Free to enter, $10 to park, and declared finished before it was done. Everything you need to plan a visit to Mount Rushmore, and the idea that followed me down 425 stairs.

Interstate 90 crosses the Missouri at Chamberlain in a matter of seconds, and the road would rather you did not notice. On the bluff above it stands a fifty-foot woman with a star quilt, moving in the wind, in a rest area that has quietly refused to be only a rest area since 1968.

A museum in Richmond built around exactly one car. I gave it twenty minutes, then stayed an hour, thinking about how a whole country taught itself to drive.

Close enough for a real weekend, unpretentious enough to explore without spending a fortune, but is it worth the drive?

Some resorts you visit; this one you disappear into. An honest look at the Florida-under-glass giant near Orlando, and whether it earns the drive.