It is hard to beat the thrill of spending a week kayaking around Prince William Sound.

Days are spent paddling along fjords to reach tidewater glaciers where you bob around in the ice-filled waters waiting for some action. With luck a huge wall of ice will peel away with a thunderous roar.

It is a thrilling experience tempered only by the fear that the ensuing wave might be bigger than expected. Prudent paddlers will stay at least 500m back from the face, though the glaciers are so huge you feel much closer.

Alaska's finest multi-day hike follows the Chilkoot Trail, a 33-mile route from the lowland forests around the gold-rush town of Skagway over the snow-bound coastal mountains to Lake Bennett, one of the sources of the Yukon River over the border in Canadian British Columbia.

Sure, you can hit the beach in a lot of places. But a beach so lovely as to be preserved by a president? Such is the case with the Cape Cod National Seashore.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy, Jr established the Cape Cod National Seashore – nearly 40 miles of fragile coastline – so that this sugary sandscape would remain protected for future generations.

The United States Rockies are an outdoor nirvana. They not only offer virtually every possible type of landscape, but also have enough infrastructure to make it all accessible without having so much that it’s over-developed or overcrowded.

Whether its solitude or adrenaline, you can have it all here. There’s plenty of scope for patient wildlife watching, just soaking up meadows full of wildflowers, contemplating life while tramping along a trail or simply whiling away an afternoon fly-fishing for the many healthy trout.

No beer tastes better, no hearty pub grub more satisfying, than that consumed after an active day in the mountains.

Perhaps this is why so many microbreweries have accumulated around the Rockies: one town – Fort Collins, Colorado – had seven at the last count, and they pop up in every corner region.

Along with inventive and distinctive brews you always also find great bar food here. Perhaps it’s the scenery that inspires the mountainous portions, but it’s usually the local ingredients that really make the difference.

You can legally drive on Daytona's 20-mile stretch of sandy beach

A quintessential, slightly tawdry Florida beach town, Daytona Beach is lined with T-shirt shops, amusement arcades and strings of motels on every arterial road.

Columbus mistook the manatee for a mermaid

Though a distant relative of the elephant, its broad girth and whiskered snout makes the Florida manatee look more like an oversized toothless walrus.

Strange then, that despite this appearance of cheerful caricature, Christopher Columbus' crew is said to have mistaken the docile beasts for mermaids.

Tuck into a real Key Lime Pie in the Florida Keys

Imposter pies in various lime-green hues may pop up on menus all over America, but for a glorious and authentic Key Lime Pie you'll need to go to the Florida Keys.

A delicacy born out of necessity, the pie was developed from a lack of fresh milk before the arrival of the railroad in 1912.

A trip to New England wouldn’t be complete without a lobster dinner – it’s a culinary rite of passage for first-time visitors.

Maine is regarded as the lobster capital of the region (in 2004 there were 3.2 million lobster traps in Maine waters) and across the state people line up at seafood shacks and lobster pounds to get their hands on this sublime, sweet meat.

Travel agents and tour guides make much of New England’s autumn season, spinning what is essentially a bunch of colorful leaves into an oft-used selling point.

For once though, it’s safe to believe the hype – there isn’t anything quite like an autumn in New England, where the temperature, climate and species of trees converge to create a technicolor landscape unique to this little corner of the world.

Colorado alone attracts around six million skiers every year – an almost incomprehensible figure until you realize how great the skiing in the Rockies really is. 

Somehow it never occurs to some visitors that if you come to Alaska in summer you won’t experience the northern lights.

They’re there alright, but since it never gets truly dark you’ve no chance of seeing them. Stick around until late September, or make a special trip in winter and it is a different matter.