From Memorial Day to Labor Day, you have 15 precious summer weekends to explore your backyard, take a road trip or visit a new city. Make the most of the warm summer weather – check-out our top 15 weekend breaks and enter the competition for your chance to win your own American trip and to download the 15 free mini-guides.
It's all about the water in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where three of the Great Lakes lap the lonely, forested shoreline. Explore the Shipwreck Coast, watch freighters leap the Soo Locks and hike the wave-bashed cliffs of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
FREE mini-guide when you enter the competition
Sun-honeyed fields, toast-colored hills and rows of vines carpeting the valleys – California wine country is a feast for the eyes. It's also full of organic fresh-from-the-farm eats and environmentally minded wineries, so sampling the offerings can be hedonistic and planet-saving all at once.
FREE mini-guide when you enter the competition
How better to escape than to have your cares rubbed, scrubbed or rub-a-dubbed away? Southern California bubbles with hot springs and day spas ethnic, hip and froufrou, and grand hikes and explorations that are just as rejuvenating.
FREE mini-guide when you enter the competition
No American city celebrates the summertime like Chicago. The Windy City will blow you away with its architecture, lakefront beaches and festivals that run throughout the summer. With Taste of Chicago, Blues Festival and more, you'll always have a chance to join the party.
FREE mini-guide when you enter the competition
No forks, no sauce, no sides: that's how many Texas barbecue joints started. And it's the meat – slow-smoked brisket, ribs and sausage – that's still revered. Join the food pilgrims and taste your way through small towns around central Texas in search of barbecue's best.
FREE mini-guide when you enter the competition
Nothing evokes classic Americana like Route 66, the USA's original road trip. Tracing Route 66 today is a time-warped journey through rural America. Take in a small-town parade and then continue past the neon signs, motor courts and pie-filled diners of yesteryear.
FREE mini-guide when you enter the competition
Florida's 'other coast' is the stuff of tropical dreams: bohemian beach towns and exclusive seaside resorts, pearly sands dipped into turquoise seas, fiery red sunsets and more than 100 barrier islands just waiting for you to get your feet wet.
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Maine's fresh lobster is so ubiquitous that if you ask 10 Mainers where to find the best, you'll get 20 different answers. Taste-test your way across the state enjoying the various lobster incarnations: lobster roll, lobster salad and the traditional steamed lobster.
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For an Alice-in-Wonderland outdoor adventure, pay Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks a visit. From a hallucinogenic landscape of sulfur-burping hot pots and mammoth mountains to half the world's geysers and a must-see animal line-up, everything about these blockbuster natural treasures is super-sized surreal.
FREE mini-guide when you enter the competition
Despite the coffee and wine explosion, microbrewed beer is still the Pacific Northwest's definitive beverage. It follows that a brewery tour is the region's definitive trip. Rather than tearing across the region by car, travel by train. Best of all: no designated driver necessary.
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Step back into some of the USA's defining historical moments in time. Physically retracing the preserved sites from the American Civil War gives unparalleled insight into other chapters of that narrative, and leads you through some of America's most bucolic landscapes.
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The towers of red rock in Sedona don't just glow with an otherworldly light at sunset, they concentrate Mother Earth's mojo, or so say the many spiritual pilgrims here. Relish in the cosmic energy and leave with a cleansed body and mind.
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Few destinations have as many sensational ways to kill time as the Crescent City. Its history runs deep, the colonial architecture is exquisite, there's mouth-watering Cajun and Creole food, historic dive bars, a gorgeous countryside and lashings of great free live music.
FREE mini-guide when you enter the competition
Glacier National Park turned a century in 2010, but the party was subdued. That's because by 2020, Glacier's signature ice fields will reach an even bigger milestone: extinction. Make a journey to the park's top five must-sees before the glaciers die.
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With more opportunities for antiquing than anywhere else in the Northeast, it's no wonder so many shoppers come to Cape Cod armed with little more than an Amex card and a map. Keep on shopping until you run out of cape.
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Congratulations to Corinna Garcia who is the winner of the 15 Weekends of Summer competition.
Thank you to everyone who entered.
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