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Fleet Foxes’ ‘A Very Lonely Solstice’ Is The Band’s First Livestream Since The Release Of ‘Shore’

At the exact moment of the autumn equinox, Fleet Foxes surprise-released their well-received album Shore. The group has not performed a single livestream since their album’s September release, but that’s about the change. Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold announced a solo performance of the album on the upcoming winter solstice.

Pecknold will bring his soulful music to the St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, New York for the performance. While the majority of the performance will be Pecknold alone, the singer will also be joined by Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of more than 60 women and non-binary singers, for one song.

Ahead of the livestream’s announcement, Pecknold announced he would be dropping the stems to his Shore album on Bandcamp for fans to remix. Announcing the project in a statement, the singer commented:

“VERY excited to release all of the stems for Shore this Friday on Bandcamp. This is eleven hours of all of the album’s isolated tracks, solo’d drums, vocals, horns, bass, guitars – every individual piece of every song untangled and laid bare. These aren’t royalty free, but any and all remixing / sampling / twisting / creative reuse and reimagining for your personal, non-commercial use is highly encouraged. And if you want to sample for commercial release, just get in touch.”

A Very Lonely Solstice livestream kicks off 12/21 at 9 p.m. EST. Get tickets here.

Shore is out now via Anti. Get it here.

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After being married for 47 years, this couple died of COVID-19 within the same minute

Usually when we share a story of a couple having been married for nearly five decades, it’s a sweet story of lasting love. Usually when we share a story of a long-time married couple dying within minutes of each other, it’s a touching story of not wanting to part from one another at the end of their lives.

The story of Patricia and Leslie “LD” McWaters dying together might have both of those elements, but it is also tragic because they died of a preventable disease in a pandemic that hasn’t been handled well. The Michigan couple, who had been married for 47 years, both died of COVID-19 complications on November 24th. Since they died less than a minute apart, their deaths were recorded with the exact same time—4:23pm.

Patricia, who was 78 at her passing, had made her career as a nurse. LD, who would have turned 76 next month, had been a truck driver. Patricia was “no nonsense” while LD was “fun-loving,” and the couple did almost everything together, according to their joint obituary.



Coronavirus Kills Husband & Wife One Minute Apart – NBC

www.youtube.com

Reading a bit about their life is a reminder of the human toll of this virus.

“Summers they hosted family pool parties, where Pat made way too much food. They loved driving their ’59 Corvette to car shows to meet up with family and friends. We always ended the summer with the annual family canoe trip, in Evart, Michigan. Pat and LD loved going to watch Maxx and Mia race quarter midgets and rarely missed a race. They also enjoyed going up north to watch their grandson, Keaton, play basketball and baseball. Every Tuesday, Pat and LD babysat their great-granddaughter, Arbor and she brought the youth out in them. They attended all their nieces and nephews sporting events. Pat and LD loved to play cards and Mexican Trains with just about anyone who would play. Family game night was something they always looked forward too. Every Saturday was a Hickley’s Day that started with their granddaughter, Chelsea and carried on through their great-grandkids.”

The McWaters’ daughter, Joanna Sisk, did see some sweetness in the tragedy of her parents’ passing, based on the couple’s relationship in life.

“It’s beautiful, but it’s so tragic. Kind of like Romeo and Juliet,” she told NBC affiliate WDIV. “One wouldn’t have wanted to be without the other.”

“I can tell you this, when they passed we think Mom—the boss–she definitely went to his room and said, ‘Come on. Let’s go,'” Sisk said.

Sisk said that hearing people brush off the risks of the virus has been painful as she and her family grapple with such a terrible loss.

“People were talking about it not knowing my parents in the hospital fighting for their lives and I just had tears streaming down my cheeks listening to them,” Sisk said. “Our entire family is completely devastated.”

“It’s tough enough to lose one parent, but this was the worst,” she said.

