Off the Beaten Track

Black Hills National Forest

This area offers splendid opportunities for hiking, biking and camping. The most notable attraction, though, is the Crazy Horse Memorial, consisting of a massive statue of the Sioux leader famous for orchestrating the demise of General George Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn. The statue, carved out of the mountainside, already dwarfs Mount Rushmore.

Cleveland

Drawing from its roots as an industrious, working man’s town, Cleveland has worked hard in recent years to prove it rocks. But even as the city wipes the sweat from its brow, it might need more than the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a revitalized riverfront to maintain its precarious comeback.

Today Cleveland is a unique blend of early architecture and gentrified neighbourhoods with enough urban grit and grime to add an edgy ambience. The new self-appointed informal city slogan, taken from the lyrics of a bar band's local anthem is 'Cleveland Rocks!'

Flagstaff

If the strip-mall chintz of small-town Arizona leaves you dry, drop in on Flagstaff, a cultural oasis in an otherwise arid landscape. The town has a gallon of charm, from the downtown area, which harks back to the region's early railroad whistle stop days, to the dusty motels and truckstop diners.

Antique inns sidle up against vegetarian cafes and you're more likely to hear strains of a harmonica than the rumble of RV traffic in this Grand Canyon gateway town. If the rustic charm wears thin, there's always a visit to the Lowell Observatory, where in 1930 the planet Pluto was discovered.

Highway 395

Out where the Sierras drop straight down into the sagebrush of eastern California's Owens Valley, truckers, hunters and road-trippers cruise Hwy 395. Running thousands of miles from the northern fringes of the LA basin to the Canadian border, the familiar terrain was the location of many a western.

The Manzanar National Historic Site, about half an hour's drive north of Lone Pine, consists of the remains of one of the infamous 'relocation' camps in which American citizens of Japanese descent were imprisoned during WWII. A little farther on is the funky Eastern California Museum, a mixed bag of displays on natural history, Paiute Indian basketry and ancient Milk of Magnesia bottles. If you've still got a nest egg left when you reach Carson City, east of Lake Tahoe just over the Nevada border, let it ride at one of the town's many casinos.