The most expensive home for sale in every state

Travelers searching for America's safest cities may want to head to New England this holiday season.

5-day forecast cone for Hurricane Milton. (Photo Credit: National Hurricane Center)

I've spent the last 26 years traveling by train all along both US coasts, through the Midwest, and across the UK.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jennison Grigsby, an American mom and yoga teacher who lives in Valencia, Spain. It's been edited for length and clarity.

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Amtrak is launching a new route between Chicago and Miami this fall that will whisk passengers from the Midwest to the Sunshine State in 47 hours.

The days are getting shorter and the nights cooler, marking the beginning of the “winter season” for airlines. By a quirk of the industry calendar, airlines’ official winter schedules begin at the end of October and run through March. And new schedules mean new routes.

Aerospace manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, or Comac, launched its first large home-grown airliner, the C919, in May 2023. It first flew with China Eastern Airlines.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rocki McCrocklin, 52, a real-estate agent who has listed her home for three years on Hipcamp, a website that lets homeowners rent out their backyards to people camping in vans or tents. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.

Low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines is the most likely to bump passengers, far surpassing other major airlines in the United States. 

Since the dawn of time, the romance of railways has seduced poets, spellbound novelists, and dealt directors the perfect hand for capturing fleeting friendships, illicit affairs, and all manner of crimes and capers. A ticket is not just a permit to ride, it’s permission to trespass on the intimacies of other people’s lives. Trains bring us up close and personal—both inside and outside the carriage. On board, passengers chat politics in Finnish dining cars, clamber into couchettes above strangers on the Trans-Siberian, and share samosas on India’s many raucous mail trains. Outside, the world flashes by, a slideshow of rivers growing into oceans, deserts rising into mountains and cities sprawling then receding into darkness as the train thunders on through the night.

Chris Christensen has run the travel blog and podcast Amateur Traveler since 2005. His podcast alone has more than 900 episodes. He’s clearly not an amateur in the sense that he’s new to travel or unpaid for his work, but he is an amateur when you consider the root of the word.