Wild West

You don't need to be able to ride; you don't have to be able to sing Rhinestone Cowboy.

To enjoy a ranching holiday, you just have to love the American West, or the idea of it.

I have now been on three ranching holidays - two in Wyoming and one in Montana - and each followed a similarly delightful daily pattern: wake unfeasibly early, eat high-calorific breakfast involving grits, pancakes and mountains of bacon; saddle up; ride out with wrangler Clint/Spike/Bertha; marvel at the astonishing scenery; dismount for lunch; fall over because knee muscles have disintegrated; eat high-calorific lunch; swim; play horseshoes; shoot clay pigeons; track moose; ride out again; hobble to bar; drink Bourbon as sun goes down over prairie; weep at sheer beauty of the view/the barmaid/the welts on your thighs; eat high-calorific dinner; play softball; return to bar; offer to marry barmaid and move to Montana; topple into bed in quaint cabin; sleep as you have never slept before.

Walking in LA - your Walk of Fame

Los Angeles can still deliver a thrill - especially if you're prepared to leave the car behind

BACKGROUND

• Art attack in LA

• Family adventures in the USA

• The world's biggest hotel - in Vegas

• The largest casino in the US

• The world's greatest wine cellar

Six of the best US holidays

If planning the trip of a lifetime Stateside, where would six Times writers and US specialists go?

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The high point? Watching Cowboy Clint hypnotise a chicken on the bar of Paradise Ranch, Wyoming. The chicken had no memory of this experience when it woke up. I, on the other hand, will never forget it.

Ben Macintyre, former New York correspondent

Do it: Ranch America (0845 2773306, www.ranchamerica.co.uk) has seven nights at Paradise Ranch in Wyoming from £1,699pp with full board, soft drinks, most ranch activities and flights.

New York, New York

This is where the modern US was made, where the Italians, Jews, Poles and Irish, Chinese, Puerto Ricans and Jamaicans began their American adventure. From Central Park to Ellis Island, and beyond into Brooklyn and Jersey, it's all a film set from a thousand movies, every inch familiar. Walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, take the park stroll to the Met, yellow cab it with a Sikh or Afghan down to the Village, breakfast at an old-style deli and never experience even the shadow of a moment's boredom. New York is real-life romance, everything else is a pretty dream.

David Aaronovitch

Do it: Letsgo2 (0871 2083015, www.new-york.letsgo2.com) is offering a three-night break to New York for £525pp staying at the three-star New Yorker hotel and flights.

Historic Charleston

In 1066 and All That, the Cavaliers are described as “wrong but romantic”. The same is true of the Confederates in the American Civil War. Charleston was the South's cultural and spiritual centre. It remains so.

This is proper Gone With The Wind territory. Here, if the locals talk about something being “postwar”, they are referring to 1865, not 1945. It is a place of extraordinary beauty, with more churches per square mile than any other city in the US, surrounded by exotic islands and beaches. Yet what really counts is its continuity. Charleston has been no more immune to change than the rest of the inherently restless United States. It just feels as if it has somehow managed to preserve its soul despite all the turmoil.

Political columnist Tim Hames

Do it: TrekAmerica (0845 3306095, www.trekamerica.com) visits Charleston on a variety of tours, including the 35-day Transcontinental South. The trip costs from £1,560pp, including transport, accommodation, camping equipment and the services of a tour leader. Flights cost extra.

Washington DC

The late Sir Robin Day once told me that if he were reincarnated, he would like it to be as a US state governor. Me? I'd like to be a Justice of the Supreme Court. I can see myself striding to work, robes flowing, taking those white marble steps two at a time, on my way to defend the rights of man.

There is America as you might imagine it (Las Vegas? Manhattan?), there's America as it really is (Milwaukee? Rural Texas?), and there's America as it sees itself. And that means Washington DC. You haven't been there? You haven't visited America.

DC, where you can wonder at the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials, visit the Smithsonian museums, the Capitol, see the White House, read the aspirations of democracy's great experiment etched in marble. And stride up the steps of the Supreme Court, two at a time.

Daniel Finkelstein's Comment Central blog covers the US election

Do it: Thomas Cook Signature (0870 4434447, www.tcsignature.com) offers five nights at the Holiday Inn Capitol in Washington from £884pp, including flights and car hire, but not breakfast.

Florida theme parks

If you have kids, how could you not go to Orlando? You get sunshine, cheap meals and service with a smile. They get the trip of a lifetime. They'll drag you round the ride-based theme parks - Disney's Magic Kingdom, Universal Studios - which are great, but exhausting. So insist on visiting Disney's Animal Kingdom: in one short “Jeep” ride around the savannah, you'll cross a lake of snapping crocs, and find enough animals with “k” and “z” in their name to improve your Scrabble beyond recognition.

Dominic Wells, theme park aficionado

Do it: Premier Holidays (08444 937666, www.premierholidays.co.uk) has a week at the Marriott Village, Lake Buena Vista, Orlando, from £1,049 per adult and £629 per child. This includes breakfast, car hire, five- day passes for Disneyworld and flights.

Maine course

Go to Maine. Don't go in the summer, when everyone goes. I've been twice in the late spring, and eaten the best fried clams ever in a nearly empty, beautiful Bar Harbour, and walked through Acadia National Park when there was still snow on the ground. The hotels were empty (with the dollar the way it is, this would be less true now, but still...) and we could walk in peace by the roaring ocean. Portland's a lovely little city, too, where (you'll notice a snacking theme) we found a restaurant that made scrambled eggs by frothing them with the steam attachment of a cappuccino machine. Brilliant. Not to mention the lobsters, served just as they are with gallons of butter.

Erica Wagner, Books editor, US citizen

Do it: Bon Voyage (0800 3160194,www.bon-voyage. co.uk) has a week's fly-drive to Maine for £699pp, including three-star hotels car hire and flights.

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