Sometimes the best meals happen outside the four walls of a traditional dining room. USA Today’s “10Best” series rounded up the top food experiences across the country, highlighting dinner theaters, food halls, night markets, culinary tours, and more. Check it out.
Must Reads
FYI, a new phishing scam is hacking accounts via fake party invitations
100 Years of Route 66: In Honor of the Highway’s Centennial, Take a Drive Down Memory Lane
Ted Soqui—Corbis/Getty Images
If you’re itching to hit the pavement this summer, there’s perhaps no better year to take a spin on Route 66. In honor of the iconic highway turning 100, cities and towns across the U.S. are celebrating throughout 2026, with official national events kicking off tomorrow.
Road trippers coasting along the famed thoroughfare won’t be bored: Route 66 boasts more than 250 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including diners, bridges, and historic hotels. But a century ago, it was just a patchwork of local, state, and national roadways made largely from materials like dirt, gravel, and bricks. Only 800 of its initial 2,448 miles were paved — it would take another 12 years to complete the rest.
Read our article to learn more of the history, get details on the centennial’s official kickoff event, and access a guide on driving the full Chicago to Santa Monica route.
Together With Quince
Rest Easy in Breathable Linen PJs
Find yourself craving your linen bedding when you’re away? Now you can drape yourself in linen PJs wherever you lay your head thanks to this Quince pajama set.
The top is dolman-sleeved with a relaxed fit and deliberately rumpled look, and the matching, side-pocketed pants feature an elastic waist. Quince’s linen collection is made from 100% European flax linen — an eco-friendly and resource-light material — so you can feel good about what you’re sleeping in.
“Cheeky” Orangutan Crosses a Human-Made Canopy Bridge in World-First Footage
Sumatran Orangutan Society
Two years ago, conservationists built five canopy bridges to help orangutans cross over a public road that divided the species’ habitat on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. They announced Monday that the work has now paid off: For the first time, an orangutan was seen on camera crossing one of the bridges — and doing so quite confidently, might we add.
In the landmark video, the brave ape grips the rope, carefully steps onto the structure, and pauses, perhaps at the view. “Then, with a cheeky glance to camera, he continues on his way,” wrote the Sumatran Orangutan Society, which worked with government partners and a local conservation group called TaHuKah to install the bridges.
“This was the moment we had been waiting for,” Erwin Alamsyah Siregar, the executive director of TaHuKah, told the Associated Press. Experts added that the footage also marks the first documented case of a species on the brink of extinction using a human-made canopy bridge to navigate a public road. (In this case, the road was built to provide rural communities with access to schools and health care.)
Now that one orangutan has successfully crossed, conservationists are hopeful that more will follow. Watch the video.
Lifestyle
Better Than Fiction: Readers Live Out Literary Dreams on Book-Inspired Retreats
Common Ground Pilgrimages
Books can be the best traveling companions — and it turns out, they can provide some of the best itineraries, too. That’s the case at Common Ground Pilgrimages, a travel company hosting small book-inspired retreats that draw readers away from the comfort of their couches and into the real-world settings of fictional stories.
Upcoming retreats include readingSense and Sensibility in the English Cotswolds, A Room With a View in Florence, and Three Pines in Quebec. Each retreat generally lasts three to four nights and is filled with unique experiences that bring the pages to life — like visiting the author’s birthplace, watching movie adaptations, and gathering for reading seminars by a fire.
These trips are part of a growing wave of lit-inspired adventures. Data from the travel portal SkyScanner shows that more travelers are interested in visiting the landscapes from their favorite stories and using books to inspire journeys IRL — like say, trekking through The Shire in New Zealand or strolling by the Regency-era London estates that house the characters in Bridgerton.
So the question is … what book has a world you’d love to step into?
In Other News
Track starAllyson Felix is unretiring at age 40 in hopes of competing in her hometown at the 2028 LA Olympics (read more)
Recent advances show nuclear medicine could mark the start of “a new era” in treating cancer (read more)
Got a telescope? NASA wants your help in documenting a fleeting lunar phenomenon (read more)
43 days out: The Big Apple will host free FIFA World Cup fan events in all five boroughs this summer (read more)
Three weeks after hatching, Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets are growing up and sporting new feathers (read more)
Something We Love
Biblioscents Scented Bookmarks
If you love to read and were mildly obsessed with scratch-and-sniff stickers as a kid, consider ditching the dog-ears for a four-pack of Biblioscents. Scratching the botanical illustration on each bookmark releases a grown-up scent — ginger root, frankincense, vetiver, geranium — for an adult version of an old habit.
– Mike Newman, SVP, Editorial Strategy
When teen swimmer Ali Wright discovered that only 1 in 4 New York City children know how to swim, she was motivated to teach more kiddos the lifesaving skill. Through her initiative, “Turning the Tide,” she launched a swim-a-thon that has raised nearly $100,000 to provide free lessons across the city. “I’ve taken it for granted to learn how to swim, and I think a lot of my friends have as well,” the 17-year-old said.
Photo of the Day
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Flying cabs may be around the corner. Joby Aviation successfully completed its inaugural electric air taxi test flight in New York City on Monday. The aircraft traveled from John F. Kennedy International Airport to a Manhattan heliport, shrinking an hour (or longer) car ride into a sub-10-minute flight. See footage from the test.
Try Horizon IX Risk-Free to Hear Clearly
The only thing standing between you and hearing clear, natural sound is a decision that costs nothing. Horizon IX by hear.com is a revolutionary hearing aid that you can try risk-free for 45 days. You have nothing to lose: The hearing aid arrives at your door, you wear it, and the world either sounds different or it doesn’t. Most people who try it don’t send it back.
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