The WalknTours
Travel Blog

Free parking, free admission, and a pace that actually works. Here is how to see all four missions in one relaxed day. If you typed “san antonio san antonio texas” into a search bar hoping for something beyond the River Walk and the Alamo, here is my answer: drive the Missions. San Antonio Missions National Historical Park protects the largest concentration of Spanish Colonial churches in North America, and the four missions in the park are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bette

Looking for a Scenic Byway 12 Utah map before your road trip? This 120-plus-mile drive in southern Utah links Bryce Canyon National Park to Torrey, the gateway to Capitol Reef National Park. It's Utah's first All-American Road, and it's packed with overlooks, waterfalls, slot canyons, and small pioneer towns. Because towns and gas stations are far apart, and cell service comes and goes, it helps to know the route before you start. Here's how Scenic Byway 12 breaks down, secti

A Red Rock Canyon sunset is one of the most beautiful sights near Las Vegas. As the sun drops, the red and cream sandstone cliffs glow orange, pink, and gold, and the desert goes quiet. It's the perfect break from the noise of the Strip, just 17 miles away. But there's a catch. The 13-mile Scenic Drive has a closing time, and in the winter months it closes right around sunset. With a little planning, you can catch the best light and still get out on time. Here's how. TAKE A S

Pilgrim Memorial State Park is the heart of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Right on Plymouth Harbor, this small waterfront park is home to Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower II, and some of the town's most important statues and memorials. The park was created in 1920 to mark 300 years since the Pilgrims arrived in 1620. Today, it's free to visit and open from sunrise to sunset, making it the perfect place to start exploring America's Hometown. TAKE A SELF-GUIDED TOUR OF PLYMOUTH: The Ply

Haunted places in Phoenix might not be what you expect from a sunny desert city. But downtown Phoenix has been around since the 1870s, and its Victorian homes, old hotels, and grand theaters come with plenty of stories. Some are tragic, some are strange, and some are just plain spooky. Here are the downtown spots that locals and visitors talk about most. Remember, these are legends and reported experiences, so take them with a grain of salt, and enjoy the history behind them.

Palm Springs celebrity homes are some of the most famous houses in America. In the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Hollywood studios had a "two-hour rule": actors under contract had to stay within about two hours of Los Angeles in case they were needed on set. Palm Springs sat right at that limit, and the stars came running. Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant, and dozens of others built or rented desert hideaways here. Many of those homes still stand, and you can

Ocean City Maryland history is full of surprises. Most people know this beach town for its Boardwalk, its fries, and its saltwater taffy. But not many know that by 1926, women owned and ran 30 of the town's 32 hotels, years before most of them could even vote. Locals called it the "Petticoat Regime." From a quiet fishing village to one of the East Coast's favorite resorts, Ocean City's story is about storms, fires, shipwrecks, and some very determined people. Here's how it al

Mystic, CT history runs deep, much deeper than its pretty harbor and famous pizza suggest. Long before the shipyards and souvenir shops, this river valley was home to the Pequot people. It was the site of one of the darkest days in early American history, and later, one of the busiest shipbuilding towns in the country. Today, Mystic is a seaside village where you can walk past 18th-century homes, cross a 1922 drawbridge, and hear ghost stories in buildings that have stood for

Horseshoe Bend parking is the first thing you need to figure out before you see one of the most famous views in Arizona. Just outside Page, the Colorado River wraps around a giant sandstone peninsula 1,000 feet below the rim, and millions of people come every year to see it. It wasn't always this busy. Not long ago, fewer than 40,000 people a year made the trip, and they parked on the side of the highway. Then social media discovered Horseshoe Bend, and the crowds grew to aro

One day in Madrid is enough to fall in love with Spain's capital. The city packs ancient walls, royal palaces, grand plazas, world-class art, and some of the best food in Europe into a center you can explore on foot. With a good plan, you can walk from Madrid's oldest ruins to its most famous museum and still have time for churros at midnight. Madrid began in the ninth century as a Moorish fortress called Mayrit. In 1561, King Philip II made it the capital of Spain, and it gr

The Ilulissat Museum is one of the best places to learn the story of this Arctic town on Disko Bay. Set in a red wooden house at the edge of town, it's the building where famous polar explorer Knud Rasmussen was born in 1879. Inside, you'll find the history of Ilulissat, its people, and the explorers who set out from here to cross the Arctic. Before it was a museum, the house was a school for catechists, the local church teachers who spread Christianity in Greenland. Today, i

El Floridita Havana is one of the most famous bars in the world. It sits at the end of Obispo Street in Old Havana, and it has been pouring drinks since 1817, when it opened as La Piña de Plata, or "The Silver Pineapple." Today it's known as the "Cradle of the Daiquiri," and it's the place Ernest Hemingway loved most for a cold drink. Hemingway spent countless evenings at El Floridita, sitting in his favorite corner of the bar and swapping stories with friends. He even descri

The Apache Trail, Arizona's historic State Route 88, is one of the most dramatic drives in the Southwest. It starts in Apache Junction at the foot of the Superstition Mountains and twists past a rebuilt gold rush town, a canyon lake, and the tiny town of Tortilla Flat before heading deeper into the backcountry toward Roosevelt Dam. But the Apache Trail in Arizona wasn't built for sightseers. It started as a freight road for building that dam, and the name was given later to d

Jack Kerouac's grave is one of the most visited spots in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. The author of "On the Road" spent his life traveling across America, but when he died in 1969 at just 47 years old, he came home. He was buried in Edson Cemetery, not far from the mill city streets where he grew up. Visiting Jack Kerouac's grave is a quiet experience. There's no big monument or crowd, just a simple stone among many others. But for fans of the Beat Generation, stand

Ljubljana Old Town is one of the most charming historic centers in Europe—a car-free tangle of cobblestone streets, Baroque buildings, and riverside cafés wrapped around the green Ljubljanica River, with a castle watching from the hill above. It's small enough to cross on foot in minutes, but it's packed with stories. Ljubljana Old Town grew up in the Middle Ages around three squares at the foot of Castle Hill. Before that, the Romans built a walled town called Emona here, un

The Battle Road Trail is one of the best ways to step into the first day of the American Revolution. This five-mile trail in Minute Man National Historical Park runs from Meriam's Corner in Concord to the park's eastern edge in Lexington, Massachusetts, following much of the same road where colonial militia and British soldiers fought a running battle on April 19, 1775. That morning, hundreds of British soldiers marched out to Concord to seize hidden weapons. By afternoon, th

When people think of country music, they picture Nashville. But a lot of Knoxville music history came first. In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Knoxville radio stations put stars on the air before most of the world knew their names—Roy Acuff, Chet Atkins, Kitty Wells, and a 10-year-old girl from Sevier County named Dolly Parton. Knoxville music grew out of everything that met in this Appalachian valley: fiddle tunes and ballads from the British Isles, gospel from local churches,

Creek Street in Ketchikan is one of the most photographed spots in Alaska—a boardwalk of colorful wooden houses perched on stilts over a rushing creek, where salmon swim right under your feet. Today it's full of shops, galleries, and cruise visitors. But a hundred years ago, Creek Street Ketchikan was something very different: the town's red-light district, where loggers, miners, and fishermen came to spend their pay. Long before the boardwalk, the Tlingit people fished this