As the coronavirus careens through the country at a pace we haven’t seen since the outbreak began, it’s more important than ever to be vigilant in distancing and staying home as much as possible, wearing masks in public, and washing hands frequently. While there is an end in sight with promising vaccine trial results, we still have months to go before enough doses will roll out to make a difference.

The McWaters passed away two days before Thanksgiving, forever altering that family’s holiday. We are already anticipating thousands of families’ December holidays being similarly impacted by losing loved ones to COVID-19. Please follow the advice of public health professionals to keep those numbers as low as we can going into the new year. We’ve already lost too much to this pandemic.

Rest in peace, Mr. and Mrs. McWaters.

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Aminé Is Adding Almost An Album Of New Material To ‘Limbo’ With A Deluxe Edition

Music changes with the times and new trends emerge. One of the biggest ones to come out of 2020 is the new way deluxe albums are treated. Usually, a deluxe edition would come out months down the road to bring renewed interest to an aging album. This year, though, they have come out sometimes just days after the original release as a way to generate even more hype for the new music. Aminé took more of an old-school approach to his just-announced deluxe edition of Limbo, which originally came out in August.

The deluxe edition drops this Friday, December 4, and the core tracklist expands from 14 tracks to 21. Unlike most deluxe albums, however, the new songs are added to the front of the tracklist, as opposed to the back end of it. In the seven new songs, there are a handful of fresh collaborators making their way onto the album: Valee, Saba, Toosii, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

Check out the deluxe Limbo tracklist below.

1. “Mrs. Clean”
2. “Zack & Cody” Feat. Valee
3. “Gelato”
4. “Talk” Feat. Saba
5. “Chicken” Feat. Toosii
6. “Buzzin” Feat. Unknown Mortal Orchestra
7. “Solid”
8. “Burden”
9. “Woodlawn”
10. “Kobe”
11. “Roots” Feat. JID & Charlie Wilson
12. “Can’t Decide”
13. “Compensating” Feat. Young Thug
14. “Shimmy”
15. “P.I.M.P.” Feat. Vince Staples & Slowthai
16. “Riri”
17. “Easy” Feat. Summer Walker
18. “Mama”
19. “Becky”
20. “Fetus” Feat. Injury Reserve
21. “My Reality”

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‘Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla’ Doesn’t Throw a Strong Punch

I give movies 20 minutes to grab my attention before I call it quits. TV shows, two episodes. Books … well I usually open the book in the store, read a few pages, and decide within 60 seconds. Time is money, and also, books cost money, sorry. There are millions of lifetimes worth of entertainment at our fingertips, with new material releasing daily to compete for our attention, so why is the video game community so obsessed with the idea that we need to sink dozens of hours into a game before deciding to move on? Especially if it’s The Witcher 3!

But as much as I wanted to love it, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla isn’t for me.

I picked up Valhalla because cool Viking sh*t totally is for me and, make no mistake, Valhalla is chock full of it. I got to swing a battle axe around, raid monasteries, and get my face tatted. Plus, I got to do all the typical Assassin’s Creed stuff like sneak around, climb some buildings, and explore. It’s a gargantuan open world filled with battles, secrets, and Viking conquests that felt well-tailored to my progress throughout my playtime at first.

Without spoiling anything: Valhalla starts you off in a fantastic tutorial section where you learn the basics of the game and begin to unfold the story. Then after 3-5 hours, depending on how many side-quests and exploring you want to do, it thrusts you out of that area and into a large open world where you are expected to spend the majority of the game. It’s at this point that the main connections to the AC franchise get made, the quest-load thickens, and all the “RPG stuff” gets dropped in your lap, which is expected. And from a graphics and scope standpoint, it’s pretty awe-inspiring. So what gives?

