5 Walkable US Resort Towns Where You Can Skip The Car, According To Travelers

Having a car to help you get around on a trip can be convenient, but it can also be a hindrance to relaxing. Not only do you have to worry about traffic and parking in some highly populated tourist destinations, but renting a car adds a huge expense to your trip. If you're looking for a spot where you can plant yourself and relax for a week without worrying how you'll get from point A to point B, we've gathered five walkable resort towns where you can skip the car, according to past visitors.

To put this list together, we compared resort towns across the country to find locations where you can fully enjoy your vacation on foot. Each of these locations is either entirely walkable or has public transportation and shuttle options readily available if you do need to travel anywhere. We read through traveler testimonies on the walkability of each location, including various blogs, Reddit posts, and travel forums. Looking ahead to the summer, we've also found five walkable beach towns in the U.S. where you can skip the car, in case you're looking forward to spending your days on the sand.

Starting in a winter resort town, Breckenridge, Colorado, is a perfect destination for skiers or anyone looking to have a cozy staycation that includes small-town charm and unique architecture. Originally founded as a mining town in the 1800s, today Breckenridge is one of the largest historic towns in the state. All of the action you'll want to explore in town is situated right next to the Breckenridge Ski Resort, making it easy to go back and forth between the two if you choose to base your vacation around skiing. Everything within town is walkable, and if traveling in from out of state, you can get right to Breckenridge from the airport via the Epic Mountain Express shuttle. Once in Breckenridge, it's easy get around using the area's free trolleys and buses.

Outside of the ski resort culture, there's still plenty to do. Within the charming and colorful facades that make up Main Street, you'll find local shops and boutiques, restaurants, bars, and art galleries. As is written in a blog post published by Moving Mountains, Breckenridge encourages "more boots and bikes, less cars!" With a focus on sustainability, the town makes it easy to ditch driving in favor of walking, cycling, or using local public transit.

A similarly sized town to Breckenridge up in the Pacific Northwest, Leavenworth, Washington, is a dreamy destination pulled right out of a postcard. With the aesthetic charms of a small European city (and designed in the image of a traditional Bavarian village), there's plenty to do here without ever needing a car. One traveler, Jenny Luttenberger, wrote in her travel guide to the area, "Leavenworth isn't very big, so staying anywhere in the city will allow you to walk to most everything."

A lot of the cuisine options in town are German or German-inspired. (Leavenworth even holds its own Oktoberfest celebration each year and gets a lot of traffic for its Christmas celebrations in the winter.) Yodelin comes recommended by past visitors and serves German-Japanese fusion cuisine. You'll also find a few Italian restaurants and a lot of cozy spots to grab a cup of coffee in town. While Leavenworth is very popular in the fall and winter, it's a perfect resort town to come enjoy in the summer, with activities like tubing, kayaking, and paddleboarding offered nearby. 

There's a free river shuttle that will pick you up in town during the warmer months, so you don't need a car to enjoy the area's natural beauty. There are also multiple conveniently located accommodations, including a few resorts. One traveler recommends staying at the Bavarian Lodge, writing in a Facebook comment that from there, "you can walk to everything, no need for a car. If you take the train .... Use uber to pick you up. Lower cost than the Leavenworth Shuttle."

For New Yorkers and travelers from nearby states like Connecticut or New Jersey, Montauk is very accessible via public transportation. There are also bus companies that will take you from New York City out to the Hamptons. Known for its luxury resorts and beach rentals, this is a great spring and summer destination to escape the city without relying on a car. And once you reach Montauk, unless you plan to visit a more secluded area, it's fairly easy to get around on foot, according to past visitors on Reddit.

While Montauk is indeed a resort town, you can also easily make a day trip of this location if you're itching to ditch the crowded, littered city for a few hours. One traveler wrote on the blog New York Cliche, "Imagine clean, not crowded beaches! I know that's hard to believe, New Yorkers, but they are the reality in Montauk! I am serious: Montauk Beach has so much free sand space, so very little garbage, and is a walkable distance from the LIRR train station." Aside from the beach, downtown Montauk is walkable and is home to resorts (as well as motels), a lively restaurant and bar scene, and boutiques and surf shops to explore. Montauk — or any Hamptons town, for that matter — is the perfect place to plant yourself without a car for a few days to get in some sun, surf, and R&R.

Key West is a classic resort destination. It's also a relatively isolated one, where most people stick to a small area. Travelers on Facebook who have visited multiple times recommend planting yourself in Old Town Key West for the best, most walkable experience, but if you do choose to stay at a hotel or resort farther out or closer to the beach, many offer shuttles into Old Town. One traveler posted on Reddit, "We fly into Key West and Lyft to our hotel. Other than that, we walk everywhere. ... We probably average 12k steps a day while we're there." Another traveler on Tripadvisor shared, "I really don't feel you need a car, unless you plan on driving up the Keys to visit other places. Just to get around Key West a car is a [hindrance] more than anything, and you'd likely spend more on parking than you would on taxis."

From historic Duval Street and the southernmost point of the Continental U.S. to the local Margaritaville, it's easy to get from one part of town to another on foot. And in a city as colorful and unique as Key West, walking is a great way to take in all the oddities it has to offer. You may even run into an iguana or two on the way to your destination.

While you probably do need a car to get to our last destination, once you're in Rehoboth Beach, you could easily leave the car parked until you depart again. This extremely walkable beach town is chic, cute, family-friendly, and much more affordable than some of our other picks, like Montauk, which was ranked 4th in a roundup of the country's most expensive vacation destinations in 2024. As for Rehoboth Beach, Budget Your Trip said, "After analyzing 35 great hotels... we found the average hotel price in Rehoboth Beach is a remarkably economical $154." 

Depending on your budget, there are all kinds of housing options here, from full home rentals to beachside motels and high-end hotels that will shuttle you to the beach. If you're staying in the town of Rehoboth, it's easy to get to and from the beach, a meal, or an afternoon of shopping in the town's boutiques on foot. Plus, one thing you must do during a visit here is roam up and down the historic boardwalk, which is a Delaware gem lined with food, shops, games, and ocean views. One visitor wrote in a TripAdvisor forum, "The whole town is pretty compact and walkable (or bike-able), and anywhere you stay, you shouldn't have to worry about moving the car unless you want to go shopping on the highway or take a day trip to one of the other towns around here." 

Not just a great beach town, Rehoboth is known for its phenomenal restaurant scene. Northern Virginia Magazine even called it "a prime destination for foodies." And many of those restaurants are tightly packed within a few blocks of each other. If you wanted to do a food tour, you could walk from spot to spot for different courses. Some of the area's best restaurants and eateries, according to one local's Substack (and my own experience), include breakfast at Egg or Rise Up Coffee, lunch at the Dogfish Head Brewery, and an elevated dinner at The Cultured Pearl or Henlopen City Oyster House.

There are many walkable vacation destinations in the United States. To narrow down our picks to the five above, we looked specifically for destinations that could be considered resort towns. From there, we compared resort towns across the country to find locations where you can fully enjoy your vacation without a car. Each of these locations is either entirely walkable or has public transportation and/or shuttle bus options readily available if you do need to travel. 

We read through traveler testimonies on the walkability of each location on blogs, Reddit posts, travel forums, and in the comment sections of sites like Tripadvisor and Facebook. We also considered where each destination was located and the kind of experience it could provide compared to other towns to come up with destinations in a variety of regions and at different price points.