Welcome. California officially reopened on Tuesday. In New York, restaurants and movie theaters are no longer required to space patrons six feet apart. The European Union is expected to open to American tourists on Friday. As regulations change rapidly, questions about travel abound: What are the testing and vaccination requirements for domestic and international travel? What sort of paperwork is required? Here’s what to know before you go.

The road beckons. If you’re inclined to heed its call, perhaps you’ll drive U.S. 1 the length of Maine (beware the $34 lobster roll) or take a barn-quilt tour of the Midwest. You could go birding in the Arizona desert (August is high season for hummingbirds) or pay a visit to Northern California’s redwoods. The journalism professor Ron Stodghill, inspired by Stacey Abrams’s work, drove from Missouri to the Golden Isles of southeastern Georgia to, as he writes, “hang out in some of its less-frequented coastal areas (and yes, away from a wave of newly, often reckless, unmasked crowds) and confront some of my own lingering ghosts in the state where my paternal grandparents were born.”

Here are some tips for snagging a rental car, and here’s a look at the latest in R.V. technology. Don’t forget the road trip soundtrack: Jon Caramanica has five tracks to listen to right now; Lucy Dacus and Amythyst Kiah have new albums on the way; and, of course, there’s always your At Home playlist if you get a little homesick.

P.S.

• Joan Armatrading’s 20th studio album, “Consequences,” will be released on Friday. For now, watch her perform “Drop the Pilot” on Top of the Pops in 1983.

• The writer and musher Blair Braverman has a good beginner’s guide to hiking in Outside.

• “How did an aggressively polarizing drinking bitters from Italy start a love affair with a city clear on the other side of the world?” Grant Marek has a lively investigation into Fernet Branca’s popularity in San Francisco.

Tell us.

Do you have plans to travel this summer? If so, where to? Are you going to visit family, setting up a remote office or just taking a vacation? Tell us: athome@nytimes.com. Include your full name and location and we might feature your story in a future newsletter. We’re At Home and Away. We’ll read every letter sent. More ideas for leading a full and cultured life, at home and away, appear below. I’ll be back on Friday.

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