AGE and health are prompting my wife and me to do more travel in the U.S., less abroad. Little sacrifice is involved. The U.S. has so much to offer. Mainland places that
are worth visitingRecent discoveries or re-discoveries:
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho -- About 25 miles down a good highway from Spokane's uncrowded airport. It's lake country, not unlike Scotland's Loch Lomond and Loch Ness. The main hotels in town are the Inn and Conference Center and the lakeside Coeur d'Alene Resort. The latter is rated by Conde Nast readers as the best inland resort in America. The resort is circled by what is called the longest floating boardwalk in America. To add to the "floating" motif the nearby golf course has a floating 14th hole.
Despite that, there's little "touristy" about Coeur d'Alene. Postcards and souvenir shops are hard to find. Most of its visitors stay in motels, en route east from Seattle (a day's drive away) or headed that way.
Coeur d'Alene Lake is a dream. A boat cruise on it discloses several yacht harbors and an exclusive residential area accessed only by boat. Some people from elsewhere keep craft at the lake year-round. Coeur d'Alene, with no dirty back streets, and apparently tidy people, must be one of the cleanest cities in America.
Sedona, Ariz.-- Depending on how you approach it, you may get the feeling it isn't going to live up to its reputation as one of America's special beauty spots. The tourist clutter on its main street tends to confirm that.
But then you burst onto red rock country, a vein of rock also associated with the magnificent colors of Grand Canyon. One of its most dramatic resorts, Enchantment, is deep in a red rock gorge. We stayed in the nearby village of Oak Creek, amid red rock buttes and monoliths.
Sedona's most unusual shopping mall features the work of local artists and artisans. It seems to be in an old Spanish mission with wonderful old trees in its courts. Not so. It was built to be what it is.
My old home town, York, Pa. -- In 1777-78, the Continental Congress settled for a year in York after it was driven out of Philadelphia by the British. The Articles of Confederation were signed there. The first national Thanksgiving was proclaimed there. Lafayette made a historic toast there, affirming French support for George Washington. The toast aborted a cabal against Washington's leadership of the Revolutionary Army.
Central Market on Philadelphia Street in midtown is the best of its farmers' markets oriented to Pennsylvania German or Pennsylvania Dutch (for Deutsch) tastes. Central has an ancient barny, high-roofed structure. It is filled several days a week with local farm produce, bolognas and other meats and good old local standbys such as soft pretzels unmatched elsewhere. A few of the farm women still wear Amish bonnets. Sadly, items from elsewhere also are creeping in, but the ambience remains special and old-fashioned.
Our five surviving brothers and sisters, aged 70 to 88, live elsewhere now. But, with the annual county fair in progress, we gathered for two nights at the midtown Yorktowne Hotel. It is an aged but refurbished eight-story structure, the tallest "tower" in York. It is a "best buy" at $65 a night for spacious, well-appointed rooms near the market and historic places.
I took a bit of Hawaii to York and left macadamia nuts on the family graves at Prospect Hill cemetery -- surely a new taste for the squirrels there.
Alexandria, Va. -- It's 20 minutes from Washington, D.C., with many of its town center homes more than 200 years old. George Washington took his final military review on the steps of what is now Gadsby's Tavern. Its waitresses and decor provide a small sense of Colonial Williamsburg. Harrison Ford was just across the street as we lunched at Gadsby's. He was in a leather jacket riding a motorcycle past the cameras for his newest film.
These are tiny samples from among thousands of attractive places. America, the world's richest nation economically, also is rich in many, many other ways.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.
