Travel Tips & Adventures

Everyone loves a day at the zoo!  And one of the best zoos is the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.  Get on your comfortable walking shoes and plan to spend a day visiting the animals with your human animal family, because the zoo is even more fun with kids.

It’s All Happening at the Zoo

There is often a newborn – animal, that is – that creates quite a stir.  

The pandas are one of the prime attractions at the zoo.  With everyone jockeying for position, it may be hard to get some great photos.  It was fun watching the pandas, though, as they ate their bamboo and lumbered about.  They are so big and fluffy that you have to remind yourself that they are bears, so I was glad of the separation from them.

There are three pandas to view these days and they are playful and fun to watch, but sometimes, not totally active.  Hey, you wouldn’t want to move around a lot in the DC heat and humidity, either!

Playful Panda with Bamboo

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What better way to celebrate USA’S birthday than a visit to Washington, DC!

Imagine standing in bone-chillingly freezing weather near a large, manmade lake (The famous Tidal Pool) with two impressive monuments across from you, just waiting for sunrise.  That was the scenario for me several years ago in Washington, DC during the spring cherry blossom season.

Almost on a dare, I decided to try photography at sunrise since I’d always heard it was the best.  Well, it was, but the cold was so numbing that I almost couldn’t get my fingers to push the camera shutter.

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Jefferson Memorial at Sunrise

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When a group of upstart colonists decided they wanted self-governance back in the 1770s, there was a hotbed of activity in Boston, Massachusetts.

Names familiar to many American schoolchildren – Paul Revere, John Adams and others – resided in Boston or the nearby area.

Paul Revere statue

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Boston, Massachusetts conjures up images of the fight for United States independence, history and old buildings.  It’s all of that and much more.  With the 4^th of July this week, Boston seems a great place to celebrate the USA’s birth.

Quincy Market - where street performances happen often

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Scotland: Fall 2009

DAY 14

Even though we just got there (Edinburgh), it’s time to get out of town!

What do Mel Gibson, Liam Neeson and Angus Macfadyen have in common? They have all portrayed Scottish heroes at your local Cineplex. Whether or not the movies were entirely accurate (Braveheart & Rob Roy) is beside the point. The characters were real. William Wallace, Rob Roy and Robert the Bruce were, in fact, local heroes, much to the chagrin of the British monarchy at the time. (more…)

Every girl likes her pearls – or other beads. It turns out that men, too, throughout time have valued beads. Beads are the featured and the only items on display in the unique Bead Museum in Glendale, Arizona.

What are beads? Anything that has a hole in it that can be strung. That means that our ancestors of 13,000 years ago who took a reindeer tooth and strung it on a leather strand had an early bead.

Iridescent decoration made from beetle wings

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When you travel to the National Parks in the Southwest and start with Zion, as we did, you find yourself overwhelmed and feeling very small.  The cliffs tower over you and you can get lost on the trails.  

Part of the “Grand Circle” of National Parks, we really enjoyed the diversity of the trails.  One moment, walking along a nice level path, you might see a deer grazing not too far away.  

Red cliffs of Zion National Park

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Landscape Arch

From Moab, Utah, it is a fairly easy drive to the Park’s visitor center. Allow a very full morning or afternoon or even a day to visit the evocatively named formations. See “Courthouse Towers,” “ Parade of Elephants,” “Three Gossips” and the famous “Landscape Arch.” Landscape Arch looks likes it will fall down any time now, but it might take thousands of years. As recently as 1991, a large segment fell from Landscape Arch and the section left looks very close to fragmenting entirely.

Parade of Elephants

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Scotland: Fall 2009

As promised from yesterday, we’re continuing our journey down to Edinburgh.

Day 12

Aviemore to Edinburgh

Distance: 126.0 miles
Time: 2 hr 48 min

We are going to make a few stops and hopefully we’ll have time for all of them.

1st Stop

Blair Atholl

The village of Blair Atholl is approximately a 90-minute drive north from Edinburgh or Glasgow just off of the A9, 35 miles north of Perth.

Blair Castle

The seat of the Dukes and Earls of Atholl is touted as Scotland’s most visited historic house and is also the home of the Atholl Highlanders, Europe’s only remaining private army. (I think I’ll see if I can rent them out for a few jobs that I have pending around the house.) (more…)

Scotland: Fall 2009

A Sale Is A Sale, Unless It Isn’t …

We had a real scare around here last week. We got an e-mail from Qantas Airlines touting incredible fares to Australia from L.A.!!! And guess what? They were during the same time we planned to go to Scotland! There was even a free stopover thrown in.

Of course there was!

As Australia and New Zealand are our number 2/3 destinations after Scotland, we decided to take a look. I even got out the Australia/New Zealand travel brochures I had been storing, some for over five years! (more…)