The City I Most Want to Visit in Each State, Part 2: Colorado to Georgia

This is the second post in a series. I recommend reading the introductory post first. Today I'll be picking the city in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, and Georgia that I most want to visit, then listing my top 2 attractions in each location. 

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The City I Most Want to Visit in Each State, Part 2: Colorado to Georgia

 

I would love to travel to Colorado Springs, Colorado. Olympic City USA is home to the Olympic and Paralympic Training Center and the Olympic committee headquarters, more than 20 national Olympic governing bodies, dozens of national sports organizations, and my top pick for attractions, the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum. I would also love to take the cog railway to Pikes Peak. 

The city I'd most like to visit in Connecticut is New Haven. I'd start my time at Yale University, specifically at the Peabody Museum. It looks incredible. I would also like to check out Lost in New Haven, which looks really unique and would be a good introduction to the area. 

On my next trip to Delaware, I'd most like to visit Wilmington. The are six units of First State National Historic Park; Wilmington is home to three of them. I'd start my visit at Fort Christina. I'd also plan to visit the small but charming Brandywine Zoo. 

It should be no surprise that the city I most want to visit in Florida is its capital, Tallahassee. We have been to 45 of the 50 state capitals and I'd love to see the rest. My priority would be the Florida Capitol and the Museum of Florida History. 

My top choice for a city to visit in Georgia is beautiful and historic Savannah. I would start by riding a full loop on Old Town Trolley Tours; we've taken Old Town Trolley Tours in multiple cities and always found them to provide an excellent overview to a city. After learning all about the city and seeing its most famous sites from the trolley, I would check out the American Prohibition Museum. 

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Did I miss any must-do attractions in these cities? Let me know in the comments what else I should do when I make it to these cities!

The City I Most Want to Visit in Each State, Part 1: Alabama to California

I've been to all 50 states, but there are still lots of places I want to visit in the US. There are cities I want to revisit because cool new things have opened since I was last there, like Chicago and Washington DC. I want to revisit other cities, including San Antonio and Atlanta, because attractions I wanted to visit were closed on the days we were there, or we simply didn't have enough time to see all of the highlights. But that's not what this blog series is about. Instead, I'll be picking the one city in each state that I most want to visit for the very first time. 

Here are my ground rules: 

• I can only pick cities I have never visited, even if that visit was really short. I'll allow an exception if the only place my feet touched the ground in that city was the airport. 
• I can only select one city per state, without ties.  
• I have to choose my top 2 attractions in that city that led me to select it. I'm not going to be pedantic about whether an attraction is technically in that city. The metro area counts. 

With that established, let's get started!

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The City I Most Want to Visit in Each State: Alabama to California

The city I most want to visit in Alabama is Selma. I really wanted to include it when we visited Alabama in 2022, but I just couldn't make it work. When I do visit, the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute and the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail Interpretive Center are my highest priority to see. 

Of all the places I haven't been in Alaska, I most want to visit Fairbanks. The Golden Heart City is home to the Museum of the North and the Fairbanks Ice Museum. Fairbanks is also a great place to see the Northern Lights. 

I've traveled extensively through Arizona, but there is still plenty of The Grand Canyon State that I haven't seen. Topping my list of cities I'd like to visit is Page. It looks absolutely stunning. My top attractions include a tour of Antelope Canyon and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. 

The city I'd most like to visit in Arkansas is Bentonville. I would start my visit at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Its campus looks absolutely stunning and that's before you even go inside where, presumably, there is a lot of beautiful art. Next, I would visit the Walmart Museum. 

Of the places I haven't been in my home state of California, the city I most want to visit is Palm Springs. Interestingly, Palm Springs wasn't on my radar until recently. I'd thought of it as mostly golf courses and swimming pools until I attended the 2023 Outlook Forum and learned that it is so much more. The two places I most want to visit are Agua Caliente Cultural Museum and Living Desert Zoo and Gardens. 

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What about you? What cities would you most like to visit in each of these states? Let me know in the comments!

22nd Anniversary

Steve and I celebrated our 22nd anniversary in beautiful Sausalito. This is the layout I made. 

22nd Anniversary (affiliate link)

I included pictures from the time in Sausalito, as well as our day of fun in nearby Fairfax and San Rafael. It's a simple page, but there are a lot of memories packed into those six photos. I'm glad to have the layout in the album. 

Making Cards Using Metallic Watercolors

After using Soho Metallic Watercolors for the first time on my Liberty Bell project, I wanted to play with them a bit more. I tried them on black cardstock and white coldpress watercolor paper, then experimented with coloring over them with alcohol markers and colored pencils. Then I turned my painted doodles into cards. Affiliate links below. 

