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• Last year, my husband and I traveled across the US, spending time in 29 states along the way.
• I fell in love with Michigan, Vermont, and South Dakota, and found plenty to do.
• Although I had a great time in places like West Virginia and Idaho, I think I saw the highlights.

Last year, my husband and I decided to make the most of working remote jobs by traveling across the US, staying in 29 different states along the way.

Although I don’t regret visiting any of the states we spent time in, there are some I’m excited to return to — and others I’m glad I saw once.

In my opinion, Michigan is seriously underrated.

Whenever we had a spare moment during our month in Michigan, we were outside.

We strolled through a tulip farm in Holland, had a picnic on the beach at Saugatuck Dunes State Park, and sipped pinot noir along a wine trail near Buchanan, stopping by different wineries along the route.

We spent most of our time near the shores of Lake Michigan, so we had access to all the things I could want on a beach vacation — fresh seafood, lively boardwalks with all kinds of quirky shops, and pristine sand.

However, in my experience, the prices seemed lower than what I’m used to in many of the “beach destinations” along the coasts.

I already have a list of places I want to explore the next time we’re in Michigan, such as Traverse City, Sleeping Bear Dunes, and Mackinac Island, one of the few places in the US where cars are banned.

South Dakota offers so much more than Mount Rushmore.

Seeing massive carvings of former presidents is impressive, but there’s so much more to South Dakota than Mount Rushmore.

For example, I loved spending time in Custer State Park, which I believe offers some of the best views in all of the Black Hills. During our visit, we saw coyotes, prairie dogs, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and hundreds of bison (one even licked our car!)

Less than two hours away, we were treated to an entirely different landscape in Badlands National Park, which is dominated by buttes and towering rock spires.

There are also tiny museums and fascinating sites tucked away in small towns, making the drive across the state even more entertaining.

We stopped at the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs — an active excavation site where the remains of over 60 mammoths have been unearthed. I was amazed by the sheer scale of that many skeletons found in one place, and it was definitely worth the stop.

Vermont’s small towns are incredible.

I firmly believe that Vermont has some of the most picturesque small towns in the US. And although each one has its special charms, Stowe really stands out to me.

Between perusing the cute shops, riding the gondola to the top of Mt. Mansfield (Vermont’s highest peak), and grabbing a drink at the Von Trapp Brewery (started by Maria von Trapp’s son), I felt like I’d been sucked into a postcard.

I was also impressed by Vermont’s dairy game. In almost every town we visited, I saw a shop selling creative varieties of cheese.

My favorite usage of dairy, however, had to be at the Ben & Jerry’s Factory in Waterbury. The tour was fun, the ice cream was perfectly decadent, and I still chuckle about the hilariously poetic Flavor Graveyard, where retired varieties are memorialized.

On the other hand, West Virginia was beautiful, but I think we saw the highlights.

We spent several days driving around West Virginia, checking out different hiking trails and marveling at the abandoned mills hidden on backroads.

There were certain moments that took my breath away, like visiting Sandstone Falls and the stunning 3,000-foot bridge in New River Gorge National Park.

However, after getting our fill of nature, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of other options to fit our interests. In general, the state is pretty rural, and a lot of the small towns seemed designed for locals, not tourists.

Although I think hikers, campers, and whitewater enthusiasts could enjoy a visit to the Mountain State, I’m content with what I saw on my trip.

Idaho surprised me, but I don’t feel the need to return anytime soon.

I didn’t know much about Idaho before we visited, but we saw some incredibly memorable spots during our trip.

Craters of the Moon National Monument — filled with black ancient lava fields and hill-like cinder cones — is unlike any other natural preserve I’ve been to in the continental US. Seeing it covered in snow only added to its otherworldly quality.

We also visited the Basque Block in Boise, which is a section of town that is preserved and dedicated to the Basque people who emigrated from Spain to Idaho in the late 1800s. As we strolled, we read signs that were posted and learned about the area and the culture.

