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America, rediscovered: 6 timely tours to take in the United States right now
When it comes to planning vacations, Americans are showing a strong interest in exploring their home nation’s history and landscapes. According to a May 2026 survey of 1,200 respondents in the U.S. and Canada from EF Go Ahead Tours and Qualtrics Research, 73% of U.S. travelers said they’d be interested in tours specifically focused on American history. Per the EF Go Ahead Tours Traveler Index: Volume II, only 16% expressed diasinterest in history-focused travel. For the former group, the interest in American history isn’t passive; it shapes the trips they plan.
In the wake of America 250 celebrations, would-be travelers in the U.S. are looking to their own vast and diverse country as the backdrop for their next trip.
The nation’s semiquincentennial is reshaping domestic travel in real time, drawing travelers to the founding cities, battlefields, and landscapes that shaped the republic. Among survey respondents interested in U.S. history tours, 48% said the American Revolution era appealed to them most. Civil War and Civil Rights history follow closely, and the Gilded Age and World War II round out the list.
Yet, the data also reveals a striking gap between intent and experience. While 70% of the most active American travelers have visited New York City and 65% have visited Washington, D.C., only about half have been to Boston or Philadelphia, the cities where America’s independence was debated, declared, and won. Fewer than one in five have visited Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; Lexington or Concord, Massachusetts; or Yorktown, Virginia. For most Americans, the founding landscape of the United States remains unexplored territory.
That gap between interest and personal experience in America’s key historical locations inspired EF Go Ahead Tours to recommend these six U.S. itineraries that turn historical curiosity into lived experience across national parks, island paradises, glacier-carved wildernesses, and the storied streets of colonial New England.
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1. U.S. National Parks: The Grand Canyon to Yellowstone
The American West is a geologic time machine. This itinerary sweeps through seven national parks across six states, including the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, and Yellowstone, tracing the volcanic activity, wind and water erosion, and other natural phenomena that have sculpted the North American continent over millions of years. At the Grand Canyon, stand on the South Rim and watch the light shift across a mile of exposed geological history. At Bryce Canyon, wander through an otherworldly landscape of sky-scraping hoodoos. At Yellowstone, witness Old Faithful erupt against a backdrop of bison and boiling mud.
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2. Hawaii: Oahu, the Big Island and Maui
Hawaii is one of the world’s most storied crossroads. The archipelago’s history runs from Polynesian seafarers who navigated thousands of miles of open Pacific by stars and swells, to the kingdom’s annexation in 1898, to the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II. On Oahu, the USS Arizona Memorial marks the resting place of the sailors and Marines killed on the battleship during the attack. On the Big Island, Volcanoes National Park tells an even older story: the raw creation of land itself, with lava still flowing where the island continues to grow. Maui’s Road to Hana winds past waterfalls and ancient fishponds. This itinerary deserves more than a week to visit three islands, each with its own distinctive layers of geology, history, culture, and coastline.
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3. Alaska’s National Parks: Denali and the Kenai Fjords
The 49th state defies easy description. Alaska is larger than Texas, California, and Montana combined. It’s a place where grizzlies fish rivers in view of snow-capped peaks, glaciers calve into frigid fjords, and the northern lights, given the right season and latitude, fill the sky with curtains of green and violet light. From Fairbanks, travel south through Denali National Park, home to North America’s tallest mountain, then on to the tidewater glaciers and sea otters of Kenai Fjords National Park near Seward. Alaska entered the Union in 1959, but its history stretches back millennia through the Athabascan, Yup’ik, and Tlingit peoples, who shaped this land long before statehood. For travelers who believe that history is written in landscape, Alaska is essential reading.
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4. Canada and New England: Quebec City, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine
Although it starts in Quebec City, rooted in French culture, this itinerary takes travelers on a deep dive into New England and sheds light on the origins of the United States. Start the New England portion with a relaxing stay at the von Trapp Family Lodge & Resort in the Green Mountains of Stowe, Vermont. The itinerary continues on to Boston and its surrounding suburbs, visiting the very terrain where the American experiment was conceived and first tested. Walk the battle road at Lexington and Concord, where, on April 19, 1775, the first shots of the Revolution were fired; explore the cobblestoned streets of Boston’s North End, keeping your taste buds peeled for hunting the perfect pizza slice, pasta dish, lobster roll, and cannoli; see where Samuel Adams and Paul Revere organized resistance in the early days of the American experiment. If you have time, continue North to trace the rugged Maine coast where early colonists scratched out a living centuries before the republic existed.
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5. Fall Foliage Tour: Vermont to Massachusetts
There’s a reason New England’s fall foliage draws visitors from around the world every October: It is, by any measure, one of the most spectacular natural events on the continent. Maples, oaks, and birches in the hills of Vermont and the Berkshires of western Massachusetts ignite in shades of crimson, amber, and gold. This Itinerary captures the peak of that transformation, visiting Stowe, Vermont’s postcard-perfect village beneath Mount Mansfield; the artists’ enclave of Woodstock; and the historic college towns of the Pioneer Valley. It also weaves in the deep history of the region—the Puritan settlements, the witch trials, the abolitionist movements—that give New England’s beauty its complicated, compelling weight.
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6. America’s National Parks by Train: Rocky Mountains, Arches and Zion
The railroad didn’t just connect America—it created it. The transcontinental railroad, completed at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869, stitched the continent together and made the West accessible in ways that forever changed the country. This itinerary honors that legacy by combining train travel through the Rocky Mountains with visits to Arches and Zion National Parks—a journey that mirrors the routes taken by 19th-century explorers and settlers through terrain that seemed, to those from the country’s eastern reaches, almost otherworldly. Float the Colorado River through Castle Valley. Ride a Hummer through Moab’s red-hued canyons at sunset. Hike the canyon floor of Zion Narrows.
EF Go Ahead’s survey found that 57% of today’s travelers prefer a mix of cities and natural landscapes. This itinerary delivers both, with the added romance of the rails.
The Bigger Picture
The traveler sentiment survey paints a portrait of an American travel public that is looking to plan trips. In the face of global uncertainty, 75% of high-intent travelers surveyed confirmed plans to travel in the next one to two years, and 58% say that learning about the history and culture of the places they visit is very or extremely important to them.
America’s 250th anniversary gives that curiosity a focal point. The founding battle sites and historic cities, the glaciers and geysers, the dramatic shorelines—they’re all waiting. The only question is where to go first.
Methodology
The EF Go Ahead Tours Traveler Index Vol. II was conducted in May 2026 in partnership with Qualtrics Research (n=1,200 U.S. and Canadian high-intent travelers).
This story was produced by EF Go Ahead Tours and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
