All car museums are laid out the same way, I’ve been to enough of them to know. There’s always a big entranceway with a two-tiered display of a couple of dozen cars angled toward the visitor. The whole thing started when the depression-era bootleggers needed to run from the law. Read more
Charlotte is the headquarters of NASCAR, so its racetrack is naturally the American home of speed. The Charlotte Speedway doesn’t just host races, it also has a star-studded history of being on the silver screen. Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, Burt Reynolds in Stroker Ace, and Elvis Presley in Read more
It’s a small museum in Mount Airy, NC about actor Andrew Griffith’s life. He grew up in the town and filmed the Andy Griffith Show here, which is where Mayberry is based on. It’s mostly on the Andy Griffith Show with the original courthouse signs, desk, and clothes, but there Read more
The museum in North Carolina’s state capital occupies the ground floor of the city’s first high-rise building. There’s a lot on black history such as black businesses of the 19th century, how the oldest black university—Shaw University—was founded by Dr. Tupper in 1870, and racial exclusion in American politics. There Read more
That pointy building in San Francisco that’s said to be earthquake resistant? I’ve parachuted off the top of it many times in GTA San Andreas while trying to evade the police. At 42-stories tall, it was the city’s tallest building from its construction in 1972 until the Salesforce Tower was Read more
The battery and US Army base under the Golden Gate Bridge was active until 1994. The Spanish started building it in 1776 and then it was taken over by Mexico when it battled for independence. After the Spanish-American War, the US seized California and continued using the area as a Read more
San Francisco’s famous Lombard Street is much longer than just the squiggly bit with eight bends, it goes all the way from the Presidio Boulevard, through the hill where Coit Tower is, to Pier 27 on the shore. Tourists love to drive down the curvy bit of the road, and Read more
Federal land as a national park. Technically not part of California so you can’t smoke recreational Marijuana here. I recommend the first ferry as it gets you there just as the prison opens. The main exhibit is on the evolution of the US correctional system, like at Eastern State Penitentiary Read more
It’s not usually open to the public, but the once-a-year Doors Open Toronto event invites everyone to take a peek inside a collection of heritage buildings and city infrastructure. The interwar water treatment plant still provides about a third of Toronto’s drinking water supply at nearly a billion liters a Read more
I wanted to do a quick visit to Buffalo just before Christmas, but the border closed before I could go. So, I got a refund for my ticket to the Buffalo Botanical Gardens and credit for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House tour. The gardens open in the morning and I Read more