Wire Travel

BIG SKY, Mont. - This place is absurdly misnamed. That's not a complaint, but it does require an asterisk.

The traffic on H-1, a Hawaiian interstate that connects with no other state, is still horrendous.

TUCSON, Ariz. - For the past decade, I've headed to Arizona in midwinter to visit family and catch a respite from cold weather. Each year, as I leave its warm, dry air to return to my snowy home, I'm told, "You really should come when the desert is in bloom. It's spectacular."

In Sweden, unique hostels spring from old quarters:

TULSA, Okla. - The woman in the wheelchair and headphones is watching pictures go by and hearing a narrator speak about a place and a moment long ago.

STOCKHOLM - I seemed to be flowing amid a river of wildflowers.

Timing is everything in travel, and Japan was a great place to be the past several weeks if you wanted a front-row seat for World War III.

CARLSBAD, Calif. - The Legoland Hotel, which opened April 5, got plenty of little things wrong in its first weeks. But its designers got one thing enormously right, and that will make this place a screaming success: kid-centricity.

TORONTO - Streetcars, sharks, pandas and parasols.

WEST UNION, Ohio - The Edge of Appalachia Preserve may be Ohio's greatest natural treasure.

SEATTLE - When Dr. Beverly Beeton moved to Seattle from Alaska several years ago, she started looking for ways to learn more about her new hometown.

MIAMI - There are many Vanderbilt mansions, all of them grander, and certainly larger, than the relatively modest manse on Miami's Fisher Island that bears the famous family name.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Here are three tweets I would have sent from my recent stay at Santa Barbara's just-reopened El Encanto hotel if I hadn't been busy behaving like royalty and pretending the Internet didn't exist: