Alabama
Heaven for Hounds
Traditions
On Labor Day (September 7) in the little town of Cherokee, folks toting lawn chairs, appetites for barbecue, and reverence for the hard work of good dogs now departed will congregate at the Key Underwood Coon Dog Memorial Graveyard. Hunters have buried their beloved dogs there since 1937, and each September, the event fills the cemetery with life and laughter via bluegrass bands, buck dancing’s fancy footwork, and a liar’s contest, when storytellers compete to see who can spin the most outlandish hunting yarn. Sales of plates piled with baked beans, slaw, and smoky pulled pork support the cemetery’s upkeep; otherwise, the fun is free. “It’s a celebration, but a way to honor these dogs, too,” says Lee Hatton, who sits on the board of the Friends of the Coon Dog Cemetery. More than three hundred headstones, bearing names like Blaze, Queen, and Rage (Hatton’s own bluetick coonhound), dot the hallowed rural hilltop. “For coon hunters, our dogs are like family, so we bury them like family,” Hatton says. “I love watching folks wander among the graves, remembering their special dog.”
Arkansas
The Soft Sell
Art
It started with strawberry Hubba Bubba bubble gum and ended with packs of Tyson chicken. And somewhere between those two creations, the U.K.-based fiber artist Lucy Sparrow and her five-person team cut, sewed, painted, and otherwise transformed thousands of square feet of felt into a staggering 20,450 life-size replicas of retro consumer goods for the installation The Beginning of Convenience (on display until July 11, 2027). Running for nearly a year at the Momentary, a Kraft factory turned contemporary art space in Bentonville, Sparrow’s first U.S. museum exhibition explores the rise of convenience culture in the 1980s and 1990s through the exceedingly shelf-stable lens of a Walmart-inspired supermarket. And if you’re wondering whether the felted products carry the subliminal advertising power of their real-world counterparts, the answer is a resounding yes. Because even if you’ve never experienced the gustatory pleasure of eating, say, an Eggo or Hot Pockets, Sparrow has one response: “Obviously, I just give in to those cravings.”
Florida
A New Naples Classic
Hotels
Many a traveler swoons over stately old hotels, but creaky floorboards and temperamental plumbing can test that nostalgic affection. Enter the just-opened Olde Naples Hotel, which manages to evoke the sophisticated ease of vintage Florida hospitality while delivering the amenities one expects from contemporary boutique hotels. “Though entirely new, the property incorporates architectural cues from the original Naples Hotel that opened in 1889,” says general manager Laura Radler. Communal spaces pop with such design touches as a mirrored ceiling dome in the lobby and a vine-covered courtyard with a fireplace fashioned of oyster-shell tabby, transitioning to rooms that echo Naples’s original cottage homes, with lofted wood ceilings and marble bathrooms with mosaic tiles. The best-of-both-worlds vibe continues with a prime location in the historic Third Street district, just steps away from shops and dining and a short stroll in the other direction to Naples Beach.
opalcollection.com/olde-naples-hotel
Georgia
Visionaries Gone Wild
Art
Artist colonies may have been a dime a dozen in the 1960s and ’70s, but few retreats were as remote—as in, accessible only by boat—as the Ossabaw Island Project and Genesis, a pair of multidisciplinary arts residencies on an undeveloped barrier island off Georgia’s coast. The salt-marsh-lined, live-oak-shaded spit of land is home to a host of endangered critters and has lured creatives to its wild terrain for decades, securing designation as the state’s first Heritage Preserve in 1978. “Ossabaw took on a mythology of its own, and became a real sanctuary for artists,” says Erin Dunn, a cocurator of Off the Coast of Paradise: Artists and Ossabaw Island, 1961–Now (through September 6) at Telfair’s Jepson Center in Savannah. Collecting photography, painting, sculpture, and more from OIP and Genesis members, Dunn likened the curation process to a treasure hunt; the major exhibition is the first to explore the island’s creative legacy.
Kentucky
Toasting Fifteen Years of Bourbon Women
Drinks
Peggy Noe Stevens was anointed in bourbon culture during her Louisville upbringing, attending Derby parties and watching her mom mix highballs. But she was baptized entirely in the spirit when she became a master bourbon taster and, in 2011, founded Bourbon Women Association to help female friends and colleagues feel more at home in the brown-water world. At the organization’s annual SIPosium (August 13–16) in Louisville, the country’s only consumer-oriented whiskey conference for women, Bourbon Women will mark fifteen years with its biggest party yet. “When we announced this year’s hotel room block, the response was so big and so fast, it shut down the reservation system,” Stevens says. “It’s because we’re serving great education, but there’s plenty of fun, too.” Attendees will soak up know-how during behind-the-scenes excursions to more than a dozen distilleries and venues including Whiskey Thief Distilling and the family-owned Vendome Copper & Brass (a still-making company). They’ll expand their palates with tastings and savor, for example, how salty country ham enhances whiskey in food-pairing workshops. Mix-and-mingle events don’t take themselves too seriously: A pajama party with a DJ spinning dance tunes will set the stage for attendees to swap stories while sipping the event’s anniversary blend, crafted by nine master distillers and blenders including Alex Castle and Lisa Roper Wicker. “SIP built this close-knit community and these lasting friendships,” Stevens says. “They’re the magic that I never anticipated and what I’m most proud of.”
bourbonwomen.org/siposium-2026
Louisiana
Imported Stories, Salvaged
Openings
When Hurricane Ida made landfall in 2021, it dealt a serious blow to a Donaldsonville city institution. Over three decades, the River Road African American Museum had grown from a single exhibit at a former plantation to its own site in the small Mississippi River town. But after the storm damaged the main building, cofounder Darryl Hambrick saw an opportunity to upgrade. The museum, which returned to its renovated home this year, explores the region’s antebellum past from a Black perspective. “I’m proud of the history of the Africans who were brought to these plantations, because I see nothing but Black excellence,” Hambrick says. Exhibitions introduce visitors to such local standouts as Pierre Caliste Landry, who in 1868 became the nation’s first African American mayor, and Plas Johnson, a Donaldsonville-born musician known for his saxophone solo on “The Pink Panther Theme.” In a nearby historic church that the museum operates, an exhibition is devoted to the 272 people Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown University once enslaved, who were sold to plantations along the Mississippi. That history, which journalists exposed a decade ago, prompted the university to offer scholarships to their descendants. “The most fascinating part is to be able to tell those stories,” Hambrick says, “turning trauma into something triumphant.”
Maryland
A Private Retreat Goes Public
Openings
Mike Dreisbach and his wife, Jan Russell, had a guiding principle when they opened Savage River Lodge in the western Maryland mountains in 1999. “We tried to make sure that nature was at the center of what we did,” Dreisbach says. Their forty-acre in-holding within a 55,000-acre state forest offered guests private hiking trails, fly fishing, and cross-country skiing, along with upscale cabins and yurts with heated floors. When the couple were ready to retire, they asked the state to buy and preserve the property. That decision was a no-brainer, says Sarah Milbourne of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. “It’s a magical place. For us to not sweep this up as quickly as we could really would have been such a loss.” Late this summer, the property will reopen as Savage Highlands State Park, with upgraded infrastructure and a focus on families. The improved accommodations will also be a welcome addition to the region, which is known for dense forests of hemlock and rhododendron but has little in the way of lodging. “It was a tremendous thirty-year journey, and today it’s our legacy,” Dreisbach says. “I have complete confidence in the state of Maryland…this place is going to be sparkling.”
