Most cities have at least one interesting neighborhood to explore on foot, while large cities -- like New York and Chicago -- have dozens of areas that lend themselves to walking tours. Southern cities that are especially walk-worthy include New Orleans, Louisiana, with its French Quarter and Garden District, Savannah, Georgia, with its cobbled riverfront lanes and passageways, and Charleston, South Carolina, with its waterfront promenade along the Battery.
Farther west, the downtown of Salt Lake City, Utah is laced with historic buildings and gardens, and downtown San Francisco has a number of interesting walking areas, including Chinatown and the curiously shaped Lombard Street.
New York's Central Park is a well known walking destination but other cities also have urban parks that make for great weekend walks. Balboa Park, in San Diego, has miles of trails as well as gardens to explore. When you get tired, visit one or more of the park's 15 museums. Portland's Forest Park is a 5000-acre refuge that will make you forget you're near a large urban area. And San Francisco's Golden Gate Park features a windmill and a Victorian greenhouse to admire as you walk.
National and state parks and forests are great places for weekend walking. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in Tennessee and North Carolina, has hundreds of miles of trails that feature 130 species of trees, 1,500 types of flowering plants and 200 species of bird. Walk part of the Oregon Trail by starting at the base of Mt. Hood in Mt. Hood National Forest and walk along the Columbia River. At Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, in Miami, you can walk a mile of white sandy beach in the shadows of a lighthouse built in 1825.
Theme walks can take the form of city or nature walks. A Martin Luther King Jr. walk, for example, could include a visit to King's Atlanta birthplace as well as a walk around his Sweet Auburn neighborhood. Stop by the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park and take an audio tour of the city's historic jazz sites, including Louis Armstrong Park and the Jazz Walk of Fame. An Ivy League walk could explore one or more Ivy League college campuses. Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, has miles of walking trails, some of which cross bridges over gorges that run through the campus.