For me, when I made it into the mid-game, Valhalla stopped feeling rewarding. The cool Viking stuff began to feel repetitive, the exploration felt tedious, and the Assassin’s Creed storyline stuff felt tacked-on. The game begins to ask you to commit a lot of time and trust into seeing things through, like traveling a great distance or finishing a questline. When you arrive at the place or accomplish the task, however, it doesn’t seem to change much in the game at large. In my opinion, the most important thing to nail in an “action role-playing game” is the skill-development aspect. Valhalla opts for what seems like a comprehensive skill-tree model, but upon closer inspection, it reveals itself to be random-feeling with most of its attainable “skills” being percentage-increasing, passive attributes. The stuff that isn’t passive (like the ability to stomp stunned enemies) either proves incredibly useful to the point of monopolizing my fighting style or kitschy to the point of uselessness. This ripples out to combat, which starts to feel stale after a while. That is kind of a big deal for a Viking game. For all intents and purposes, I’m here to lob heads with a great ax.

I’m also here for the loot. I have a compulsion to gaze in every nook and cranny, check in every drawer, and explore every cave behind a waterfall. Valhalla actually does a good job of providing plenty of areas to discover, but each time I found myself off the beaten path, I managed to uncover a bug that soured the experience. While I imagine most of these will be patched out going forward, for the time being, their frequency definitely spoiled my desire to get lost now and again. On more than one occasion I encountered a broken quest. There were a few times I found myself literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. And one instance, in particular, the grand offender, I slid through a hole in the wall, found a secret chest, and discovered that I couldn’t slide back out. I know there’s bound to be issues with a title this big so close to launch and I have a deep respect for developers and QC’ers alike. But truthfully, I turned off the game at this moment without resolving the problem. I was pretty frustrated.

What is a big deal to me might not be a big deal to you, as Valhalla has plenty of other things going on outside of the combat. There’s plenty of that aforementioned “RPG stuff” like item acquisition, settlement management, and distracting side quests. While all of that is super appealing to me, and at this point expected in an Assassin’s Creed title, I just honestly lost faith that it would feel rewarding after the 60-80 hours it takes to complete the game because of the lack of excitement I got from the skill-development, combat, and exploration. Of course, most RPG and story elements don’t pay off until much later in the game by design, but usually in these types of games, it’s the stuff that’s designed to be rapidly developing that will carry you to the major goalposts. The time between goalposts might not be too important for diehard fans of the series, but for me, they’re a large part of the equation.

So, after giving the beginnings of the mid-game a chance to see where things went, I decided that Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla wasn’t my cup of mead. Some might say I didn’t give it a fair shot, but how do you define a fair shot anyway? What rules do I abide by? Have I no shame? I think why the gaming community has these dramatically skewed rules by which to judge a video game is because video games, even within the same genre, are dramatically different from one another. But for games from a well-established series that unapologetically has entries that don’t stray too far from the formula like Assassin’s Creed, you don’t have to give them the Witcher 3 treatment to have an understanding of the full scope of what the game has to offer.

For people who absolutely love the Assassin’s Creed series, this tends to be a really good thing. You can jump in and feel instantly at ease. For some, it’s a welcome home parade that happens every two years. But for me, I felt like I had seen the beginning and end of the parts of the game that were most appealing to me in picking up Valhalla in the first place. I couldn’t imagine that combat was suddenly going to get better and all the bugs would suddenly go away. And in case you were wondering, I played 47 hours of The Witcher 3 before deciding it wasn’t for me. I can’t begin to tell you why. I only gave the show one episode, though. The Assassin’s Creed movie? It’s … on my list.

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Jennifer Lawrence Thanked The Firefighters Who Put Out A ‘Devastating Fire’ At Her Family’s Farm

Jennifer Lawrence’s family farm in Louisville, Kentucky, burned down in a “horrible fire” over the weekend. “It is with the heaviest of hearts that we confirm the news that we lost our barn last night in a horrible fire,” a statement from Camp Hi Ho read (the camp is operated by her brother Blaine). “We are deeply thankful that no people or animals were hurt, but we are still mourning the loss of years of hard work and memories that occurred in these walls.” It took nearly 30 firefighters and a half-dozen fire trucks to put out the blaze, which started around 9 p.m. The four-time Oscar nominee has since expressed gratitude not only for the firefighters, but also Louisville residents for their support.

