Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for U.S. travel
The Pillars of Crowley Lake
By Linda Tancs
A short distance south of California’s Mammoth Lakes, Crowley Lake is a reservoir that’s the focal point of fishing season (late spring to autumn) in Mono County. Boasting some of the finest fish in the Sierra, it’s prized for its trout, perch and cutthroat. What might not seem as evident are the stone pillars that reveal themselves when the water level is just right. Believed to have been formed over 700,000 years ago by a massive volcanic eruption, the columns are situated on the east side of the reservoir off Highway 395 near Rock Creek. You’ll need four-wheel drive to navigate a steep hill, after which you can park and hike down to the beach where you can view the pillars.
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Billed as the Great North American Eclipse, a total solar eclipse will cross North America on April 8, 2024, passing over Mexico, the United States and Canada. The path of the eclipse begins in Mexico, entering the United States in Texas, and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The eclipse will enter Canada in Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. This will be the last time any solar eclipse will be visible within the United States until 2045.
Be prepared! So long as supplies last, you can purchase eclipse glasses and other accessories, like a phone app and photo filter, from American Paper Optics, a NASA-approved manufacturer. The link in the preceding sentence is an affiliate link, which means that if you click on the link and purchase merchandise from the page, then I may receive a small commission.
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Birth of the NFL
By Linda Tancs
First known as the American Professional Football Association, the National Football League (NFL) was born on September 17, 1920, in Canton, Ohio. The minutes from the NFL’s formation meeting are understandably among the league’s most precious documents, and you’ll find them at Canton’s Pro Football Hall of Fame. As you might expect, the museum chronicles every Super Bowl from the first to the present, and you’ll find a bronze bust of every player enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Early August marks Enshrinement Week in Canton, where football’s greatest legends gather for the annual enshrinement ceremony. Visitors will also experience parades, autograph sessions, tailgating festivities and more.
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More Than Prairie
By Linda Tancs
Despite its name, there’s more than prairie at Prairie Garden Trust in New Bloomfield, Missouri. In fact, it’s loaded with woods, ponds, streams, rocky bluffs, rolling fields and all sorts of native plants and animals that change with the seasons. Summer is a great time to see the buckeye butterfly, green heron, hummingbird clearwing or a spangled skimmer. And check out blazing star, the perennial that paints the prairie purple this time of year.
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Old Phones in New Jersey
By Linda Tancs
Boasting eight streets, Vincentown is the archetypal small American town. Located in Burlington County, New Jersey, it features a building that housed the Vincentown-Tabernacle Telephone Company from 1911 until the company was bought out by New Jersey Bell in 1930. The unassuming clapboard structure also served as a millinery shop, a tinsmith’s shop and a plumber’s shop. Now it’s home to the Vincentown-Tabernacle Telephone Company & Museum, where early telephone equipment is on display, like a vintage black candlestick phone and a rotary gem.
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Billed as the Great North American Eclipse, a total solar eclipse will cross North America on April 8, 2024, passing over Mexico, the United States and Canada. The path of the eclipse begins in Mexico, entering the United States in Texas, and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The eclipse will enter Canada in Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. This will be the last time any solar eclipse will be visible within the United States until 2045.
Be prepared! So long as supplies last, you can purchase eclipse glasses and other accessories, like a phone app and photo filter, from American Paper Optics, a NASA-approved manufacturer. The link in the preceding sentence is an affiliate link, which means that if you click on the link and purchase merchandise from the page, then I may receive a small commission.
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New Jersey’s Field of Dreams
By Linda Tancs
Sitting atop a bluff above the Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey, Hinchcliffe Stadium is one of the last remaining Negro Leagues stadiums in the United States. It’s the first National Historic Landmark honoring baseball and the only sporting venue within the boundary of a national historical park (Great Falls). Completed in 1932, the stadium seats 10,000 and has served as the home park for the New York Black Yankees, New York Cubans and, on occasion, the Newark Eagles. The venue is likely be reinvigorated as the New Jersey Jackals make it their new home park.
