Hotel Review: *Nemacolin Woodlands Resort Where: Farmington, PA The Vibe: *Nemacolin Woodlands, a luxury resort located 90 minutes south of Pittsburgh, doesn’t have a single vibe. The type of vacation you have depends on where you stay—one of three hotels or on-property vacation homes—and what activities you’ve come for. On …

Living in Colorado, our family enjoys spending weekend ski vacations, but driving to the ski resorts can mean battling traffic, weather and pretty precarious winter roads at times. So I was excited to discover The *Winter Park Express ski train from Denver to Winter Park Resort. My husband and I …

It’s a challenge for a city or region to develop a new tourist area from the ground up. It’s even more unusual for to develop one that is robust enough to be self-sustaining and genuinely worth visiting. But Maryland has done exactly that with the *National Harbor, a great base …

The Hotel: Woodloch Pines Resort Where: Hawley, Eastern Pennsylvania The Location: *Woodloch Pines is an all-inclusive resort that sits on the rural edge of the Poconos.  Rather than one large hotel, the resort has a series of small buildings and cabins that dot a woodsy campus on the shore of a picture-perfect …

Fall is a great time of year to for quick weekend getaways. It’s cool, but not cold, places tend to be less crowded. Apples orchards, fall festivals, corn mazes and haunted happenings offer inexpensive family fun and your last shot at pleasant outdoor time before winter sends you indoors. And …

On previous, childfree trips to Newport, Rhode Island, we grooved in the hot sun at the famous Folk Festival, kayaked Narragansett Bay, slurped raw clams and drank a lot of beer. These activities weren’t likely to go over well with Tiny Traveler, age 4.5, so I wondered what we would …

Dutchess County is a no brainer for a family weekend getaway. It’s a quick two hour drive from New York City and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, so with a reasonably early start you can make the most of your short vacation. And with a wealth of attractions from …

Zoos are one of the most reliable crowd-pleasers of family travel. Adults like them. Kids like them. Both toddlers and teens can learn something new and find something to enjoy. And it seems that these days there is immense variety in how zoos organize and present their animal and what …

Once the winter comes, most families are tempted to simply stay at home where it’s cozy and warm and there’s no need to wrap yourself in hats and scarves. Or they flee to the warmer, sunnier climates of southern Europe. But what if you’re going stir crazy at home and …

We visited Legoland outside of San Diego in the fall, satisfying my long-held curiosity about it. The park was about what I expected: Enjoyable but made for bigger Lego fans than we are. But we were really surprised by how much of a blast we had at the Legoland Hotel. …

Big things are happening in McKinney, TX, known as the fastest growing city in the US and named the #1 best place to live by Money Magazine. Just 30 minutes from Dallas, McKinney has managed to maintain its tourist-friendly small-town feel while still offering big-town amenities. All this gives the …

Read about side trips from U.S. national parks. Who says kids can’t spend some time learning new things over the summer?  Weekend visits to these historical places can make history more real, colorful and relatable than the textbooks they’ve been reading all year. They probably won’t even mind that they’re learning—though we’ve …

Read about Pittsburgh with school-age kids. The forecast was rain but we decided to risk it: a 24-hour jaunt to Pittsburgh to catch part of a three-game series between the Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals. Of course, as soon as we hit the Steel City limits, a deluge of rain …

We went to Hershey, Pennsylvania on a whim. We had no weekend plans, it’s a reasonable drive from New York City, and my husband and I both had childhood memories of Hershey Park that made us curious about it. We had a good time, but there are a few things …