Every sizable, decent city has a main “cool part of town” and where I live it’s my neighborhood: East Nashville. This is where you find an abundance of artists, songwriters, musicians, and others who have trouble fitting into a cubicle life, plus you’ve got historic homes, sidewalks, bike lanes, and plenty of bars and restaurants you can get to on foot.

Each year the neighborhood’s biggest party is the Tomato Art Fest, started by a local gallery owner and growing each year like a prize-winning tomato at the county fair. You can spend the whole day here, especially if you have kids. This being Nashville, there are plenty of great bands playing all day. Galleries display tomato-related art and hand out prizes. Kids can get their hair spray painted red and do tomato-themed crafts. This year kiddies built a giant sundae at a local ice cream shop—then dived in and ate it before it melted.

There’s a contest for the biggest/smallest/ugliest tomatoes, a “dress-up your tomato” contest (always at least one Elvis), and fashion shows for both people and dogs—wearing items from local businesses.

Naturally, this being a peak time of year for tomatoes, there’s no trouble finding related food in the restaurants and bars. Pictured here is a green tomato BLT: my lunch at Rumours East. You can pick up some fresh salsa or good bloody mary mix from one of the booths. (Oh, there’s an annual bloody mary contest as well.)

Sometimes you don’t have to go very far to break out of the weekend routine where you live either. Keep an eye out for the oddball festivals nearby.

Even as a travel writer it’s hard sometimes to look at the place you’re from — your hometown — as a travel destination. I know Whitefish, Montana, is a great place to live and a popular tourist resort town. When I see gardens like this one at a local cafe, I tend to take it for granted. That’s just how we do things around here. But it takes some change of perspective to see it from a travel writer’s point of view.

When it comes to eating out, though, the only effort required is deciding where to go. The Buffalo Cafe has been around for 30 years and is really the only place to get breakfast if you want to pretend to be a local. Lines can be long-ish for weekend brunch, but it’s worth it. I always get some form of Heuvos Rancheros and a big pot of Buffalo Blend coffee, roasted specially by Montana Coffee Traders.

Speaking of Montana Coffee Traders, they’re local, too. Since 1981 they’ve been providing Northwest Montana with some of the best coffee you’ll ever taste (I still order it from New York — locavore that I strive to be, you gotta draw the line at poor-quality coffee). You can visit their roasting station in a restored farmhouse on Highway 93, or get coffee, pastries, and sandwiches at one of their three coffee shop locations in Whitefish or the neighboring towns of Kalispell and Columbia Falls.

For a change of pace on brunch, or a late lunch or fantastic light dinner, the Rising Sun Bistro has had me hooked for years. They closed shop at a previous location due to inflated rent (why are landlords so shortsighted sometimes?), and even then I kept scouring the area to see where they’d open up again. Their food was too good to be gone for long. Sitting out in the peaceful gardens or deck area, eating way too much of the berry breakfast parfait and Eggs Benedict, you can pretty much fill up your afternoon with great food, fresh air, and classic Rocky Mountain views.

Or you can go really local and check out burgers, beers, and the bathrooms (unless you’re scared of porn on the walls … lots and lots of porn on the walls) at The Bulldog, a downtown saloon since 1983 in a building over 100 years old. The name of their website (fart-slobber.com) gives away the atmosphere, as does the writing on the wall: “This Ain’t No Country Club.” The burgers are awesome.

Post-hike, middle of the day slumps usually call for a coffee cure, but sometimes what you really need is ice cream and milkshakes. Mrs. Spooners ice cream is located kitty-corner from the Central School, and is open until 9 p.m. After a long trip up to the top of the ski mountain (via gondola, granted), my 5-year-old niece was ready for some rainbow sherbert, which gave me an excellent excuse to guzzle a huckleberry milkshake.

You can find a more high-end meal at Tupelo Grille, which has been around for about 15 years. I sorely miss the bakery and sub shop it replaced (home of many cash-poor high school lunches), but love it now that I can afford the food. And, also, now that I have the palate to appreciate the many kudos the restaurant has garnered from Wine Spectator over the years.

Along the same lines, Pollo Grill just outside of the main part of downtown got a great review from The New York Times, which praised the tasty food and wine list. I have a nostalgic affection for the place, as that’s where my husband and I took my family for a post-courthouse-wedding dinner, but the food was just as good when we went again recently.

And of course, you can’t wine and dine in Whitefish without stopping off at the Great Northern Brewing Company. Located right on the main drag, this brewery produces excellent craft beers that could leave you addicted. While they don’t carry my favorite beer (Moose Drool, which comes from a brewery in Missoula, Montana), the Wild Huckleberry Wheat is a longtime preference. Take a free weekday tour of the brewery, and end your day with a few tastings in the upstairs beer bar.

There are plenty other places to eat in and out of town, of course, but these are a few of my favorites. Whether you go for the Tupelo Grill for dinner or the Mackenzie River Pizza Company followed by a latte to go from the historic train depot, it’s hard to go wrong eating out in Whitefish.

Sometimes when you’re on vacation with family it’s hard to balance out everyone’s needs: your family’s need to see you and spend time with you (after all, you love one another, right?), your need to decompress and actually have a vacation (novel thought), and the assembled kids’ needs to be entertained and diverted and cared for at every turn.

Kalispell, Montana, isn’t exactly a tourist destination, but it’s close enough to Whitefish (home of a big fat lake as well as a ski resort that does lots of summer hiking) and Glacier National Park as makes no difference. It also happens to be where my father’s house is, so that’s where we land when coming to my home stomping ground.

