Nights to Immagine Introduction Imagine playing a starring role in one of your dreams -- while you're wide awake. Usually dreams are a nocturnal activity, a necessary escape valve allowing us to safely go a little insane each evening. But living them out can be a powerful way to push the boundaries of daily existence, and travel -- a physical leap into the unknown -- provides a perfect opportunity to do just that. Traveling through life, I always seem to tote around a ragged suitcase stuffed with dreams and carefully measured doses of insanity. That may be how I came to awaken one morning to a suboceanic bedside staring competition with an unblinking barracuda. It explains how spending time behind iron bars became a desirable, if temporary, lifestyle choice. It's even why I started writing this in a swaying shed high in the branches of an oak tree. The colorful adventures I try to cram into life -- holidays, anniversaries, holidays toasted on battleships, in fire lookout towers, underwater and overjoyed -- are a reassuring yardstick of my days spent on planet Earth.

For me, genuine travel requires a blend of wonder and curiosity. It's not just about seeing foreign lands, but seeing the foreign in familiar territory. Even though I've slipped through messy penguin rookeries in Antarctica and clambered across vine-rope bridges to attend tribal pig roasts in New Guinea, the spray of dirt kicked up on cattle drives through the Rockies or the foghorn that announces a craggy Atlantic coastline still sets my adrenaline pumping. Within the nooks and crannies of the American landscape, an abundance of serendipitous discoveries awaits, gift-wrapped by the asphalt ribbon that detours off the beaten path. Never fond of sitting in the bumper-to-bumper monotony of the routine world, I find it more rewarding to watch the crowds dissolve into specks in my rear-view mirror. I tend to bypass the freeway's cookie-cutter pit stops, motel chains and fast-food franchises to seek the exit ramp that separates the traveler from the tourist. In my years poking around America's dusty byways, I've managed to harvest a healthy crop of lodgings that defy mediocrity. Some are remote outposts in fragile cahoots with nature.

Others, pehaps right around the corner, present the bedroom as theatrical experience or create their own quirky universe in the midst of a busy city. All are vibrant expressions of the American character, of our distinctive pioneer heritage and the entrepreneurial spirit it engendered. This treasury of magical bedtime stories is a celebration of fantasy, a carefully hand-picked selection of gateways that either whisper romance, scream eccentricity, or burst at the seams with the promise of adventure. Whichever you choose, I hope they strengthen your appetite for the smorgasbord of life. For dreamers, satisfaction is virtually guaranteed. You'll know it in those few fleeting moments at the margins of consciousness when, as your weary head melts into the pillow in some strange and unforgettable new place, you find yourself longing for just a few nights to imagine.