Ideal Location Stays is a field guide to the places worth staying a while. We write long, honest lists of the best mountain towns, beach towns, river towns, and ski towns in the country, and increasingly beyond it, with the caveats left in. No sponsored placements, no pay-to-list, no places we would not go ourselves.

Suggest a place

If you know a town that belongs on one of our lists, tell us. We are especially interested in the places the big travel magazines overlook: the small gateway towns, the working river communities, the ski hills that never turned into resorts. Write to hello@ideallocationstays.com and tell us what makes it worth a week.

Property owners and managers

We are building toward a curated collection of places to stay in the landscapes we write about. If you own or manage a short-term rental, a small lodge, or a boutique property in a genuine nature destination, we would like to hear from you. Reach us at stays@ideallocationstays.com.

Corrections

We try to get the details right, the trail mileages, the snowfall averages, the seasons, and the honest drawbacks, and we cite our sources. When we get something wrong, we fix it. If you spot an error in any article, email corrections@ideallocationstays.com and we will correct the record.

Part of Ideal Location

Stays is one property in a larger family built around a single idea: that economy and ecology are not opposites but one system. Our nonprofit sister site, Ideal Location, maintains a directory of more than twelve thousand environmental organizations and a library of climate solutions. Every place we write about sits inside a real landscape that someone is working to protect, and we link to them throughout.