Luckily, it’s also a fantastically functional family-friendly city. Half of our family was recovering from jet-lag on Monday, and half recovering from nasty debilitating colds. Too tired and ill, collectively, to take an all-day hike in Glacier, or wishing to shiver at the lake, we still needed something active to do with the kids — which was how we ended up spending over two hours here, at the Woodland Water Park right in town and an easy walking distance from our house.

The waterslides and “lazy river” were great additions to the full-sized swimming pool and pulled in plenty of adults, older kids, and teenagers. With my 5-year-old niece and 2-year-old son, though, the biggest attraction was the full-sized kiddie pool, open only to kids up to 7 (non-swimmers must be accompanied by an adult). I loved the idea: a pool that goes from about 0 inches to 2 feet, where my niece could show off the fruits of her dedicated swimming lessons, and my son could fall absolutely in love with being in the water (“Out, John?” after 30 minutes — “NO!” Glad we got that straight).

The water park is actually contained in Woodland Park, a huge open city space with trees and plenty of quiet areas, birds, a river, and playground. Next to the water park itself is a large skateboarding park, making it an all-round family fun spot.

Great lesson to me that day: when traveling with kids, sometimes it’s a good idea to research the towns neighboring the area you’re traveling to. They might not have the best attractions for adults, but that’s what cars are for, and you might find yourself in a place overflowing with lazy between-times entertainment for the little ones.

On a hot, muggy day in July, I drove through the tiny town of Ames, Texas (because the back roads always beat the tar out of the Interstate.)

Next to the highway leading into Ames was a small wooden painted sign on the ground – “Welcome to Ames, Texas, home of Cookie’s Soul Food Kitchen.” Soul food sounded good to me!

I found Cookie’s on the other side of the railroad tracks that paralleled the road; it was in a bright yellow welcoming building with red trim.

What was my final traveler’s criteria for a restaurant thumbs up on a Sunday in rural southeast Texas between noon and 1 p.m.?

That’s right….the parking area all around Cookie’s was jammed with vehicles. That’s a no-brainer signal to one’s Personal Local Grub Radar.

I had a lovely buffet meal for the princely sum of $8.99 – chicken, pork, ox tail, collard greens, black-eyed peas, mashed potatoes and banana pudding for dessert.

As a single, I was seated next to a delightful local guy who turned out to be a Navy veteran and a drag racing fan, just like me. Don’t you know we talked up a storm! He even gave me a story idea about a local event that I’m pitching right now to one of my favorite travel magazines.

All you need is a sense of adventure, willingness to jump at the unexpected and a well-tuned food radar.

Cookies is open 11 am – 2 pm Mon-Fri, closed on Sat and open 11 am – 3 pm on Sunday. Entrees rotate each day (things like meatloaf, fried catfish, baked chicken) and a variety of vegetables are available on the side.  You can get sandwiches, too.  Phone (936) 336-1954.

(Note: Soul food hits the spot, but find some coffee afterward or you may do the full-belly doze-off while driving.)

This post is included in the latest Wanderfood Wednesday on the Wanderlust and Lipstick blog.

Here in California wine country, there are many, many ways to visit wineries. Most people drive. Some go on bus tours. A few hire a limo. And the uber-fit ride bikes.

But as someone looking for fun filled adventure with my wine tasting, I knew there was really only one way to go – the ‘segway’ way.

Which is how I ended up standing in the carpark of the Sonoma Cheese factory earlier this week, watching Hunt Ballie, the owner of Sonoma Segways, unload a dozen segway transporters and set them up ready to roll. Assisted by ‘G’, his enthusiastic and entertaining employee, it didn’t take long to get everything in working order. Next came the requisite paperwork, helmet fitting, and a thorough segway operating tutorial that ensured that all twelve of us were feeling comfortable with our new toy means of transport.

One minute we were all standing nervously around the machines, wondering how in the world we would manage to control these monsters. Granted, I had ridden a segway before in Madrid, but it was a few years ago and  The next, we were zipping around the carpark, weaving in and out. We were definitely good to go.

With ‘G’ leading the way, we headed single file along the path, sounding like a swarm of bubble bees. Heads turned as we whizzed by, with kids pointing, and people asking ‘what’s that?’

First stop was gothic revival style home of General Mariano Vallejo, a Spanish native who played a large part in the evolution of California from Mexican district to American state. Named ‘Lachryma Montis’ (mountain tears), the house, interestingly, was one of the original kit-set houses ordered from Sears.

It would be the first of many photo stops while passing houses, shops, and vineyards on our way to Bartholomew Park Winery located at the top of a hill just two miles east of downtown Sonoma.

Hopping off the segways and heading for the tasting room, Ballie and ‘G’ gave us some sage advice – ‘taste in moderation’. Apparently ‘drunk in charge of segway’ isn’t part of the tour plan. And we still had plenty of segway riding to do. 

Bartholomew Winery offered not only wines easy on the palate, but also had a  small wine museum that documented this area’s colourful history.

But while the winery visit was interesting, the call of segway was hard to resist. We wanted to get going. To feel the wind against our faces. To be a child and play. By this time even the initially timid were zipping along with huge grins on their faces.

On the ride back to downtown Sonoma, we stopped at the Vella Cheese Co. where we toured the facility and then sat outside in the sun, tasting twelve varieties of cheese. A perfect moment. All that was missing was a glass of wine.

And then, all too soon, it was time to pack up and return the segway to the carpark.

Sure wish I could find time to do it all again.