For "Hip Hotels: USA", Herbert Ypma has taken to the road, travelling the length and breadth of that vast land in search of Highly Individual Places to stay. Every HIP hotel has its own unique character. It is timelessly stylish, it is attuned to its location in design, ethos and cuisine, and it achieves that subtle balance between attentiveness and discretion that marks the best of modern service. The natural magnificence of the US is stupendous. Many of these hotels invite you to immerse yourself in wilderness. Restore your perspective in a spectacular private treehouse 50 feet up a giant cedar in the heart of Mount Rainier National Park, or come back to earth in your own lakeside cabin in Wisconsin designed by a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright. Experience Old World gentility in the Renaissance palazzo of Wheatleigh, amid the steeples and clapboard farmhouses of New England, where an immaculate makeover has restored the grace and understated privilege of the world of Edith Wharton (but added all the discreet modern luxuries you might mention). Or live out your Rat Pack fantasies as you lounge poolside with a cocktail surrounded by mid-century modern classics - furniture by Bertoia, Eames, Saarinen - in an authentic 1950s motel in Palm Springs.