Field Notes
The guides on this site were written in 2023 and 2024. Field Notes are newer: each one takes a handful of those guides, checks what still holds, and pulls them into something you can plan with.
Field Notes started with a practical problem. The guides on this site were written one place at a time, between 2023 and early 2024, and some of them cover the same ground. Four different pages deal with Kauai’s North Shore. The Salt Lake City list has fifty entries, which is more than anyone can fit into a long weekend. Read separately, they are useful. Read together, they say a lot more.
So each note takes a handful of guides and reads them side by side. We check the details that age fastest, such as park rules, reservation systems and venues that have changed their names, and keep what still holds. One note sets Hawaii’s beaches next to the beaches around Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, one cuts the Salt Lake City list down to three days, and one looks at what our own archive teaches about writing about a place.
Every guide a note discusses is linked in the text and listed beside it, and each of those guides links back to the note, so you can move from the summary to the original and make up your own mind. The notes are written in 2026 by the people who keep this archive online, not by the original authors. Where a note and an older guide disagree on a fact, go with the note. Where they disagree on a feeling, the person who was there probably had it right.
Lanikai or Macao? What Our Hawaii Beach Guides Teach About Picking a Caribbean Beach
Six Hawaii beach guides, one common question about whether the Caribbean can stand in, and a checklist that works on both oceans.
Draws on 6 guides
October 13, 2026 FNFifty Was Too Many: Turning Our Salt Lake City List Into Three Real Days
A list of fifty attractions is a menu, not a plan. Here is how we would actually spend three days in Salt Lake City, summer or ski season, using the guide we wrote in 2023.
Draws on 5 guides
October 12, 2026 FNNine-Car Lots and Painted Horses: What Our Old Posts Teach About Writing a Place
We went back through our own guides with a red pen. The sentences that hold up are the specific ones, and the lesson applies to anyone writing about a trip, from bloggers to students with an essay due.
Draws on 6 guides