Make a Trip To the Grand Canyon Effortless With a Stay at One of These Close-By Hotels

Looking for trip inspiration can be a frustrating experience especially if you’re super reliant on tour books. You’ll find quickly that you’ll be overloaded with tons of recommendations for busy tourist traps open only during the day.

As bellhops grabbed my bags, a valet driver swiped my car keys, and a receptionist handed me a key to my room at The Little Nell, a five-star hotel in Aspen, Colorado, I was already feeling the pressure of time.

Somehow, the baby I used to Björn to my chest and tote around trips to Hawaii and Colorado is now a 6'2" man with beverage preferences reclining his seat on a cross-country flight to college in Oregon. I chose to spend our pre-campus nights in the decidedly un-stuffy Jupiter Next in Portland’s Central Eastside district for its fun vending machine (get a mystery bag for $10!), chill communal outdoor balconies with views of Mount Hood, and proximity to food vendors with delicious local eats. I packed for five days, anticipating much walking, hydrating, and chowing down. Oh, and lugging books into my son’s dorm room. Read on for a peek into my packing list for Portland, Oregon.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Martha Pierce , a 34-year-old former marketing agency owner, who started her own business coaching practice this year and left Denver, Colorado for Santa Teresa, Costa Rica.

Bold, big and beautiful, Arizona has plenty to brag about. Framed by New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and California, and with Mexico at its southern reaches – the state gets more than 300 days of sunshine a year and has four distinct seasons, so you can bask in summer, hike and bike in spring and fall and ski in winter.

With its endless blue skies and hiking, climbing and exploring galore, Colorado is a wonderful place to introduce the kiddos to the great outdoors.

Come fall, there are many leaf-peeping opportunities in America’s national parks. But the great outdoors extends far beyond official park boundaries.

Terry and Al Hershey can afford to live anywhere they please after their successful careers—she in the corporate offices of Time Warner, he running businesses in medical device manufacturing and contract research and development. So, when they loaded up their 34-foot RV at their Bonita Springs, Florida home and hit the road to scout a second retirement locale, they headed to what might sound like a surprising place: Traverse City, Michigan, a small town (population 16,000) 250 miles northwest of Detroit, that sits on a bay opening to Lake Michigan. In 2021, the Hersheys moved into a 132-year-old, 5-bedroom Victorian three blocks from Grand Traverse Bay, where they spend six months a year with their goldendoodle and Aussiedoodle. Now both 76, they hike, bike, kayak and motorboat and can choose from scores of musical performances a year at the nearby Interlochen Center for the Arts and by the Traverse Symphony Orchestra. “We wanted a summer base,” Terry explains. Why not spend all year in Traverse City? They don’t mind the cold (they lived for many years in Colorado), but find the lack of sunshine during the winters in Traverse City too dreary, she says.

The sheer size (it’s the sixth-largest state) and scope of Arizona make it tempting to try to explore this wonderland on a seven-day road trip around the American Southwest. But from the vastness of the Grand Canyon in its northern reaches to its gunslinging history in Tombstone near the border with Mexico, Arizona has hundreds of miles to cover.

Travelers are drawn to Arizona by the blinding desert sunshine, but the Grand Canyon state has so much more to offer. Under these flawless blue skies, everything you can imagine to entice, entertain and enthrall is up for grabs.

When you plan a trip to Canyonlands National Park, you get way more than just one national park. You get the town of Moab, nearby Arches National Park, various stretches of the Colorado River, and a long list of other protected outdoor spaces, from state parks to national forests. This is especially true if you choose to stay in a hotel. Most hotels near Canyonlands National Park are ideally located to explore the entire Moab area. Even if you plan to spend as much time in the open air as possible, it’s always nice to have someplace comfortable to retreat to after a long day outdoors — these hotels near Canyonlands National Park deliver.

Scattered across the US are pockets of dark skies that offer some of the best stargazing experiences in the world. Within these often protected and designated areas luxury hotels are catering to the astro-tourism market with expert lead stargazing experiences. Situated in areas with low levels of light pollution and excellent air clarity, the night sky over these properties is so pristine you can enjoy it from the comfort of your hotel room or balcony. But these stargazing hotels have stepped it up by offering a range of astrological events, in-room telescopes and binoculars, outdoor skybeds, and even an on-site observatory. With a focus on the outdoors, these are not only some of the best resorts in the US, they run some of the top dark sky experiences in the nation.