Mississippi
A Half Century of the Full English
Anniversary
A 1976 menu for the Crown Restaurant described it as “a cozy English tea room” serving scones with cream and jam, chicken curry, and shepherd’s pie in a room filled with antique furniture and artwork. Not exactly what you’d expect to find in a nondescript metal building just outside Indianola, hemmed in by Mississippi Delta cotton. And yet, under the stewardship of antique dealers Evelyn and Tony Roughton, the restaurant, named for the couple’s favorite country inn to visit during a four-year stint in England, thrived, drawing regulars for buttery Parmesan-crusted Catfish Allison and Mississippi Delta Fudge Pie. Although a half century has brought some changes—Jennifer Schaumberg, who spent her early years pushing a dessert-laden tea cart for the owners (her parents), now oversees day-to-day operations at the “new” (opened in 1997) location downtown—its old-school appeal remains undeniably the same.
the-crown-restaurant.menu-world.com
North Carolina
Shining Up a Mountain Gem
Hotels
Road trippers from Florida and Georgia have long passed through the whistle-stop hamlet of Dillsboro, near the crossroads of U.S. Highway 441 and the Great Smoky Mountains Expressway. But “I grew up here,” says Chris Ellsworth, who calls himself a “real estate adventurist” and now lives in Atlanta. Still, even he wasn’t prepared for the work that lay ahead when he purchased Jarrett House, Dillsboro’s once-proud circa-1884 hotel, in 2021. Besides shoring up the sagging grande dame, Ellsworth used 1930s photographs of the inn to inspire a major renovation while adding modern amenities like heated floors and a full bourbon bar. Along the way, “I learned what Jarrett House means to this community,” he says. While the hotel is slated to reopen this summer with twenty-three rooms and two suites, “not a day goes by that someone doesn’t stop by to say thank you for restoring their hotel,” Ellsworth adds. That includes keeping much of the original restaurant menu intact, including one-bite biscuits and slices of vinegar pie.
South Carolina
The Upstate’s Big Appetite
Food
Classically trained French chef Nico Abello partly credits his move to Greenville—recently highlighted as a culinary destination on Top Chef—to a 2018 missed flight. Unable to return to New York City in time for weekend service at his Michelin-starred restaurant, L’Appart, he impulsively extended his family’s stay, exploring (and quickly falling for) the Southern city. This summer, Abello is launching his latest restaurant, Enlō, steps away from Greenville’s cascading waterfalls downtown, with a French-inspired tasting menu that “plays with the season.” Just a half hour away in Spartanburg, chef Michael Rednak—formerly of Husk Barbeque in Greenville—will soon open Lucy Anne’s, a “Southern trattoria” serving spins on classics like shrimp and polenta alongside fresh-made ricotta agnolotti. In West Greenville, chef Conner Hinderks relocated from New Orleans and recently began hosting diners at Little Secret, which offers what he calls “chaos cuisine,” mixing up culinary traditions into tamarind sticky ribs and Szechuan steak au poivre. Secret’s decor is just as playful. With an aquamarine exterior, pink walls, and party-accommodating patio, Hinderks says, “daytime disco is our vibe.”
enlorestaurant.com; lucy-annes.com; littlesecretgvl.com
Tennessee
The Fest Covering Fifty Venues
Music
You don’t have to bring a blanket or pitch a tent to enjoy a marathon of live Southern tunes. Just ask patrons of Americanafest, the multiday, fifty-venue (!) showcase and conference that has taken over Nashville for more than twenty-five years. While the festival runs from September 15 through 19, the marquee event is the Americana Music Honors & Awards at the historically cool Ryman Auditorium on the 16th. This year’s nominees include Brandi Carlile, Tyler Childers, Lucinda Williams, and Jesse Welles, and they’re all invited along with the next generation of stars. But in addition to Americanafest’s hundreds of live performances throughout the week, including by such artists as Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs, Melissa Etheridge, and Shakey Graves, some of the most memorable moments each year are the ones you can’t predict.
