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
Rocket City
By Linda Tancs
Once coined the “Watercress Capital of the World,” Huntsville, Alabama, is now known as Rocket City. That’s because it’s the place where America’s space program was born—where the rockets were developed that put the first U.S. satellite into orbit and sent men to the moon. It’s where the power for today’s space shuttle was developed and where the modules for the International Space Station were designed and built. It’s also where America’s next great ship, the Space Launch System, is being designed. NASA’s Space Launch System will be the most powerful rocket ever built. When completed, SLS will enable astronauts to begin their journey to explore destinations far into the solar system. Since 1970 more than 16 million people have toured Huntsville’s U.S. Space & Rocket Center. General admission to the center includes access to historic Shuttle Park, Rocket Park and all indoor exhibit areas such as the main museum atrium and the Davidson Center for Space Exploration.
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Clear Comfort in Staten Island
By Linda Tancs
Alice Austen was one of the first women photographers in the U.S. to work outside the confines of a studio, a pioneer in the field of photojournalism. Her home in Staten Island, New York, was built in 1690 as a one-room Dutch farmhouse. Known as Clear Comfort, she lived there from the 1860s until 1945. Now a National Historic Landmark popularly known as Alice Austen House, it’s a house museum offering interpretation of her photographs, life and historic home. In celebration of International Women’s Day today, admission to the museum is free.
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Bon Temps in Mobile
By Linda Tancs
Home to the first Mardi Gras in the U.S., Mobile, Alabama, has been letting the good times roll since 1703. That rich cultural history is on display at the Mobile Carnival Museum. Located on Government Street in a historic building, the facility features royal gowns, crowns and scepters amidst 14 gallery rooms, a pictorial hallway, theater and gathering space.
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History and Design in Wilmington
By Linda Tancs
The Bellamy Mansion Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina, is one of the state’s most spectacular examples of antebellum architecture. Built by free and enslaved black artisans for physician and planter John Dillard Bellamy and his family before the outbreak of the Civil War, the 10,000-square-foot home now serves as a museum of history and the design arts. The home’s soaring main entrance and lushly recreated Victorian gardens are met with equally compelling slave quarters, one of very few preserved urban slave quarters in the country. Guided tours are given on the hour, and self-guided audio tours are available at other times.
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A History of Immigration in Manhattan
By Linda Tancs
One of America’s foremost immigrant neighborhoods is Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in particular 97 Orchard Street. Built in 1863, this tenement apartment building was home to nearly 7,000 working-class immigrants. This ordinary building from which dreams were built forms the Tenement Museum. Accessible only via guided tours, visitors meander through restored apartments that recreate immigrant life in the 19th and 20th centuries. A testament to the lure of the American Dream, in 1992 the museum opened its first apartment, the 1878 home of the German-Jewish Gumpertz family. Since then, six more apartments have been restored, like the home of the Moores, Irish immigrants who lived at 97 Orchard in 1869. Tours start and end at 103 Orchard, site of the museum’s flagship visitors’ center.
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Superior Architecture in Wisconsin
By Linda Tancs
Fairlawn Mansion is an authentically restored 1890 Victorian house museum in Superior, Wisconsin. Built as the family home for lumber and mining baron Martin Pattison, the Queen Anne structure with its four-story turret is an iconic landmark. Among the jewels restored during extensive renovations are gilded murals on the ceilings and frieze, a grand entrance hall and open staircase, marble and tile fireplaces and original leaded and stained glass windows. The master bedroom suite on the second floor also includes period family furnishings. All tours depart at the top of the hour from the gift shop.
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The Friendly City
By Linda Tancs
Wheeling, West Virginia, dubs itself “the friendly city,” no doubt earned by its reputation for heartily welcoming visitors—a stark contrast from the tumult experienced during the Civil War. The state was formed out of western Virginia and added to the Union as a direct result of the war. Born from the walls of West Virginia Independence Hall, a forerunner of today’s skyscrapers with wrought iron I-beams and box girders with cast iron columns, its three floors tell the story of political intrigue, treason, loyalty oaths and the threat of rebel invasion. Admission is free.
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Flour and Water in Minneapolis
By Linda Tancs
Beginning in 1880 and for 50 years thereafter, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was known as “Mill City,” owing to its status as the flour milling capital of the world. Mill City Museum opened in 2003, built in the ruins of the Washburn “A” Mill next to Mill Ruins Park on the banks of the Mississippi River. The flour tower tour is the highlight, taking you through all of the floors of the mill on a historical storytelling tour. The views from the top of the river and the city can’t be beat.
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The History of Forest Hill
By Linda Tancs
A jewel of the North Ward of Newark, New Jersey, Forest Hill is a state historic district (the second largest) that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. The tony enclave is a treasure trove of period revival architecture dating mostly from 1890 to 1925. The range of styles includes Colonial Revival, Craftsman, Tudor, Italian Renaissance, Romanesque, Spanish/Mediterranean, Neoclassical, Beaux Arts and French Chateau. In its heyday, the area (formerly an agrarian region) was settled by some of the country’s most influential magnates, including the Ballantine brewery family, the Clarks (milling) and the Hellers (rasp and file). Despite a downturn in the early part of the 20th century and the conversion of some of the early baronial estates into commercial and multi-family dwellings, the district has enjoyed a resurgence that includes restoration of its palatial homes.
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A Majestic Assembly
By Linda Tancs
From October to February a remarkable sight is yours to behold at Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve near Haines, Alaska. That’s when you’ll find a majestic assembly of more than 3,000 bald eagles, six or more to a single branch, all gathered to feed on five species of spawning chum salmon. The preserve was created in 1982 when the state reserved 48,000 acres along the Chilkat, Klehini and Tsirku rivers to protect this annual reunion, the largest known gathering of bald eagles in the world. Haines Highway between miles 18 and 24 is the main viewing area for eagle watchers and considered critical habitat in the preserve.