Although I’m sure there are more beautiful places to see around Idaho, when I return to this region in the future, I’ll probably focus my time in Montana and Wyoming.

This story was originally published on February 11, 2026, and most recently updated on June 12, 2026.

Kevin O’Leary on AI, China, and why America needs more compute power.

• The vice president’s official residence is on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory.
• Different vice presidents have added amenities such as a pool, a jogging track, and a garden.
• The residence may be haunted — Walter Mondale’s daughter once said she saw a ghost in her bedroom.

Vice President JD Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, moved into the vice president’s official residence at Number One Observatory Circle with their three children upon taking office in 2025. They’re expecting their fourth child, a boy, in July.

The 9,150-square-foot historic home features personal touches and luxury features added by vice presidents over the years, including a swimming pool, a running track, and, most recently, a large chicken coop that reflects the mansion’s architectural style. It’s also been home to a few ghost stories.

Here’s a closer look at the vice president’s residence.

The vice president’s official residence is located on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.

Established in 1830, the US Naval Observatory is one of the oldest scientific agencies in the US, where scientists collect astronomical data for accurate navigation, according to the official website of the Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command.

The movements of planets and stars are used to accurately provide positioning, navigation, and timing for the Navy and Department of Defense.

Measuring 9,150 square feet, Number One Observatory Circle contains 33 rooms.

The home features six bedrooms, a dining room, a garden room, a study, and an attic.

The home was built in 1893 for the Naval Observatory’s superintendent and began housing its chief of naval operations in 1923.

Vice presidents used to live in their own homes until Congress devoted funds to refurbishing the home for vice presidential use in 1974, according to the White House.

Number One Observatory Circle became the official vice presidential residence in 1974.

President Gerald Ford’s vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, hosted events at the home but didn’t live there.

In 1977, Vice President Walter Mondale, who served under President Jimmy Carter, became the first vice president to live in the residence full-time.

Mondale’s daughter, Eleanor, once called the Secret Service when she said she saw a ghost in her bedroom.

Eleanor Mondale wrote in a 1998 issue of Swing magazine that the Secret Service was less than pleased when they found out she had reported a ghost sighting, rather than an intruder.

“I was so scared, I fainted,” she wrote, Deseret News reported. “Upon coming to, I phoned the Secret Service Command Post. I whispered that there was a man in my room and hung up. Minutes later, two agents busted into the room, guns drawn. When I told them the ‘man’ was actually a ghost, they requested that I NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!”

Vice presidents can redecorate the home according to their tastes.

Money for maintaining the home, as well as for additions or renovations, comes from private funds or donations to the Vice President’s Residence Foundation, which was founded in 1991.

Dick and Lynne Cheney decorated the residence in neutral colors.

They enlisted interior designer Frank Babb Randolph to help with the transformation.

The Bidens added pops of color throughout the house, such as “Biden blue” walls in the dining room.

Interior designer Victoria Hagan worked with the Bidens to add touches such as green wallpaper to the library and “daffodil yellow” walls in the living room.

The Bidens’ favorite room in the home was the Solarium.

“I love to go in that room and sit on the couch and grade papers or have meetings,” Jill Biden told The Washington Post in 2017. “Often, they put a round table in there and we would have dinner or lunch.”

Vice presidents have also added amenities over the years, such as a jogging track, exercise room, and horseshoe pit.

George H.W. Bush installed a quarter-mile jogging track at the residence, and he liked it so much that he continued running there even after he became president.

The house features a pool added by Dan Quayle.

Biden told reporters in 2010 that “no one can say a negative thing about Dan Quayle” because he added the pool to the vice president’s residence.

“He’s my favorite vice president,” Biden said. “And my granddaughters love it.”

Joe Biden surprised Jill Biden with a tree swing on the grounds of the residence for Valentine’s Day in 2010.