“I want to thank my Louisville community for reaching out to my family and me following the devastating fire that sadly destroyed a significant part of Camp Hi Ho,” Lawrence wrote. “Thankfully, because of our amazing firefighters and first responders, no one was hurt and all of the animals were kept safe. I grew up on that farm, going to Camp Hi Ho every summer. When my brother Blaine took it over, he applied his creative mind and fun loving spirit and expanded a camp that was already the coolest, because it was the only place where kids could do whatever they wanted. A muddy, messy paradise.”

She continued:

I’m grateful to Camp Hi Ho for the amazing childhood memories. My family and I are working together to help Blaine through this. And we are so grateful for the widespread support from the community to get Camp Hi Ho back up and running so we can welcome kids back this summer.”

The cause of the fire has not yet been announced by the authorities.

(Via People)

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Showtime Is Launching Free Pluto TV Channel In An Effort To Drum Up Subscribers

Starting today, you can watch a collection of Showtime series for free on Pluto TV. The move is an effort by ViacomCBS, which owns both services, to drum up new subscribers for Showtime by getting them hooked on its original content. Like most of Pluto’s offering, the Showtime series will be free to watch, but also contain ads. Via Variety:

The new Pluto TV channel, Showtime Selects, launches on Tuesday (Dec. 1) with about 250 hours of uncensored originals. The lineup in the linear-style channel will include sneak peeks at the first episodes of Showtime drama series “Your Honor” starring Bryan Cranston and the 11th and final season of “Shameless.” Showtime Selects also will feature select episodes of originals including “The Affair,” “Ray Donovan,” “Billions,” “The L Word” and “Californication” as well as the entire limited series “The Loudest Voice” about Fox News’ Roger Ailes and true-crime docuseries “Murder in the Bayou.”

While offering free trial periods to premium channels is common during the holiday season, Showtime Selects will be a “permanent cross-promotional vehicle” that will see its content updated on a monthly basis in an attempt to convert users to Showtime. As for Pluto TV, if you’re not familiar with the service, Uproxx’s Derrick Rossignol put together a primer on the free streaming app that emulates that old broadcast TV feel of channel surfing. It also takes away the often overwhelming task of sifting through hundreds of movies and TV shows and just enjoying whatever happens to be on, which now includes Billions and Shameless. Not bad.

(Via Variety)

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Samia Enlists Bartees Strange, Anjimile, Field Medic, And More To Cover Her Debut Album ‘The Baby’

It’s been a few months since Samia released her thoughtful debut album The Baby. But since she can’t tour behind the release, Samia has thought up a clever way to keep fans engaged with her music. The singer tapped several of her fellow indie rock cohorts to cover all the songs on her debut release.

Titled The Baby Reimagined, Samia announced the project Tuesday with a rendition of her album opener “Is There Something In The Movies?” by the singer Briston Maroney. Other artists that appear on the cover project include Bartees Strange, Anjimile, Field Medic, Palehound, and more.

Speaking about his cover, Maroney praised Samia’s songwriting. “This song is the most representative of Samia’s ability to tell a very specific story in a relatable way,” Maroney said. “I really enjoyed the opportunity to retell this story in an attempt to show my appreciation as a listener for Samia’s willingness to share her experiences with us all.”

Listen to Briston Maroney’s cover of “Is There Something In The Movies?” above check out Samia’s The Baby Reimagined cover art and tracklist below.

Grand Jury

1. “Is There Something In The Movies?” by Briston Maroney
2. “Minnesota (Remix)” by Michelle
3. “Winnebago” by Charlie Hickey
4. “Waverly” by Anjimile
5. “Does Not Heal” by Christian Lee Hutson
6. “Triptych” by Field Medic
7. “Stellate (Remix)” by The Districts
8. “Limbo B*tch” by Donnal Missal
9. “Big Wheel (Remix)” by Palehound
10. “Fit N Full” by Remo Drive
11. “Pool” by Bartees Strange

The Baby Reimagined is out 7/15 via Grand Jury. Pre-order it here.

