When I was a teenager, my parents took our family on a road trip from New Jersey up to Toronto, Canada. Along the way, we stopped in Cooperstown, New York. My dad and I are big baseball fans, so we just had to check out the Baseball Hall of Fame. The museum was amazing, of course, but what really struck me was the town itself. The small town, Americana vibes were off the charts in that place, at least from what I remember. Super quaint, lots of interesting shops and restaurants to duck into. I have fond memories of that trip, but it got me thinking recently about how traveling is inherently subjective, right? You might love an extended visit to Times Square in New York City, while for some people, like certain podcast hosts I know, even 10 minutes there sounds like hell on Earth. So how can you possibly put together a list of the best places in the entire country to visit? Well, let's find My guest today is CNN's Derek Van Damme. As the July fourth weekend gets underway, he's going to tell us about CNN's new list of the best American towns to visit and what unifies every city that made the cut.

From CNN, this is One Thing. I'm David Reind. Hey there, Derek. Thanks for being here.

Awesome to be here.

So you We and the CNN Travel Team have compiled this list, the 10 best towns in America. Before we get to the actual list, I need to know how this list was made because, for example, I live in Jersey City, New Jersey, and I'd like to think it's one of the best towns out there that you could see. So what was the criteria here?

Why not Jersey City? Why didn't it make the shortlist?

So it didn't. Okay. Okay.

Well, spoiler alert, right? I mean, look, it goes like this. We didn't want to highlight the cities like the New Yorks and the Los Angeleses in the US that get so much attention anyway. We all know they're cool. We all know they've got great stuff going on, but we wanted to give a look and feel to the lesser known towns and cities across America, but ones that stood out with a unique, new, fresh approach that's always trying to test the boundaries of what a city can really offer somebody who was going to visit it for 24 hours or a weekend or something like that. And so there was a population, minimum and maximum. I think it was roughly 50,000 to 350,000 people, right? So when you talk about the New Yorks, you got millions of people who reside in Manhattan, so that didn't fit the criteria. But there are other places to highlight that have just as much and exciting stuff going on. And I think this list is really comprehensive.

All right, so let's get into that actual list there. Count me down from number 10.

All right, well, here it is. Without any further ado. Number 10 is Duluth, Minnesota. Number 9 is Knoxville, Tennessee. Number 8, this one's got a special place in my heart, my hometown, Grand Rapids, Michigan. So that one was great. Number 7 is Georgia. Number 6 is Flagstaff, Arizona. Number 5 is San Luis, Bistvo, in California. Number 4, Portland, but not on the West Coast, the East Coast. Portland, Maine. But on the West Coast, number three was Tacoma, Washington. Then number two was Providence, Rhode Island. And drum roll, please. Number one, Richmond, Virginia.

Richmond, Virginia.

Richmond, Virginia.

So this sounds like a who's who of mid-sized cities that you may or may not have been to before in your life.

Yeah, that's a great way to describe it. That's it. Why do you want to visit it? Well, we're here to tell you.

You got to see a lot of these towns firsthand. What stood out to you in your travels?

Well, each one of them was uniquely different. To be honest, we could have probably just plopped ourselves in any one of these towns and been like, All right, talk to a local. Where do we go? We just had great friendly tour guides, like in Maken. But tell me a little bit about the history of music in Maken, just that 10,000-foot level.

Where do we start?

I mean, it goes-We teamed up. So I'm a big music junkie, and Maken has this music culture and music history that just goes back so far. And one of the bands that I listened to growing up was the Alma Brothers, and finding out that some of their most formative years took place in Maken, Georgia was mind boggling to me.

When you define sonically what Southern Rock is, as foundationally laid by the Alma Brothers, it incorporates so many genres, like we were just talking about, that have deep roots here in Maken that you would not normally associate with Maken.

But it wasn't just Alma Brothers, it's like, Otis, Redding, it's Little Richie, it's Jackson Brown. I mean, it's just so cool to find out how many people shaped the culture of American music out of that small town, Maken, Georgia. And I will show you the best American towns. I play guitar myself, so I got swept up into the music while I was there. Come along with me. I'll show you the best beautiful towns in the city. Oh, look at that. You can see the Milky Way. Oh, that's fantastic. Then being a meteorologist in my day job, Flagstaff was really special because that was a little bit more scientific. The reason I say that is because we focused on this dark sky certification that the city has, and it's what's unique about Flagstaff. In fact, if we look over here, that right there is the center of our galaxy. So we went out there with an astronomer, and we had this laser pointer, and we were able to point out the constellations, and she gave me the meaning behind some of the constellation names, how they got their names, pointed out stars and planets that I'd never seen before, and then, of course, the Milky Way being visible from a downtown urban environment was really special.

Wow. And that's different from a lot of cities that have a ton of light pollution, right?

Yeah, that's right. That's what made Flagstaff unique. Seventy-five thousand people are here, and we can see the Milky Way from downtown. A lot of that is done through simple decisions. We don't allow too much light to go into the sky. They changed the lighting design of their outdoor lights, which it focuses it down towards the ground, and instead of light just emanating into the sky, creating light pollution, they also have these standard light bulbs that create more of an amber glow to it. It's not that fluorescent, bright white light that a lot of cities have. That limits the amount of light pollution. Because of their efforts, you see 100 times more stars or something like that in their downtown than you would in another urban environment similar to Flagstab. So, yeah, it's really special.