The commemorative plaque reads “Joe loves Jill. Valentine’s Day 2010.”

Jill Biden added the Family Heritage Garden where stones memorialize all the home’s previous occupants and their family members, including pets.

The garden also features a bronze sculpture of the Bidens’ dog Champ, who died at age 13.

When the Pences moved into the residence, Karen Pence installed a beehive to raise awareness of the declining honeybee population.

Karen Pence previously kept bees at the Indiana governor’s residence, unveiling a hive there in 2014. The hive she added to the vice presidential residence in 2017 held 20,000 bees.

“All types of pollinators, such as bees, butterflies, birds, and bats, are critical to providing our nation’s food, fiber, fuel, and medicine,” Pence said at the unveiling.

Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, became the first residents to affix a mezuzah to the door of the home.

In November 2021, the second couple put a white mezuzah — a small scroll of Hebrew text from the Torah in a decorative case — on the right side of the doorway of their residence.

When they affixed the object, which marks the space as sacred and holy, Emhoff’s parents came to the ceremony, Harris told Vanity Fair.

“My mother-in-law, Barbara, is very pleased and proud of her son,” she said. 

Harris and Emhoff also planted a pomegranate tree on the grounds to mark the first anniversary of the October 7 attacks in Israel.

“For years to come, this pomegranate tree will stand here, spreading its roots and growing stronger to remind future vice presidents of the United States, their families, and all who pass through these grounds not only of the horror of October 7, but of the strength and endurance of the Jewish people,” Harris said in her speech before planting the tree. “It will remind us all not to abandon the goal of peace, dignity, and security for all, and it will remind us all to always have faith.”

There’s rumored to be a secure bunker underneath the residence.

When loud blasts and construction noises were heard at Number One Observatory Circle in 2002, neighbors complained and received letters that read, “Due to its sensitive nature in support of national security and homeland defense, project-specific information is classified and cannot be released.”

The letter sparked rumors that a secure bunker was being built after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

A spokesperson for the US Navy told the BBC in 2002 that the construction was “an infrastructure and utility upgrade.”

Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift reported in 2009 that Biden revealed the existence of the bunker at an annual Gridiron Club dinner, but Biden’s spokeswoman told Fox News that his comments were not reported accurately.

“What the vice president described in his comments was not — as some press reports have suggested — an underground facility, but rather, an upstairs workspace in the residence, which he understood was frequently used by Vice President Cheney and his aides,” the spokeswoman said. “That workspace was converted into an upstairs guestroom when the Bidens moved into the residence. There was no disclosure of classified information.”

Vice presidents have more freedom of movement at their residence than presidents do in the White House.

Presidents can’t just walk out of the White House whenever they want. At One Observatory Circle, though, vice presidents have more space and privacy to live normal lives.

At a CNN town hall in 2021, Biden likened the White House to a “gilded cage.”

“The vice president’s residence was totally different,” he said. “You’re on 80 acres, overlooking the rest of the city. And you can walk out, and there’s a swimming pool. You can walk off a porch in the summer and jump in a pool, and go into work. You can ride a bicycle around and never leave the property and work out. But the White House is very different.”

Harris occasionally hosted gatherings at the official residence.

Harris welcomed Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar to the residence for a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in 2023.

In January 2025, JD Vance and Usha Vance moved into the residence with their three young children: Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabel.

The Vances are the first vice presidential family to live at the residence with children since the Gore family in 1993.

They also hosted Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin and his wife, Mary O’Shea, for a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in 2026.

In June 2026, the Vances added a chicken coop to the property.

Designed by Carolina Coops, the structure was designed to match the architecture of the Naval Observatory. It was not built with taxpayer funds, a source familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

The chicks will supply the vice president’s residence with fresh eggs. Vance joked during a 2024 campaign trail visit to a grocery store that his young children “actually eat about 14 eggs every single morning.”