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Elliot Page Is Receiving An Outpouring Of Love From Celebrities After Coming Out As Transgender

Elliot Page (who stars as Netflix’s most powerful The Umbrella Academy sibling and received an Oscar nomination for Juno) came out as transgender and non-binary on Tuesday morning in an Instagram announcement. “I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot. I feel lucky to be writing this. To be here. To have arrived at this place in my life,” Page wrote. “I feel overwhelming gratitude for the incredible people who have supported me along this journey. I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self. I’ve been endlessly inspired by so many in the trans community.”

In addition, Page expressed solidarity with “all the trans people who deal with harassment, self-loathing, abuse, and the threat of violence every day.” He promised, “I see you, I love you, and I will do everything I can to change this world for the better.” Those words follow up on Page’s ongoing advocacy with the GLAAD organization, along with his condemnation of VP Mike Pence’s policies, which Page singled out as encouraging the normalization of homophobia that leads to hate crimes.

The announcement has been greeted with a mounting celebration. GLAAD Director of Transgender Media, Nick Adams, praised Page for being “an outspoken advocate for all LGBTQ people.” Adams added, “He will now be an inspiration to countless trans and non-binary people. All transgender people deserve the chance to be ourselves and to be accepted for who we are.”

The party moved to Twitter, where Elliot thanked GLAAD and TGI Project (advocating for transgender, gender variant, and intersex people) for their support.

Soon, The Umbrella Academy and Netflix accounts added their voices to the chorus, along with many of Page’s fellow entertainers.

2020 finally brought some good news, and the year’s not over yet, so hopefully, we’ll see some more.

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Believe It Or Not, Nick Cave Has Sold ‘Zero Rolls’ Of His Erotic Wallpaper

This summer, Nick Cave, a musician, decided to start selling erotic wallpaper. That product came with the launch of his Cave Things web store, and the “Hyatt Girls Wallpaper” was one of the most attention-grabbing items, as it features some Cave illustrations of nude women. He started selling the wallpaper back in August, and months later, he has offered an update on how sales are going.

Sales are slow. In fact, they’re non-existent.

In a new interview with The Financial Times, Cave declares that he hasn’t sold any of the wallpaper at all. Describing it as his favorite product in the collection, he said, “My favorite thing is the Hyatt Girls pornographic wallpaper, made from drawings of naked women I have doodled in hotels down the years. It’s a lovely thing — and so far has sold zero rolls. I am immensely proud of designing a product that literally nobody wants!”

It is perhaps unsurprising, or at least understandable, why the wallpaper has a limited customer base. Aside from its risque nature, it costs £200.00 (about $270) for a 50 centimeter by 10 meter roll.

The wallpaper is a low note on an otherwise good year for Cave, who just released a new live album.

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When Travel Reopens: Electronic Musician Nylo Shares The Best Road Trip Stops Between California And Texas

As we approach the steepest COVID-19 peak to date, it’s grown clear that the grimmest days of the pandemic may still be ahead of us. Thankfully, it’s finally beginning to look like there’s some light at the end of the tunnel, thanks to the announcement of several viable COVID vaccines that will begin rolling out over the next six months. By summer 2021 we might actually be able to start tackling that travel list we’ve been growing all quarantine long.

And what better place to start than here in the United States?

Though road trips aren’t completely safe, it was certainly easier to control risk factors by car over the summer than by plane (airports created endless contact points). Certainly, the low-contact road trips that we did take have only invigorated our love for all the locales we’re able to experience without jumping on a plane. But while 2020 travel may have been defined by car-based adventures, these long drives weren’t always taken for pleasure.

