100 Places in the USA Every Woman Should Go

by Sophia Dembling

Overview

100 Places in the USA Every Woman Should Go is a lively and highly subjective collection of places that will educate, illuminate, entertain, challenge, or otherwise appeal to women of all kinds. From historic (such as the Women's Rights National Historic Park) to kitschy (SPAM museum), these places and activities provide a wide-angle view of all that makes America, America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609521431
Publisher:	Travelers' Tales Guides, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/29/2014
Series:	100 Places
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.63(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sophia Dembling is a writer based in Dallas, Texas. Her latest book is The Introvert’s Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World published by Perigee Books. Sophia also is author of The Yankee Chick’s Survival Guide to Texas and co-author of The Making of Dr. Phil: The Straight-Talking True Story of Everyone’s Favorite Therapist. She has published hundreds of articles and essay in newspapers, magazines and websites, including The Dallas Morning News, American Way, World Hum, Texas Journey, Miami Herald, Southwest Spirit and many others. Sophia has had work included in several anthologies, including The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2006, The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2009, Cat Women: Female Writers on their Feline Friends, and P.S. What I Didn’t Say: Unsent Letter to Our Female Friends.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction by Sophia Dembling

When I told people about the book I was working on, their first question was usually, “What are your criteria for must-see places?” Or, less eloquently,

“Sez who?”

A fair enough question, to which the answer is: “Sez me.”

I did poll friends and colleagues as well, and got some good ideas there, but what we have here is an entirely subjective collection of American places I think are important or cool or important or quintessentially American.
And who am I to say so? A connoisseur of travel in our glorious 50.

My first view of America was through the windows of a baby blue Plymouth Duster on a cross-country road trip with two girlfriends. I was 19 years old and had barely ever left New York City—which, like Los Angeles, both defines America and barely resembles it. I was astonished and awed as much by cornfields as the Rocky Mountains. The solid farmers and stolid farm wives we saw in diners and truck stops were as exotic as unicorns to me. Chicago intrigued me and LA seduced me, and by the time we were driving up the Pacific Coast Highway, with the whole of the nation stretching out to our right, I was madly in love.

I continued the romance on the Greyhound bus, traveling for weeks at a time, crisscrossing the country, staying in cheap motels, with friends, with friends of friends, and once on a gymnasium floor because I stumped into Deadwood, South Dakota the weekend of the enormous Sturgis motorcycle rally. But I was determined to see Mount Rushmore (which I did—and have returned since).

I’ve been travel writing since the mid-1980s, and my first published travel article, in The Dallas Morning News, was about taking a tour of the stars’ homes in Nashville. For a while, my friend Jenna Schnuer and I wrote a website called Flyover America, in which we shared our passion for America’s out-of-the-way places.

I love the scale of America. I love her grand places, brash cities, and unabashed kitsch. Her breadth and depth and roadside attractions. I scorn world-traveling Americans who have never explored their own backyards—who have never seen a thunderstorm over Nebraska or the Atlantic pounding the coast of Maine. Who have never eaten grits in the South or salmon in Alaska. Who have never seen the Western art at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Wyoming or the mermaid show at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park in Florida. I’m so passionate for travel in America, I even argue that Las Vegas is a must-see, no matter how highbrow you consider yourself.

America is overwhelming in its size and variety. If you have never traveled it, where do you start? Short-hop weekends are always good for exploring cities and towns. A long weekend in New York City or Savannah can be a nice aperitif. But for serious travel in America, nothing beats the road trip—it is the only way to start understanding the nation’s culture and appreciating its geography.

Next time you have vacation time coming, invest it in a long-distance cross-country drive, in any direction. East-west, north-south. It doesn’t matter, there’s stuff to see every which way and I guarantee that you will never see America the same way again.

Naturally, there’s no place or experience in this book that men wouldn’t enjoy as well too. Any American, male or female, who doesn’t make a point of seeing the Grand Canyon is a knucklehead, in my humble opinion. (People from other nations get a pass, but I know they’re out seeing stuff like that anyway because I run into them all the time.)

