny hometown.
  
• Hawaii: North Shore of Oahu. In winter, the big waves roll in from Alaskan storms, creating the epic surfing conditions that smash up all but the best board riders.   
  
• Idaho: Idaho Potato Expo, Blackfoot. A great tourist trap in the town, this spud museum tour ends with “free taters for outta staters.”  
   
• Illinois: Wrigley Field, Chicago. There is no better way for a baseball fan to spend a spring afternoon than taking the elevated train from The Loop in downtown to Wrigleyvill.  
  
• Indiana: Falls of the Ohio State Park, Clarksville. The rocks in the golden afternoon light at the pretty state park on the banks of the Ohio River.
  
• Iowa: Hotel Pattee, Perry. Lovers of arts and crafts or just plain artistic whimsy make the trek to tiny Perry just to see the beautifully eclectic themed rooms of this one-of-a-kind inn.
  
• Kansas: Fort Scott. The town grew up around the fort established in the 1840s as one of a string of posts marking what was then the western edge of the frontier.
  
• Kentucky: Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot. Twice a year, automatic-weapons enthusiasts gather in a shallow valley near Louisville and let it rip, blasting wrecked cars and huge wooden wire spools.
  
• Louisiana: Dancing at Mulate’s, Breaux Bridge. Drive down into Cajun Country for some catfish before stomping around the wooden dance floor.
  
• Maine: Trenton Bridge Lobster Pot, Trenton. Two lobsters and a beer make a crustacean picnic by the water is still one of New England’s great inventions.
  
• Maryland: Annapolis. West Point sits on a dramatic promontory above the Hudson River. The home of the Naval Academy has the prettiest setting of all, a sunny ocean-side town that fills up with midshipmen   
  
• Massachusetts: North End of Boston. The Old North Church and Paul Revere’s house, along with great calamari and cannoli.
  
• Michigan: Old Tiger Stadium, Detroit. I was glad to get to spend a summer afternoon watching a Tigers game from the upper deck of left field of one of the last classic-era ballparks.
  
• Minnesota: St. Paul. The smaller, quieter, older Twin City, the one that counts F. Scott Fitzgerald and “Prairie Home Companion” among its assets, past and present.
  
• Mississippi: Clarksdale. Legend says Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads (most say Highways 49 and 61) to become the world’s greatest guitarist.
  
• Missouri: Independence. The core of the town made famous by “Give `Em Hell” Harry Truman has been lovingly preserved to look as it did when the president was a resident.
  
• Montana: Beartooth Highway. The scariest moments in my travels was when I locked the rental-car keys in the trunk while well up this famous “high road” near Yellowstone National Park.
  
• Nebraska: Strategic Air & Space Museum, Ashland. During the Cold War, Nebraska was the home of the Strategic Air Command, whose job was to drop hydrogen bombs on the Soviet Union if the “red phone” rang.
  
• Nevada: Gambler’s General Store, Las Vegas. You can pick up Casino ephemera here: Slot machinces, canceled blackjack cards and decommissioned craps dice once used in the casinos.
  
• New Hampshire: Dublin. A quaint New England of white church steeples and country stores.
  
• New Jersey: Hoboken. The town across the Hudson from New York was where baseball was likely invented, and where Frank Sinatra grew up.
  
• New Mexico: El Rancho Hotel, Gallup. Gallup is the quintessential Western town. Gallup’s center is a strip of bars and Indian curio shops pressed against the side of a railroad track, with the old Route 66 passing through.  
  
• New York: Ansonia Hotel, New York City. In a city of great buildings, I’ve always been charmed by the apartment house near the corner of 72nd Street and Broadway on the Upper West Side where Babe Ruth once lived.
  
• North Carolina: Clyde Jones’ Critter Crossing, Bynum. Jones won’t sell you one of his brightly painted folk art animal carvings — he only gives them away, mostly to charities for auction.
  
• North Dakota: Prairie dog town at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I found myself among thousands of golden-coated prairie dogs as they popped out from an underground “city” that stretched for hundreds of yards.
  
• Ohio: Warren Harding’s house, Marion. The simple house of arguably America’s worst president.
  
• Oklahoma: Oral Roberts University, Tulsa. Giant praying hands and the prayer tower where Roberts once waited for God to take him to his eternal reward.
  
• Oregon: Powell’s City of Books, Portland. Spend a weekend prowling the multiple floors of what I think is the best independent bookstore in the western United States
  
• Pennsylvania: Mon Valley. As American as it gets. The Monongahela River Valley was once the heart of the American steel industry.
  
• Rhode Island: Modern Diner, Pawtucket. The Modern is the most famous diner in “the diner state.”  
   
  
• South Carolina: Maurice’s Gourmet Barbeque, Columbia. Poke your head into this Old South stalwart, where the Confederate battle flag still flies overhead.
  
• South Dakota: Lead. The Homestake Mine here was the deepest and oldest in the country when it closed in 2001. Tennessee: Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, Nashville. On the right night, the music, beer and mix of locals and visitors can make for a lot of fun.
  
• Texas: West Alabama Ice House, Houston. The old “ice houses” of Houston are a longtime urban fixture giving way to the city’s never-ending sprawl and real-estate speculation.
  
• Utah: Monument Valley. If this collection of iconic monoliths weren’t on the Navajo reservation, it would be a national park.
  
• Vermont: Old Tavern at Grafton. A whole New England village looking much as it did 100 years ago. old-tavern.com
  
• Virginia: Last Capital of the Confederacy, Danville. At the end of the Civil War, this Italianate mansion is where Jefferson Davis and most of his Cabinet met for the last time in April 1865.
  
• Washington: Lake Crescent, Olympic National Park. I visited the lodge at Crescent Lake and had the grounds and a choice of canoes) to myself.   
  
• West Virginia: Harper’s Ferry. The site of the famous battle in Oct. 1859 between abolitionist John Brown and U.S. troops led by future Confederate rebels Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart.
  
• Wyoming: Irma Hotel, Cody. A little bit of the Wild West goes on many nights at the old hotel’s street-corner bar, where rowdy modern cowboys  and cowgirls who work for the area’s local outfitting companies whoop it up.

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