Sometimes — like in electronic musician and singer-songwriter Nylo’s case — they were borne out of necessity.

“I decided I had to see my mom,” Nylo explains. “She had recently recovered from surgery, which meant I wasn’t going to be taking any risks when it came to COVID exposure. Flying wasn’t an option. So I did something I haven’t done since I was a teenager, I drove from Los Angeles, California to Austin, Texas in two days.”

Along the way, Nylo found herself winding through scenic valleys, lush groves of trees, and stark desert landscapes, which inspired her to create the music video for her new song, “We’re Not The Same.” When fatigue set in, she also visited rest stops, restaurants, hotels, and roadside attractions — carving a pretty incredible path across the Southwest in the process. In fact, the entire trip looked so interesting in the video that we asked her to share her full itinerary so that we could file it away for the future.

Check out Nylo’s self-shot video for “We’re Not The Same” below and then dive into her picks for the best road trip stops between California and Texas.

Bombay Beach — California

So check this out, this is a town that went from a weekend getaway into an ultimate ghost town overnight when almost eight million tilapia died and washed ashore in one day, and all the residents and vacation goers fled. For decades it remained a very desolate town where you could walk up to an airstream, preserved in desert dust like a time capsule, with clothes and shoes exactly as they’d been left — as though the rapture sucked the tenant into the sky.

It’s eerie, but now the town has been adopted by artists in recent years and turned into this wild, mind-bending, and surreal landscape that’s like a parallel universe in which time both stood still and leaped into the future. You can still feel the pain and loss of the town’s glory days, but that feeling is mixed with this exuberant rebirth of art, and energy, and creation. It’s hard to explain but it’s amazing. There is a festival called the Bombay Beach Biennale — named with intentional irony for it occurs once a year — that converts the town into what has been described as a mini-Burning Man. One striking difference between the two festivals being, instead of the “leave no trace” mentality that Burning Man has, the Biennale takes the opposite approach, and goes for “LEAVE a trace,” meaning, most of the installations stay year-round, and can be visited until they become one with the desert.

That’s the intention for it. It’s really beautiful.

The Library at The Sea of Tranquility — Yucca Valley, California

Airbnb

A film director, photographer, and also co-founder of the Bombay Beach Bienalle, Tao Ruspoli, runs an Airbnb made up of vintage trailers and AirStreams, container homes, and more in Yucca Valley where upon entering the premises you pass a sign that says “clothing optional,” and well… it means it. The property is filled with a very beautiful and owner-curated group of guests at any given time, bringing in open-minded, free-spirited carelessness, conversations on philosophy, photography, art, and sexuality.

People swim nude, walk around topless, dance with their lovers under the unfiltered starlight, read books in the hot-tub as the sun goes down, and any other number of other whimsical endeavors you might imagine. Obviously, this is not a place you’d vacation with the kids, but with a few good friends or your life partner, I imagine it feels like what it must have felt like to walk around Woodstock in the 70s.

There’s a rare and genuine magic there.

California — The ACE Hotel and Swim Club, Palm Springs

The ACE is a desert staple and was my last stop before home after a 14 hour drive day. I couldn’t have been more thrilled to put on my ACE robe (which is like a blend between a snuggie and a robe, basically a fuzzy blanket with a hood, sleeves, and a waist tie), and have my cocktail delivered to me at the pool with my feet into the hot tub, listening to my favorite indie music filtering softly through the atmosphere. I then slept like a starfish across their king bed — which could sleep a whole family — feeling like an actual God.

The ACE is a hipster paradise. The music is cool, the staff doesn’t wear strict uniforms, the robes as I’ve mentioned before are a personal highlight, the rooms are individual and unique, and the restaurant has great food with options for vegans.
This hotel has hosted many a Coachella festival for me and many others and remains a coveted oasis of good vibes in the desert.

