13 awesome and new things to do in the USA in 2022

The long-anticipated First Americans Museum (FAM) opened to fanfare in 2021. Now it's one of the nation's premier state-of-the-art cultural spaces dedicated to Native people. The museum's exhibitions introduce visitors to the stories and heritage of Oklahoma's 39 tribes, which include those who've lived in the area since time immemorial and those who were forced there along the Trail of Tears in the mid-19th century. The museum also has workshops and public events and is working towards opening a 5,000 square foot FAMily Discovery Center with activities for all ages.

San Francisco's newest park reimagines a travel corridor through the city into a wide-open green space with incredible views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. The Presidio Tunnel Tops, which are slated to open in Spring 2022, include a working campfire circle, new trails, green meadows for lounging and the Outpost, an enormous outdoor playground. Kiddos will also get a kick out of the Field Station, where they can drop in to draw butterflies, touch crawfish and discover maps.

Biking took off in during the pandemic and if you're planning to keep up the popular pastime post-COVID, put the Parks, Peaks and Prairies trail on your bucket list. The 1,287-mile trail connects Yellowstone National Park in Montana to Minneapolis, Minnesota taking you through some of the most beautiful landscapes in the U.S. along the way including Black Hills National Park, Badlands National Park, Devils Tower National Monument and Mount Rushmore. The route is broken up into three parts, each between 380 and 508 miles long.

Those crazy kids at Disney have come up with a new immersive experience for Star Wars fans. The Galactic Starcruiser hotel at Hollywood Studios in Florida isn't just a place to rest your head, it's an out-of-this-world adventure. Battle it out with a lightsaber, take starcruiser engineering lessons, fly to Batuu or feast on space cuisine with interstellar characters. The all-inclusive experience comes with a pass to the larger terrestrial park outside.

This is as epic as train rides come. The Rocky Mountaineer takes you on a two-day ride from Denver, Colorado to Moab, Utah, with 360-views of the stunning Rocky Mountains through the train's glass roof, and an overnight stay in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The 2022 season will kick off in August and will run through October. 

Dolly Parton fervor is at an all-time high. In the last couple of years, the singer managed to release a Christmas album, win an Emmy for her 2020 Christmas special, donate 700,000 to Tennessee flood victims, and also fund one of the Covid-19 vaccines—a true American hero. If you want to celebrate all things Dolly, consider a trip to the Dolly-inspired bar White Limozeen, named after the country star's 1989 album and title song. The rooftop watering hole is a vision in pink—pink walls, pink couches, pink chairs and even a pink giant chicken-wire sculpture of Parton herself—and even has a pool.

You'll be able to light up in four more states across the USA in 2022 after New Jersey, South Dakota, Montana and Arizona passed laws legalizing recreational marijuana for those 21 and older. Fourteen other states and the District of Columbia already allow for legal recreational marijuana. The new laws mean that right now more than one in three Americans live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal. 

After a few false starts, the Academy—yes, of Oscars fame—finally opened its museum in 2021. The galleries fill a Streamline Moderne former department store with six stories of exhibitions and event spaces topped by a panoramic rooftop terrace. It also includes a tacked-on theatre in a massive Renzo Piano-designed orb. The chance to see Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard Of Oz or Jack’s corduroy jacket from The Shining are reasons enough to visit, but the opening exhibition is a stunner: a Hayao Miyazaki retrospective that includes images and production cels on display for the first time outside of Studio Ghibli’s Japanese offices, on through June 5, 2022. 

Introducing the Empire State Trail, a 750-mile, T-shaped trail that runs throughout New York state and connects its populous southern areas with the Canadian border. The trail, which builds on a network of existing pathways, is open to hikers, bikers and more. Along the way it wanders through cities, small village main streets, rural communities and other Hudson River Valley, Erie Canalway and Adirondacks landscapes (and past tons of microbreweries, too!). 

For years, Glacier National Park’s educational signs predicted that its eponymous ice sheets would be gone by the year 2020. A recent change to the park’s signs concede that this doomsday scenario hasn’t come to pass—yet—but that doesn’t mean you should sleep on a visit this year. Recreate the opening scene from The Shining with a drive along Saint Mary Lake and board a red bus from the 1930s for a trip along Going-to-the-Sun Road, a mountain-hugging highway that traverses the park’s heavenly terrain. (You’ll spot plenty of glaciers and mountain goats, too.)

The very first official Olympic museum in the United States has been welcoming visitors since summer 2020. The 6,000 square-foot space includes 12 galleries organized in a way so that visitors get to walk through a team USA athlete's journey, from training to competitions and medal collections. Actual American Olympians worked as consultants on the project, to render the experience as authentic as possible.

Tucked away in Tulsa, Oklahoma is the coolest park we’ve ever seen. The Gathering Place is a 100-acre, regional destination complete with year-round programming, a three-acre, man-made lake and a children’s playground that rivals any amusement park in the country. Best part? It’s all free. Throw in various sports courts as well as dedicated spaces for street hockey, a skate park, a BMX track, and a jogging trail and you might never want to leave this former fly-over city. 

You'll actually get to step inside the works of the great Vincent Van Gogh when a new immersive experience dedicated to the artist debuts at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields in 2021. Almost 150 state-of-the-art high-definition projectors will take up 30,000 square feet of space on the museum's fourth floor, transforming famous two-dimensional paintings into three-dimensional projections that guests can walk through and around. In total, the museum hopes to showcase about 3,000 moving images of the artist's paintings—from lesser-known ones to the renowned Sunflowers and The Starry Night—while classic music plays in the background.