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The summer months of June to August are the USA's busiest travel season, with warm days across the entire country bringing in big crowds and higher prices.
But music and food festivals and outdoor activities ensure that summer is the liveliest time to travel the country. Kids are out of school, and outdoor spaces are open for the season.
Here are the best places for a summer vacation in the USA.
Yellowstone’s real showstoppers are the geysers and hot springs – nature’s crowd-pleasers – but at every turn this land of fire and brimstone breathes and bubbles like a giant kettle on the boil.
The park’s highways traverse these geysers, through meadows and forests, past roadside herds of bison and campsites aromatic with pine needles and family campfires.
June to August are the busiest times to visit, when more than half of the park's visitors arrive, but it's also when the full range of visitor services, accommodations and entrances are open.
Hotel rates peak at gateway towns, park campgrounds fill by lunchtime and reservations are essential.
San Diego calls itself "America’s Finest City," and its breezy confidence and sunny countenance filter down to folks you encounter every day on the street.
It feels like a collection of villages each with its own personality, but San Diego is the nation’s eighth-largest city, and for its size, there's probably nowhere more laid-back on earth.
San Diego bursts with attractions for the entire family, including the zoo and the museums of Balboa Park. And then there's beautiful hikes, more than 60 beaches and the USA's most perfect weather.
Best coffee. Most food carts. Top craft breweries. Number-one hipster haven. Portland is a city of indie-spirited superlatives and humble, offbeat charms.
Portland has an abundance of natural beauty – perfect parks, leafy trees, flowering shrubs lining residential streets, the Willamette River meandering through town, and Mt Hood on the horizon.
Summer in Portland sees festivals galore, including the Oregon Brewers Festival and the Bite of Oregon. Long-awaited wildflowers reach their peak bloom in early summer.