Peggy Sue’s 50’s Diner — Yermo, California

Traveling across the miles and miles of flat desert — mixed with an assortment of Joshua Trees dispersed like confetti tossed into the wind — you’ll find Peggy Sues, a welcomed stop on the long stretch of nothingness between LA and Vegas. It’s a classic diner from the ’50s, restored and expanded, heavy-handed on the nostalgia, and there to provide you a hamburger, shake, and fries that won’t disappoint. It’s even got the 1950’s dinosaur garden out back.

After your diner snack you can hang in the fabulously random dinosaur sculpture garden before you depart to continue your journey.

Lake Dolores Waterpark – Newberry Springs, California

There is an abandoned waterpark on the way to Vegas from Los Angeles. It’s just spooky and cool, and for anyone with an Instagram account, makes a justifiable stop. ‘Cause admit it… you always want another nice pic for the gram.

Enchantment Resort — Sedona, Arizona

Enchantment Resort is a beautiful resort hotel in Arizona, where the pool backs up to a strikingly — actually strikingly — beautiful backdrop of red canyon walls. The rooms have that unique, artisan, boutique vibe, featuring desert flare in all the details, as well as the rounded adobe walls.

It’s a very posh and serene escape-away from it all.

El Cosmico — Marfa, Texas

My first visit to Marfa was to see the infamous and unexplainable “Marfa Lights,” which as Giorgio Tsoukalos of Ancient Aliens would say, “could be aliens!” The town has a special draw for artists, and people interested in art, it hosts many art festivals throughout the year and is the home of the permanent Prada store art installation, which has received national press — particularly after it was broken into on its opening night and vandalized with the words “dum dum dum” written on it.

Marfa is conveniently located exactly where you’d want to stop if headed west from Austin or Dallas, and won’t disappoint. El Cosmico was a recommendation from a friend and is a perfect place to stay if you’re looking for a unique experience, like sleeping in a desert-themed pristine Airstream.

Ski Shores — Austin, Texas

Just to speak candidly and personally, I love this restaurant so much. I can’t believe it’s real sometimes; you sit on the outdoor patio right next to the humble local marina where boats rhythmically come and go, and people get off their boats to come in for a plate of fries or a fried catfish platter. It’s really very peaceful with the sounds of the river, and if you get one of the tables on the edge of the deck where it meets the water, you can interact with an assortment of turtles, fish, and swans as they cruise by investigating restaurant-goers for potential food donations.

There were over 20 turtles just hanging next to us while I dined with my family. It’s my favorite place to lunch in Austin.

Lake Travis Paddleboarding — Austin, Texas

Paddleboarding is clearly something the Austin locals take very seriously. At any given time during daylight hours, Lake Travis is sprinkled with people paddleboarding in pods, laying solo on their paddleboards reading books, cruising around with their dogs like my mom does, and just living. It’s a beautiful lake, with so many different experiences varying from outdoor gym zones to a sculpture walk.

The cove across the lake from the paddleboard rental shop is the best-kept secret. The water in the cove is free from currents so you can float through these crystal clear portraits of the trees reflected by the glassy surface of the water. That area is less populated, quiet, and you might even catch someone abandoning their board, and scaling the overhanging low bridge to backflip into the water.

Congress Avenue Bridge — Austin, Texas

This bridge is one of Austin’s most famous attractions and home to the largest urban bat population in the country, and North America. The skyline behind the bridge is at its finest vantage point, and as the sun goes down you might be lucky enough to catch the departure of those 1.5 million bats on their way out for dinner. It looks like someone is painting black smoke across the city as they wind out in a unified stream and up through the sky, weaving around distant buildings, and — just like any good spooky movie — getting silhouetted by the moon.

People show up in hordes every night around sundown to watch from the water, from the grassy area beneath the bridge, or from on top of the bridge — all waiting to see if they can glimpse the bats as they head out. After visiting the Congress bridge many times over, I’d recommend the grassy area viewing, because you’re the closest to the action there, and you can lay on a blanket to catch the show.