United States travel tips

Best time to visit United States

Every guide's best months, checked against its own thirty-year rainfall: a filled month is recommended, a hatched one has over 250 mm of rain. Most of United States agrees on Apr, May, Sep, Oct.

best month · over 250 mm · the letters are the months, January to December.

The guides in United States

New YorkUnited StatesThe city that never sleepsGrand CanyonUnited StatesA mile deep, and no photograph has ever conveyed itLas VegasUnited StatesA city built to take your money, and extremely good at its jobSan FranciscoUnited StatesSeven square miles of hills, fog and other people’s ideasNew OrleansUnited StatesThe least American city in America, and the best-fedDenaliUnited StatesSix million acres, one road, and a mountain that makes its own weatherYellowstoneUnited StatesThe first national park anywhere, sitting on top of a supervolcanoLos AngelesUnited StatesBeaches, canyons, and a city built for drivingMiamiUnited StatesArt deco, ocean heat, and a Latin American pulseAnchorageUnited StatesA city with moose in the gardens and the whole of Alaska out the back doorJuneauUnited StatesA state capital with no road out, a glacier at the edge of town, and rainOahuUnited StatesWaikiki on one coast, the North Shore on the other, and a volcanic ridge in betweenChicagoUnited StatesThe city that invented the skyscraper, on a lake with a horizonYosemiteUnited StatesA granite valley with waterfalls down both walls, the biggest cliff face in North America at one end, and sequoias older than most countriesZionUnited StatesA canyon of red sandstone you walk up the middle of, in the river, with a cliff route so exposed it has chains bolted to itBostonUnited StatesFour hundred years of American history in a city you can cross on footSeattleUnited StatesWater on both sides, a volcano on the horizon, and the coffee that changed how the world drinks itNashvilleUnited StatesLive music in every bar on the street, from ten in the morningMauiUnited StatesA volcano you drive up for sunrise above the clouds, a coast road of waterfalls and one-lane bridges, and whales in the channel all winterMoabUnited StatesA desert town between two national parks, with two thousand stone arches on one side, a canyon labyrinth on the other, and the Colorado river through the middleHawaiʻi Island (the Big Island)United StatesAn island with eleven of the world’s thirteen climate zones, a volcano that has erupted in most recent years, and the best stargazing on earth from the top of Mauna KeaKauaʻiUnited StatesThe oldest and greenest Hawaiian island: a canyon Mark Twain called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, a coast with no road along it, and rain that made all of itWashington, DCUnited StatesA capital of free museums on a two-mile lawn, cherry blossom for two weeks a year, and a metro that actually goes where you wantSan DiegoUnited StatesThe most comfortable weather in the United States, a park bigger than Central Park with fifteen museums in it, and the Mexican border twenty minutes southCharlestonUnited StatesPastel houses on a peninsula between two rivers, the best restaurant town in the American south, and the fort where the civil war started in the harbourKey WestUnited StatesThe end of the road: 160 kilometres of bridges to an island nearer Havana than Miami, where the sunset is a nightly performance and Hemingway’s cats still have six toesBryce CanyonUnited StatesAn amphitheatre of orange rock spires at 2,500 metres, best at sunrise, and some of the darkest skies left in the country after itSedonaUnited StatesRed sandstone buttes around a small town of galleries and trailheads, with the Grand Canyon two hours north and a vortex on every hill according to someJoshua TreeUnited StatesWhere two deserts meet: spiked trees out of a children’s book, granite piles climbers come from everywhere for, and a sky with the Milky Way in itDeath ValleyUnited StatesThe hottest and lowest place in North America: salt flats below sea level, dunes, a crater and a painted canyon, all within an hour of each otherGlacier National ParkUnited StatesA road over the top of the Rockies past hanging valleys and waterfalls, with grizzly bears in the bottom of them and glaciers that will be gone within a generationGrand TetonUnited StatesMountains that rise four thousand metres straight out of a flat valley with no foothills, a river of moose and beavers under them, and Yellowstone an hour northBig SurUnited StatesNinety miles of cliff road between the mountains and the Pacific, with redwoods in the canyons and nowhere to stay that is not booked months aheadNapa ValleyUnited StatesThirty miles of vineyards between two ranges, four hundred wineries on them, and a train and a balloon to see it fromLake TahoeUnited StatesA lake of startling blue at 1,900 metres with mountains all round it, a dozen ski resorts on them, and a casino strip where the state line crosses the shoreAustinUnited StatesLive music every night of the week, barbecue worth queueing three hours for, and a river full of swimmers in a city that hits 38°CPortlandUnited StatesA city of bookshops, food carts and bridges under a volcano, with the Columbia gorge and the Pacific each an hour awayPhiladelphiaUnited StatesWhere the country was declared, with the art museum steps Rocky ran up, a covered market since 1893, and the best cheesesteak argument in AmericaSavannahUnited StatesTwenty-two garden squares under live oaks hung with Spanish moss, a river of cargo ships at the end of the street, and open containers allowed on itSanta FeUnited StatesThe oldest capital in the country, built of adobe at 2,100 metres, with the light that brought the painters and green chile on everythingPalm SpringsUnited StatesMid-century modern houses under a 3,000-metre mountain, a tram to the snow at the top of it, and two hundred days of sun a year