Metallic Watercolor Cards

Materials: 

• watercolor paper
• cardstock
• Soho metallic watercolors
• sequins
• craft glue
• Posca colored pencils
• black Ohuhu Honolulu marker

Steps:

I started with scraps of watercolor paper and black cardstock. I painted dots onto one of the watercolor papers and flowers onto the other two papers. While I needed two coats to get decent coverage on the watercolor paper, the colors popped on the black with just a single coat of paint. The Sohos definitely perform better on a dark background, whether that's black paper or an underpainting. 

Since I was happy with how the little flowers looked on the black paper, I trimmed that paper down to size for a card, backed it with pink, added a sentiment on a pink strip, then glued sequins to the center of each flower. 

Moving on to the other two. I wondered if the metallics would pop better if I colored the white space around the flowers black, so I used a Honolulu on each. That improved things slightly, but the colors weren't quite as shiny as they were on black paper. I also learned that the metallic paint will show through the ink of the alcohol marker slightly if you try to color over it. Good to know. I backed the dotted painting with yellow dotted paper and added a sentiment. 

I used Posca colored pencils to add flower centers and leaves to the final painting. The creamy pencils worked beautifully on the metallic paint. They also colored over the alcohol marker really well. I backed this card with purple and added a sentiment. 

I had fun experimenting with the metallic watercolors - making these cards was a lot more entertaining than making swatch cards would have been. I love the wide variety of colors. They have an incredible shimmer that doesn't come across in photos. And now that I know, I'll be painting these metallics on dark paper or with a base layer underneath.

Where I've Been: National Historic Sites

After discovering I've been to only 15 of the 64 National Historical Parks, I was curious how many of the National Historic Sites I've visited. As I noted in the previous post, a National Historic Sites (NHS) tends to be smaller than a National Historical Park (NHP). Often, they focus on a single building of importance in US history. 

There are 75 NHS units in the National Park System. As before, I've added a star if I've been there. If I've visited since I started blogging about travel, I've added a link. 

Where I've Been: National Historic Sites

Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, Pennsylvania

Amache National Historic Site, Colorado

Andersonville National Historic Site, Georgia

Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, Tennessee

Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site, Colorado

Blackwell School National Historic Site, Texas

Boston African American National Historic Site, Massachusetts

Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, North Carolina

Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site, District of Columbia

Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, South Carolina

Christiansted National Historic Site, Virgin Islands

Clara Barton National Historic Site, Maryland

Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, Pennsylvania

Eisenhower National Historic Site, Pennsylvania

*Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site, New York

Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site, California

First Ladies National Historic Site, Ohio

*Ford's Theatre National Historic Site, District of Columbia

Fort Bowie National Historic Site, Arizona

Fort Davis National Historic Site, Texas

Fort Laramie National Historic Site, Wyoming

Fort Larned National Historic Site, Kansas

*Fort Point National Historic Site, California

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, North Carolina

Fort Scott National Historic Site, Kansas

Fort Smith National Historic Site, Arkansas and Oklahoma

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, Montana and North Dakota

Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Washington

Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, District of Columbia

Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Massachusetts

Friendship Hill National Historic Site, Pennsylvania

Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site, Montana

Hampton National Historic Site, Maryland

Harry S Truman National Historic Site, Missouri

Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, Iowa

*Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, New York

Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, Pennsylvania

Honouliuli National Historic Site, Hawaii

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site, Arizona

James A. Garfield National Historic Site, Ohio

John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, Massachusetts

*John Muir National Historic Site, California

Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, North Dakota

Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Illinois

*Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, Arkansas

Longfellow - Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, Massachusetts

Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site, Virginia

Manzanar National Historic Site, California

Martin Van Buren National Historic Site, New York

Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site, District of Columbia

Minidoka National Historic Site, Idaho

*Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, South Dakota

New Philadelphia National Historic Site, Illinois

Nicodemus National Historic Site, Kansas

Ninety Six National Historic Site, South Carolina

*Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site, District of Columbia

President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site, Arkansas

Pu'ukoholā Heiau National Historic Site, Hawaii

Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, New York

Saint Paul's Church National Historic Site, New York

*San Juan National Historic Site, Puerto Rico

Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, Colorado

Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site, Massachusetts

Springfield Armory National Historic Site, Massachusetts

Steamtown National Historic Site, Pennsylvania

Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, New York

*Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, New York

Thomas Stone National Historic Site, Maryland

*Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, Alabama

Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, Alabama

Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, Missouri

Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site, New York

Washita Battlefield National Historic Site, Oklahoma

Whitman Mission National Historic Site, Washington

William Howard Taft National Historic Site, Ohio

I've been to 11 out of 75 National Historic Sites. Again, that's lower than I'd expected. But that just means I have a lot of destinations to look forward to visiting in the future!