You mentioned that your day job here at CNN is weather anchor. You're an honest to God meteorologist. And part of that gig, of course, in 2024 is tracking extreme weather, climate change. So how have we seen climate change impact some of these places on the list? And I guess all of our vacations going forward.

Well, okay, I'll give you an example. So we went to... Number four was Portland, Maine. And if you recall, it was early this year, and I believe it was January, there were a couple of non-named storms that moved up the East Coast into the Gulf of Maine and caused significant damage in and around Portland and some of the surrounding little bays and towns and communities in that area. And that is a result of a rise in sea levels and it coinciding with a bad storm. So storm surge, and that's only going to get worse. So the people we were talking to on the ground, we visited a harbor.

We got six crates of lobsers here to offload.

That's fantastic. What we do is we're going to get the hoist. And they receive all of the catch of the day from the local fishermen, and they were telling us stories, showing us videos of water that had never gotten to their businesses, and it was lapping up on their doorsteps of this place that would normally be very dry. Unfortunately, this is one of the highest wars on the waterfront.

Portland pier floods out a lot. They're lower.

So we're working with city and state officials about things that we can do to help mitigate. I think that's just a preview of what's to come. And unfortunately, the new reality that we're all trying to face and navigate, and it's coastal cities that will feel it. But then you start talking about inland communities, like a Flagstaff, for instance. It was hot, but it was really hot when we were We landed in Phoenix. People queue up on the highways on the weekend to try to go to Flagstaff because it's slightly cooler than Phoenix. It's just one of those things. You get this migration of people from Phoenix to Flagstaff just so they can cool off for the weekend because it's a higher elevation city, right?

It's like we all have to adjust where we think is a destination worth going to, depending on the time of the year and what may be going on.

100%. I have ridden out hurricanes and tropical storms on the East Coast, and particularly in Providence, Rhode Island. I've ridden out a hurricane there. I know what the city is susceptible to. They've got these hurricanes, storm surge barriers that's very unique. I mean, it protects their whole financial district from being flooded from storm surge. This is so cool. I feel like I'm in Italy. The The river walk, I don't know if it was necessarily specifically designed to look Italian, but it definitely... You squint and you can see Venice in Providence. A hundred %. Well, on this Providence, Rhode Island shoot, we took a gondola, which, if you can picture it, it's not like a gondola at a ski resort. We're talking like a gondola that you would take along the rivers in Venice, for instance.

Like the guy standing up in the back rowing you along.

That's That's it, the gondolier. Off to what will be our left. There are some standard marks on the pillar there. Yes. About a foot above the water line is mean high water. St stands for the spring tide line, and then the 100-year flood high. And then up on top there are the high water marks for the three worst storms to ever hit Providence. And he was the most knowledgeable local tour guide, and he pointed out to me these high water marks that were visible only from the boat of the worst storms to ever impact New England, and Providence, Rhode Island, in particular. And so you start to see these new benchmark storms. And as the seas go up and up, and then you get this new high water mark. Very cool. You see now the great storm that would destroy a city like this, but it's the concern is that when you get that inland flooding meeting up with a high tide that coincides with a full moon and a storm surge, and all of those things work together to just push water up to the brink. I mean, it's not out of the realm of possibility.

At that point, it doesn't really matter if you have a hurricane barrier because you're flooding from both directions.

Well, I can't let you go, Derek, without going back to the list because your hometown made the list. That's awfully suspicious to me.

How did that happen?

We need to audit the results a bit here.

Who pushed for Look, it's... Okay, coming from there, maybe I'm biased, but one thing I do know, Grand Rapids has got a whole heck of a lot to offer. Come on. Maya. Are you ready to be a superstar? You're going to give your daddy a high five? We had a little unique angle to the story where we brought my daughter along with me, my seven-year-old daughter. I showed her some of the places where I grew up. Yeah, you're right. You think there's a pearl in there? Yeah, we should collect them. Collect them? That's a good idea. It was a beautiful, beautiful experience. Really core memory stuff for my daughter. Yeah.

Well, it's an interesting list, and it sure sounded like a tough assignment there, Derek. God, for the sake so much.

Someone's got to do it.

Someone's got to do it.

Someone's got to do it.

Thanks, Derek.

Thanks for including me. I appreciate it.

If you want to see the full list, read about these towns, and check out some of the really awesome video Derek and his team got. You can head over cnen. Com/best towns. We'll leave a link in our show notes. One thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paulo Ortiz and me, David Reind. Our senior producer is Fez Jamil. Our supervising producer is Greg Peppers. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Zuzula is our technical director, and Steve Ligtai is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasari, Robert Mather's, John Dianora, Lanie Steinhart, Jamis Andres, Nicole Pessereau, and Lisa Namarau. Special thanks to Lindsay Reid, Marnie Hunter, Jackson Lou, and Katie Hinman. We'll be back on Sunday with another episode. I'll talk to you then.