WHY GO: The Woodstock Music Festival was held in Sullivan County NY. “Three days of fun and music, and nothing but fun and music.” Need we say more? Of course, yes. Boomers will recognize this area of the Catskills, also, as the former “Borscht Belt.” Summer resorts like The Concord, …
WHY GO: Beacon NY grew up a mill town. Hunched at the foot of mountains and wedged between waterfalls and the navigable Hudson River, factories that harnessed those raging waters decimated the landscape. Industrial waste turned the Hudson into “a sewer,” according to Beacon’s most famous resident, the late Pete …
WHY GO: This choice corner of Pennsylvania, just west of Philadelphia has been termed “America’s Garden Capital.” With 31 world-class horticultural assets within a 30-mile radius, Brandywine Valley encompasses the greatest concentration of public gardens on the continent. The typical tourist comes to Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley – Southern Chester County PA …
WHY GO: New Canaan CT, an hour commute by train into Manhattan, was the quintessential John Cheever-esque suburb, pioneered first by farmers, and then by strivers, achievers, and, surprisingly, a futuristic, visionary type of architect. Though Philip Johnson, designer of The Glass House, is the most famous, he was just …
WHY GO: The Chelsea section of Manhattan was hipster Brooklyn before Brooklyn became Brooklyn. Home to the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT: which is to clothing design what the Culinary Institute of America is to cooking), the country’s first successful elevated linear urban park, cool shops, a museum dedicated to …
WHY GO: In contrast to the sometimes frenetic surrounding areas, particularly the District of Columbia, Carroll County MD is “Zen Peaceful” – in only the way that an agricultural region can be. But what puts this Maryland county on this Maven’s Go List is a phenomenal inn whose owners are …
WHY GO: Falmouth MA, in the extreme southwest corner of Cape Cod, encompasses the tiny burg of Woods Hole – a Getaway Maven hot spot – and the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard – another Maven fave. But there are things to see in Falmouth as well, including a recently renovated …
WHY GO: During the Civil War, the little Shenandoah Valley town of Winchester VA suffered from extreme Multiple Personality Disorder. Allegiance towards Union and Confederate forces alternated an alarming seventy two times over the course of the conflict. All this stress and anxiety may have followed the populace into the …
WHY GO: Staunton VA (pronounced like “stand ton”), is best known as hometown of President Woodrow Wilson and as the rather unlikely setting for the American Shakespeare Center. But this Shenandoah Valley burg will also delight those with any interest in design or architecture. Most of the diverse structures lining …
WHY GO: I found it very strange that a whole block of African American intellectuals found safe harbor and thrived in a place called Lynchburg VA in the early 20th century. That they did so is both testament to the town’s namesake, the Quaker, John Lynch, and its surprisingly progressive …