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
Best Sunset in the Hudson Valley
By Linda Tancs
For many, the best sunset view in the Hudson Valley is the one from the fire tower at Ferncliff Forest in Rhinebeck, New York, a 200-acre, old-growth forest preserve. Standing high above the treetops at 80 feet, the tower provides visitors with an amazing sunset view over the Catskills and Hudson River. The tower is easily visible driving east across the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge. Follow the East Tower Trail in the forest for the most direct path to the structure. As with any climb, consider any physical limitations you may have before attempting it.
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The Heart of the Thousand Islands
By Linda Tancs
Alexandria Bay, New York, is a tourist village located on the St. Lawrence River in the heart of the Thousand Islands, an archipelago straddling the border between the U.S. and Canada. Its centerpiece on town-owned Heart Island is Boldt Castle, a full-size, Rhineland-style castle built by hotelier George Boldt for his wife. Accessible via boat tours (from May to October), a shuttle from the island also runs to the Boldt family’s yacht house on nearby Wellesley Island, featuring some of the original fleet, including an 1892 steam yacht.
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Tulips in New Jersey
By Linda Tancs
If you can’t fly to Holland, then you can drive there—Holland Ridge, that is. Located in Cream Ridge, New Jersey, it’s the site of a massive tulip bloom, just like the Dutch variety. In fact, the Holland Ridge Farms Tulip Festival is reportedly the largest on the East Coast. You’d expect nothing less from fourth-generation tulip growers from Holland. The flowers are in high bloom. Better hurry.
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The Story of American Law Enforcement
By Linda Tancs
America’s first museum giving visitors a “walk in the shoes” experience of law enforcement opened late last year in Washington, D.C. Located in Judiciary Square, the National Law Enforcement Museum offers over 20,000 artifacts telling the story of American law enforcement since its beginnings. Seeking to encourage dialog between police and communities, the facility’s exhibits include a training simulator exploring the making of police decisions. The grounds also feature a memorial with the names of more than 21,000 officers who have been killed in the line of duty throughout U.S. history, dating back to the first known death in 1791.
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All About Bones
By Linda Tancs
Located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Orlando, Florida, the Museum of Osteology is a unique museum focusing on the form and function of the skeletal system. The exhibits feature hundreds of real animal skeletons (no dinosaurs!) designed to foster an appreciation for the diversity of the animal kingdom existing today. America’s only skeleton museum, it’s family-owned and open year round.
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Old Wheels in Hershey
By Linda Tancs
There’s more to Hershey, Pennsylvania, than its chocolate-themed park. Indeed, just minutes away is the AACA Museum, an automotive museum dedicated to the preservation and presentation of vintage automobiles and their vast history. A Smithsonian affiliate, the facility showcases vintage vehicle displays and interactive exhibits featuring cars, buses, motorcycles and other vehicles from the 1890s through the 1980s. Permanent exhibits include the Cammack Tucker Gallery (the world’s largest display of Tucker ’48 automobiles and related artifacts), the Route 66 gallery exploring this iconic stretch of roadway and the Museum of Bus Transportation. Special themed exhibits and car shows are plentiful.
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America’s National Road
By Linda Tancs
Authorized by Congress in 1806, the National Road was the first highway built entirely with federal funds. It linked the eastern and western states in the first half of the 19th century, running from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois. Known in many places as Route 40, its charm lies in the many historic stone bridges along its path and the quaint, untouched towns and villages that called the road “Main Street.” In fact, the road earned the nickname “the Main Street of America.” Of the many inns dotting the route, Mount Washington Tavern (adjoining Fort Necessity Battlefield) in Pennsylvania is an example of a typical stagecoach stop for early travelers on the National Road. Unlike those early settlers, if you drive straight through without stopping, you should be able to complete the route in about 13 hours.
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Batty in Austin
By Linda Tancs
From late March through autumn, Austin, Texas, hosts North America’s largest urban bat population, a community that swells to 1.5 million by summer’s end. Their habitat is in the crevices of the Congress Avenue Bridge, where onlookers congregate before sunset to witness the spectacle of their flight to catch dinner. Be sure to face east on the bridge or catch the view from the lake below on a boat cruise.
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The House Above the Falls
By Linda Tancs
In the 1930s wealthy department store owner Edgar Kaufmann commissioned renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright to build him a house in the woods in southwestern Pennsylvania. Not just any house, mind you. Positioned right over a waterfall in the Laurel Highlands in Mill Run, its cantilevered tiers assure that the man-made structure melds with its natural surroundings, which include a mature forest, sandstone boulders, a stream, a variety of plants and flowers and, of course, that waterfall. Appropriately named Fallingwater, the structure is a National Historic Landmark. Be sure to capture the trademark view from the clearing called, what else, The View.
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The Town that Fooled the British
By Linda Tancs
St. Michaels, Maryland, is a tony waterfront town on the Eastern Shore. Perhaps better known for its quaint inns, crab shacks and boutiques, it’s also, as legend goes, the town that fooled the British. That part of the story dates to the War of 1812. When residents were warned of an oncoming attack by the British, they dimmed the lights and hoisted lanterns into the trees above the city, creating blackout conditions that fooled the British into overshooting the town’s houses and shipyards. The ruse was largely successful, resulting in a single cannonball shot to the Federal-style home built for shipbuilder William Merchant. That house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, one of many stops on the town’s historical walking tour.
