Up here in Canada, we hear some scary stuff coming out of the U.S. these days. But it isn’t all bad.

I visited the American South for the first time in my life last year (California and Florida don’t count!), and was so surprised by the sense of hospitality I found there. I’ve since gone back several times and loved every visit (read more about those on my U.S. page).

To get the best sense of what some of the forgotten parts of the U.S. are like, please have a look at my first article for the newly-launched Almost Fearless magazine: Finding Heart in America’s Heartland. I’m thrilled with the response that I’ve been getting from Americans who are from that area.

Note: the experiences I talk about in this article were from press trips hosted by tourism bureaus, but no one from any of the places mentioned reviewed or approved my article and very few of the people I met even knew I was a writer on a press trip.