• Widespread outages plagued Facebook and Instagram Friday morning.
• A Meta spokesperson confirmed platform issues in a post on X and later said: “We’re coming back.”
• Outage reports on third-party website DownDetector have since fallen.

Facebook and Instagram suffered from widespread outages for hours on Friday before the service began to come back online.

Outage reports spiked throughout the morning on the third-party website DownDetector.com before the disruption appeared to ease.

“We’re aware people are currently having trouble accessing our services,” Meta’s communication director, Andy Stone, said in a 10:11 a.m. ET post on X. “We’re working on it.”

At the time, Meta’s systems dashboard page also showed “high disruptions” for its Facebook Ads Manager, Messenger API, Messenger platform, and WhatsApp Business Platform.

Just before noon EST, Stone said in another update: “We’re coming back, though it may take a bit of time for everything to be fully back to normal.”

Users were quick to take to X to complain about the disruptions amid the outage.

“This is the third time Facebook has gone down this week. Every time, it takes Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger down with it,” one user said.

Another added, “Anybody else just been logged out of Facebook messenger and can’t log back in? Unknown error.”

Others took the opportunity to make light of the moment.

“QUICK EVERYONE GO OUTSIDE AND TOUCH GRASS,” user Peter Czepiga said.

Then there were the memes. “Everyone’s yearly instagram down drill to X,” one user shared with a GIF of a crowd.

• The companies led by Elon Musk have become increasingly intertwined in the past couple of years.
• These firms have shared employees and purchased batteries, software, and vehicles from each other.
• SpaceX is expected to contribute to Tesla’s coming Roadster, for example, and xAI’s Grok is in Teslas and Optimus demo bots.

For years, the sprawling companies in Elon Musk’s business empire have worked closely together.

Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, et al. have behaved like pieces of a shared ecosystem inside Elon Inc. — buying one another’s products, investing billions across company lines, sharing software and materials, and moving employees between ventures.

Now, the overlap is leading to consolidation. In the past year alone, Musk’s empire has already consolidated from six major companies to four after his xAI acquired social network X and SpaceX acquired xAI.

Those tie-ups are fueling a bigger acquisition question: Is he eyeing a mega-merger between aerospace company SpaceX and electric carmaker Tesla?

That speculation renewed on Friday when SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell was asked on CNBC about combining the two.

“That might make Elon’s life a little easier, actually,” she said. “There’s no question that there’s synergies between Tesla and SpaceX in our futures, definitely, there’s a convergence of a kind of what we’re all trying to accomplish in the future.”

That merger would be the most dramatic step yet, collapsing two of Musk’s best-known companies into a single corporate giant.

Even without a deal, his companies are already increasingly intertwined. Here’s how:

Tesla and SpaceX are buying from each other

SpaceX is a major customer of Tesla’s energy business.

In SpaceX’s S-1 securities filing, the rocket and AI company unveiled that it spent $697 million on Tesla Megapack battery products across 2024 and 2025.

SpaceX is also giving some technology back to Tesla. Musk has said that the carmaker’s long-awaited next-generation Roadster will be a “Tesla/SpaceX collab” and feature SpaceX-built cold-gas thrusters. The hyper-powered sports car’s launch event has been repeatedly delayed after Musk penciled an unveil in for April 1.

“It’s gonna be really cool, and it’s gonna have some rocket technology in it,” he said during a 2024 sit-down with Don Lemon.

Tesla’s AI ambitions are increasingly tied to xAI

Tesla’s January earnings disclosed that it had agreed to invest $2 billion in xAI, with a related “framework agreement” to explore additional collaboration opportunities.

Tesla has already integrated xAI’s Grok into its vehicles, allowing drivers to chat with the AI and use it to add and edit navigation destinations.

Videos have shown early versions of Tesla’s in-development Optimus robot using xAI’s Grok AI chatbot for its voice.

SpaceX and The Boring Company have bought Tesla vehicles

Aside from full-blown investments or acquisitions, the most visible example of Musk’s companies coordinating might be Tesla’s vehicle sales to his tunnel-building startup.