Texas
Putting Their Feet Down
Traditions
For fifteen years, Adeline and Larry Castleberry have made the trek from Fort Worth to the Messina Hof winery in Bryan. At the height of every summer, they join a crowd to kick off their shoes and stomp on grapes. It’s part of a juicy Texas tradition that sees dozens of vineyards from the High Plains to the Hill Country invite the public to help pick and crush the harvest. “It’s a group of friends and families cheering each other on when they’re stomping,” Larry says. “It’s chaotic fun.” These days the couple bring their two grandchildren along and make a weekend of it. While processing grapes by foot is a millennia-old practice, Texas stomping took inspiration in part from a classic episode of I Love Lucy, says Karen Bonarrigo. Her family owns Messina Hof, which adopted the stomping tradition shortly after opening in 1977. “You can feel the grapes under your toes,” Bonarrigo says. “It’s almost like when you’re a kid and you get to jump into a mud puddle.”
Virginia
Making Waves on the East Coast
Outdoors
Virginia Beach can trace its history as the birthplace of East Coast surfing to 1912, when a young rider first caught a local wave on a twelve-foot Hawaiian redwood board. Now the city has opened the $350 million Atlantic Park development, with a wave lagoon that’s the only one of its kind in North America. The attraction’s split design allows for a right-hand break and a left break to accommodate both regular stance and goofy-footed (right foot forward) surfers. “You might surf ten good waves in a couple hours in the ocean versus basically twenty perfect waves an hour at Atlantic Park,” says Connor Goldsmith, who took up the sport almost six years ago when he moved to Virginia Beach from Louisiana. “I am always improving and can transfer that back to the ocean.” The Sitio boutique hotel overlooks the lagoon, while on-site music venue the Dome by Rutter Mills might host surprise guests like the Virginia Beach native son and park partner Pharrell Williams. Along the oceanfront just a couple of blocks from the park, the oldest continuous surfing competition in the world—the Coastal Edge East Coast Surfing Championships—runs August 23–30, and the Super Girl Surf Festival (September 5–7) brings the world’s largest women’s surfing event to town for its twentieth anniversary.
Washington, D.C.
Room to Grow
Art
In 1974, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden opened in the heart of the National Mall, unveiling Joseph H. Hirshhorn’s collection of sculptural masterpieces, including work from Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, and Alexander Calder. Fifty-plus years later, its 60,000 square feet of gallery space and welcoming outdoor plot remain an art hub. Now Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960, on through October, looks back at a time marked by revolutions in science, philosophy, and industry. Pablo Picasso’s first cubist sculpture, Head of a Woman, is on display, along with Queen of Hearts by Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock’s Number 3, 1949: Tiger. Meanwhile, a $68 million outdoor renovation—the largest in the museum’s history—is transforming the garden, which will reopen this fall. Artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto is updating the design to make space for more native plants and newly acquired contemporary works such as Dancing at Dusk, a carved stone piece by Raven Halfmoon of the Caddo Nation.
West Virginia
Total Class Act
Hotels
Before her passing in 2016, Pat “Patsy” Phillips Wendell was an energetic advocate for preserving the history of her hometown, Fayetteville. No doubt she’d be pleased to see the three-story Fayetteville High School building, constructed of local sandstone in 1923 and closed because of school consolidation in 2019, reborn as Hill Hall Hotel. “My grandmother is the star of this project,” says Mountain Shore Properties CEO Stephen Wendell. Thus, while converting the building and an adjacent mid-century middle school into forty stylish, light-filled guest rooms, designers took great care to retain the tall windows, wide hallways, and even original slate chalkboards that provide visual links to the past. Guests returning from adventures at nearby New River Gorge National Park find that the hotel’s restaurant, Patsy’s, serves additional delights its namesake was known for—meat loaf, fruit cobblers, and her signature Chex mix.
—Larry Bleiberg, Crai Bower, Christine Koubek Flynn, Robert Alan Grand, Matt Hendrickson, Jordan P. Hickey, Jennifer Stewart Kornegay, Lindsey Liles, Grace Roberts, and Steve Russell