By Sara Benson

Great books inspire people to travel. In turn, travel can inspire great people to write books. The next time you're ready for a road trip, why not head somewhere that famous American writers found inspiring? From Pacific Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau rhapsodized about the natural world, to the bohemian streets of San Francisco, where the Beat Generation found their voices, there are countless literary pilgrimages worth making all across this country.

Seven Mile Bridge - Florida Keys, Florida
© Lee Foster Lonely Planet Images.

Escape to Florida's Key West

The best-loved books make you feel like a character in another place and time. Just like a road trip to the Florida Keys does. Follow in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, who moved to Key West after returning from the literary salons of Paris in the 1920s. It's a surreal drive from Miami across Florida's far-flung archipelago, via the Seven Mile Bridge and the head-spinning Overseas Highway (U.S. 1). Just 90 miles across the water from Cuba, tropical Key West is a laid-back place full of fishing boats, today looking much like it did when Hemingway wrote "A Farewell to Arms" here. Get on the water for sportfishing, something "Papa" used to frequently do, or take a tour of the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum , where the descendants of Hemingway's six-toed cat wildly roam.

Massachusetts' Hermitage Retreats

You don't have to cut yourself off from the U.S. mainland to find a writerly peace of mind. Outside Boston in Concord, Mass., Walden Pond was made famous by 19th-century philosopher, naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau. The author of "Walden" lived here for two years as a poetic experiment in self-sufficiency and simplicity. Only 1,000 people each day can now visit Walden Pond State Reservation , which ensures the serenity of your walk through Thoreau's woodlands.

A short drive away in Amherst stands the Emily Dickinson Museum , preserving the 19th-century home of an idiosyncratic, reclusive poet who worked in obscurity during her own lifetime. At the end of guided tours, her works are recited under an oak tree in the elegant homestead's garden.

Chasing Literary Lions in New York City

Of New York City , America's poet of democracy, Walt Whitman, wrote "I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan Island" and that "Brooklyn, of ample hills, was mine." He famously rode the Brooklyn Ferry in 1900 and composed a poem about it. Although the ferry no longer runs, you can drive across the Brooklyn Bridge today, celebrated by eccentric poetic genius Hart Crane in his poem "To Brooklyn Bridge."

On the skyscraping streets of Manhattan, the Algonquin Hotel and Hotel Chelsea are literary landmarks. Near Times Square, The Algonquin was a 1920s social club for witty Dorothy Parker and "The Vicious Circle" of New Yorker writers and literary critics. It's less than a two-mile walk from Times Square to the arty Chelsea neighborhood. There the libertine Hotel Chelsea has housed free-thinking writers for more than 100 years, notably humorist Mark Twain, playwrights Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, essayist Gore Vidal and lyricist Bob Dylan. Originally in the heart of New York's theatre district, the hotel attracted many famous residents for its bohemian lifestyle, becoming a mecca for artistic types; you can still check in to the hotel today.

Grooving with the Beats in San Francisco

In San Francisco's historic North Beach neighborhood, the Beat Generation was born. The original literary vagabond and author of "On the Road," Jack Kerouac crashed here in the late 1950s and early '60s with like-minded friends, among them the poet Allen Ginsberg and psychedelic novelist William S. Burroughs. Today, you can browse small-press and limited editions at City Lights , the bookstore co-founded by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Stop in for a live literary reading at The Beat Museum , chock-a-block with autographed memorabilia. Then have a drink at Vesuvio , a beatnik carousing haunt just off Jack Kerouac Alley, where even the pavement stones quote literary legends.

Santa Monica Pier entrance at dusk.
© Richard Cummins. Lonely Planet Images.

Los Angeles: City of Angels — and Devils, Too

Noir was born in Los Angeles — not only on Hollywood's silver screen, but also on the printed page. Pick up a classic hard-boiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the 1930s and '40s king of pulp, who portrayed the dark side of Los Angeles and fictionalized the oceanfront Santa Monica area where he lived with the moniker "Bay City." Drive the serpentine Pacific Coast Highway, where his fictional detective Philip Marlowe investigated bloody murders, or dine where Chandler himself did at venerable Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard.

Literary noir was resurrected in Los Angeles starting in the 1990s by writers such as Walter Mosley, whose tragic stories like "Devil in a Blue Dress" are set in south L.A. The silver-screen adaptation of James Ellroy's twisted "L.A. Confidential" featured real-life historic locations around Hollywood , including the glittering Pantages Theatre on the Walk of Fame and the 1930s Formosa Cafe bar, both of which you can visit today.

Bio: Sara Benson makes her home in California, except when she's off road-tripping around the U.S. or working in the Sierra Nevada mountains as a park ranger. Already the author of more than 20 travel and nonfiction books, Sara has written for newspapers and magazines from coast to coast, including National Geographic Adventure and the Los Angeles Times' Daily Travel Deal Blog.

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