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Here’s the thing nobody tells you about living in (or repeatedly visiting) Las Vegas: it might be the single best national-park base camp in America. Zion is under three hours away, Death Valley two, the Grand Canyon a long-but-doable four-plus, and Valley of Fire — which would be a headline park in most states —

Nashville is surrounded by more variety than people give it credit for: the longest cave system on Earth is 90 minutes north, whiskey country is an hour south, and within three or so hours you can be standing in the Smokies, on Beale Street, or on a Kentucky bourbon tour. The drives themselves are easy

San Diego’s weekend-trip hand is almost unfair. Drive an hour in different directions and you’re eating apple pie in a gold-rush mountain town, tasting wine in Temecula, or crossing into Baja for the best food value on this list. Two to three hours opens the desert — Anza-Borrego, Palm Springs, Joshua Tree — plus alpine

Philadelphia sits in one of the densest weekend-trip zones in the country, and the drives are short enough that most of these work even if you can’t leave until Saturday morning. An hour puts you at the Jersey Shore or on the Delaware River in New Hope; ninety minutes buys Amish farmland or a Victorian

Washington DC might be the best-positioned big city in America for weekend trips, and most people who live here never fully use it. Within about an hour of the Beltway you can be sailing on the Chesapeake or standing where the Potomac cuts through the Blue Ridge. Within three hours you have Atlantic beaches, mountain