The Boring Company, which operates tunnels in Las Vegas and Texas, uses fleets of Tesla vehicles to transport passengers through its underground systems. The tunnel builder has also constructed tunnels around Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin.

It isn’t alone. SpaceX reported in its paperwork ahead of the public offering that it bought $131 million worth of Cybertrucks.

Musk’s employees move between companies

Musk has repeatedly drawn on employees from one company to support others in his portfolio.

In 2022, about a month after Musk bought Twitter — now known as X — he sent roughly 50 Tesla employees to the social-media company’s headquarters to help overhaul its code-review systems, according to court filings.

Musk later argued in court that the Tesla employees had “volunteered” to do the work and that their temporary reassignment should not concern Tesla’s board.

Executives share overlapping functions on several of Musk’s companies, too, according to org charts obtained by Business Insider.

For example, Charlie Kuehmann, the vice president of materials and engineering at Tesla, also holds the same title at SpaceX.

It’s all par for the course for ‘Elon Inc.’

The growing web of internal deals has fueled discussion among investors and analysts about whether Musk’s companies are evolving into something closer to a single, vertically integrated enterprise.

And it’s not clear if it’ll stop at SpaceX combining with xAI.

“In Tesla’s case, an important factor to consider is that investors are buying into Elon Musk’s vision for the future as much as they are buying into an automaker or clean energy company,” Lou Whiteman, a contributing analyst at The Motley Fool, told Business Insider in January.

“Since this group of companies, public and private, combine to represent Elon Musk’s full vision of the future, I’d bet that many investors are happy to see Tesla involved in all aspects of ‘Elon Inc.'”

• AI infrastructure growth is exposing a major shortage of skilled blue-collar workers.
• Google, Meta, and other tech giants are investing in programs to prepare Americans for construction jobs.
• Tech firms need electricians, welders, and plumbers to build data centers, despite community backlash.

The AI race has a blue-collar problem. Big Tech wants to fix it.

Days after Meta said it was launching a $250 million program to train Americans for data center construction jobs, Google announced a similar initiative.

The search engine giant on Thursday said it is investing $50 million in skilled-trades training programs across the US in fields critical to building AI and energy infrastructure.

They are tailored for aspiring construction workers, electricians, plumbers, pipe fitters, welders, and other laborers. Some training program partnerships are already underway, a Google spokesperson said.

The moves follow efforts unveiled earlier this year by Oracle and Microsoft to expand existing initiatives aimed at building a pipeline of workers to support the AI boom. Together, they underscore a shortage of tradespeople capable of building the data centers essential to powering AI ambitions — and Big Tech’s increasing role in tackling it.

“The constraint on growth isn’t hiring more engineers. It’s building physical infrastructure,” said Tulane University business professor Rob Lalka. “Silicon Valley’s white-collar executives won’t succeed without blue-collar workers across America.”

The construction industry needs an estimated 349,000 new workers this year to meet demand elevated by AI, according to Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade group.

Since tech companies are more accustomed to training workers to use keyboards than bulldozers, they are partnering with organizations such as the International Training Institute for the sheet metal and air conditioning industry to achieve their goals. That has made the likes of Meta and Google highly appealing to proponents of long-standing programs designed to expand the ranks of hard-hat talent.

“We welcome the support of industry leaders like Google to create good, family-sustaining jobs and meet the growing energy needs of our economy,” said Kenneth Cooper, international president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, in a statement.

Big Tech’s push to build more data centers, however, has also attracted foes.

Some critics point to the vast number of layoffs that tech companies have linked to AI, while residents across the US have been protesting such projects in their communities in recent months. A May Gallup poll found that seven out of 10 Americans oppose living near a data center.

In 2025, permits were issued for 176 new data centers across 34 states — the most new permits in one year since the first was issued in 1976, Business Insider previously reported.