What I tried to do with this highly subjective list, with the help of other women, is highlight places and activities that enlighten us about American women and their history, allow us to indulge our girly and tomboy sides, hold particular spiritual significance, or otherwise have something to offer women or our understanding of America and the women in it.

You will surely have your own ideas to add to this list, and I say have at it. America is so vast, so diverse, so fascinating, so beautiful—100 places is not nearly enough. But it’s a start.

Table of Contents

100 Places in the USA Every Woman Should Go
By Sophia Dembling

Women Make History
• Salem, Massachusets
• Ellis Island, New York City
• Galveston Island, Texas
• Angel Island, California
• Upstate New York
• Statue of Liberty, New York City
• Esther Hobart Morris statue, Cheyenne, Wyoming
• Nashville site (Wyoming statue)
• Statue of Liberty, New York City

Tough Cookies
• Harriet Tubman, Maryland, Delaware, New York State
• Rosa Parks Museum, Montgomery, Alabama
• National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis
• Women in Flight, Atchison, Kansas; Oklahoma City
• Annie Oakley (Cody, WY, Fort Worth, Ohio);
• Nellie Bly, Newseum, Washington DC
• Lizzie Borden Bed &Breakfast Fall River, Mass.
• Brothel Museum, Skagway, Alaska
• Texas (Hallie Stillwell, Cowgirl Hall of Fame, others)
• Georgia

Artists and Muses
• Orchard House Louisa May Alcott, Concord, Massachusetts
• Massachusetts (Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton, Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum)
• Zora Neale Hurston Museum, Eatonville, Florida
• Georgia O'Keefe's Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, New Mexico
• National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC
• Little House on the Prairie, De Smet, South Dakota
• Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville, Tennessee
• Willa Cather State Historic Site, Red Cloud, Nebraska
• Nina Simone’s hometown, Tryon, North Carolina
• Christina’s World house, Cushing, Maine
• Dorothy Parker’s stomping ground, New York City
• Movie sites (Various)
• Native American artists?
• Stax Museum and Motown Museum, Memphis, Detroit
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland

Girls Will Be Girls
• Weeki Wachee Springs State Park,
• Tea with the girls Plaza Hotel, other cities?
• Do lunch (Four Seasons NY, other citites?)
• Plantation stays
• Met costume collection, New York City
• LA Fashion Institute
• First Ladies Exhibit, First Ladies Library, Washington D.C.
• Mall of America, Bloomington, Minn.
• Tiffany’s, New York City
• Garden Club towns (Jefferson, Texas, others?)
• Neiman Marcus, Dallas, Texas
• Gardens
• Shoe tree
• Antiquing - Round Top and others
• World’s Longest Yard Sale
• Rock star pilgrimages

Retreat, tranquility and spiritual pursuits
• Lily Dale, New York
• Best Friends Animal Sanctuary Kanab, Utah
• Miraval, Tucson, Arizona
• Monument Valley, Four Corners
• Northern California coast
• Kripalu, Stockbridge, Mass.
• Goddess sites
• Maine coast
• Cape Cod
• The Cloisters
• Hot springs
• Labyrinths
• Monroe Institute
• Cat Yronwode's hoodoo shop and the world's smallest church

Adventure
• Grand Canyon Arizona
• Becoming an Outdoorswoman
• Iditarod, Alaska
• National Parks - Yellowstone, Yosemite
• Skiing Lake Tahoe, Jackson Hole
• Rafting the Gauley West Virginia
• Surfing
• Boating

Just Go
• Santa Fe
• Washington DC
• New Orleans
• New York City
• Las Vegas
• Savannah
• Disney World
• Drive cross-country

Home & Hearth
• Cooking schools
• Bad Food museums
• Canyon de Chelle, Arizona
• Newport, Rhode Island
• Pike’s Place Market, Seattle, Washington
• Agritourism
• Tenement Museum, New York City
• Hearst Castle, California
• Architecture tours (Phoenix, Chicago, Savannah)