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Billed as the Great North American Eclipse, a total solar eclipse will cross North America on April 8, 2024, passing over Mexico, the United States and Canada. The path of the eclipse begins in Mexico, entering the United States in Texas, and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The eclipse will enter Canada in Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. This will be the last time any solar eclipse will be visible within the United States until 2045.
Be prepared! So long as supplies last, you can purchase eclipse glasses and other accessories, like a phone app and photo filter, from American Paper Optics, a NASA-approved manufacturer. The link in the preceding sentence is an affiliate link, which means that if you click on the link and purchase merchandise from the page, then I may receive a small commission.
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Newport’s First Palatial Residence
By Linda Tancs
Until the appearance of the Vanderbilt houses in the 1890s, Chateau-sur-Mer was the most palatial residence in Newport, Rhode Island. Built in 1852 as an Italianate-style villa for China trade merchant William Shepard Wetmore, it was the site of elaborate parties, including a country picnic for more than 2,000 guests and the debutante ball for Miss Edith Wetmore in 1889. The mansion ushered in the Gilded Age, a period characterized by extreme wealth among America’s leading industrialists. William’s son George (later Governor of Rhode Island and a United States senator) remodeled the house during the 1870s in the Second Empire French style, details of which are evident throughout the home. The mansion is open daily from July to October.
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A Tropical Oasis in Buffalo
By Linda Tancs
When you visit the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens, you’ll find a tropical oasis under the Palm Dome, home to a beautiful and diverse collection of palms and other tropical plants native to areas throughout the world like the Foxtail Palm. Native to Queensland, Australia, this rare palm was unknown to botanists until 1978. The dome is just one of many interconnecting indoor gardens featuring an aquatic garden, an Asian rainforest, succulents, exotic flowers and the largest public ivy collection in the world. The gardens are located in Buffalo, New York, easily accessible via the New York State Thruway or a public bus from downtown.
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Billed as the Great North American Eclipse, a total solar eclipse will cross North America on April 8, 2024, passing over Mexico, the United States and Canada. The path of the eclipse begins in Mexico, entering the United States in Texas, and traveling through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The eclipse will enter Canada in Southern Ontario, and continue through Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. This will be the last time any solar eclipse will be visible within the United States until 2045.
Be prepared! So long as supplies last, you can purchase eclipse glasses and other accessories, like a phone app and photo filter, from American Paper Optics, a NASA-approved manufacturer. The link in the preceding sentence is an affiliate link, which means that if you click on the link and purchase merchandise from the page, then I may receive a small commission.
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Two Downtowns and a Train
By Linda Tancs
The Hoosac Valley Train connects the downtowns of Adams and North Adams at the northern end of Berkshire County in Massachusetts. The round-trip, scenic ride operates regularly with a classic 1955 Budd RDC or self-propelled passenger car, and volunteers narrate the history of trains in the mountains. Trains leave from the platform beside the Adams Visitors Center on weekends from May to October in addition to holiday-themed special runs in December.
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A First in Wyoming
By Linda Tancs
Named after the river that runs through it, Bear River State Park in Evanston, Wyoming, features a captive herd of bison and elk kept for public viewing and education. For the first time in the park’s history, a white (not albino) bison was recently born there. Beyond rare, there’s a 1-in-10 million chance of such an occurrence, according to the National Bison Association. The white bison is a sacred sign to the Lakota Sioux and other plains tribes. Enjoy the wildlife displays at the Visitor Center, as well as the miles of paved and packed gravel trails.
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In the Heart of the Cascades
By Linda Tancs
Stehekin is a place where no roads can take you. Nestled deep in the North Cascades in Washington State, it’s only accessible via boat, plane or foot. It might be one of the most peaceful places on Earth, a valley surrounded by peaks of the North Cascades, where the closest thing to white noise is glacial melt running over the rocks of the Stehekin River. The name “Stehekin” comes from a word in the Salishan language that means “the way through.” If an escape from everyday life is what you’re after, then it’s more like a way out. Accommodations include an array of cabins and hideaways with names like the Round House and Rainbow Cabin. Regardless where you stay, you’ll be a stone’s throw away from Stehekin Pastry Company, where the treats are legendary.
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