Tag: travel

As much as I love swimming in the ocean, combing for sand dollars, watching pelicans drift along the coast, and eating ice cream by the lighthouse, I was glad for the rain. It slowed us down enough to explore parts of St. Helena’s history.  

Picture the quintessential Southern mountain town and the village of Cashiers may come to mind. This idyllic historic community, complete with a central Village Green, sits at the crossroads of NC Highway 107 and U.S. Route 64, zigzagging roads that part the surrounding Nantahala National Forest like a comb. Despite its rising profile, thanks to a bounty of pristine nature, superb shopping, and renowned lodging, Cashier’s pace remains blissfully unhurried.

“Graceland or Sun?” my friend asked. I had to ponder that one for a moment. “Sun,” I finally replied. We drove a few blocks and reached one of the most hallowed addresses of my life: 706 Union Avenue, Sun Studio. I could almost see a youthful Elvis Presley nervously hanging around outside, trying to get the courage to go in and record a ballad to give to his mother.

Situated at the intersection of the mighty Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, the West Virginia park boasts more than 200 historic structures. Though the West Virginia town of the same name is home to fewer than 300 full-time residents, it welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

Memphis, the unofficial capital city of the Mississippi Delta, is widely renowned for two things: blues and barbecue. The two Memphis institutions are tightly connected—each a result of the Great Migration of the early 20th century.

As a destination, Montgomery is a journey in contrasts. The Alabama capital is both a proud epicenter of the mid-20th-century civil rights movement and a landscape curiously steeped in Confederate memory. Here, history isn’t merely preserved; it is powerfully experienced.