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 Center of the USA
By Linda Tancs
The geographic center of the contiguous United States is the point where a plane map of the 48 contiguous states would balance if it were of uniform thickness. That point has been officially established by the U.S. Geological Survey nearest the town of Lebanon, Kansas. This arguably obscure fact is commemorated by a stone monument at the end of Kansas Highway 191. The actual center is about a half mile away in the middle of a former hog farm. Another more colorful marker is a few miles away on U.S. Highway 36. At least this community can boast that it is, quite literally, at the center of it all.
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The Grand Lady of Bartlesville
By Linda Tancs
Frank Phillips was a poor farm boy in Iowa who later became an oil magnate in Oklahoma, founding Phillips Petroleum Company. His success is evident at the Frank Phillips Home in Bartlesville. Fondly referred to as the Grand Lady of Cherokee Avenue, the Neoclassical house sports intricate mahogany woodwork, silk damask wall coverings, Waterford crystal chandeliers and a 2,000-volume library no doubt enjoyed by guests like Will Rogers, Wiley Post, Elliott Roosevelt and architect Edward Buehler Delk. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the house is now owned and operated by the Oklahoma Historical Society.
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A Chieftain’s Table
By Linda Tancs
Legend has it that South Carolina’s Table Rock got its name from a Cherokee chieftain who used a ledge of Table Rock Mountain as a dining table to feast on the bounty of his hunt. Indeed, long before this area of the Blue Ridge Mountains become Table Rock State Park (one of 47 state parks), its Cherokee inhabitants named it Sah-ka-na-ga, the Great Blue Hills of God. The extensive trail system carries hikers past streams and waterfalls to the top of Table Rock and Pinnacle mountains. Pinnacle Mountain is the highest peak located entirely within the state.
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Dangerous Water in Minnesota
By Linda Tancs
One of the most recognized and photographed icons in Minnesota, Split Rock Lighthouse in Two Harbors is a National Historic Landmark. Completed in 1910, it addressed the disastrous loss of 29 ships in a 1905 storm, two of which foundered in this area dubbed “the most dangerous piece of water in the world” by an American novelist. Its compelling location on the top of a sheer cliff that plunges 130 feet made it the most visited lighthouse in the United States in its heyday. Today, it’s still a favorite among visitors to the Lake Superior shoreline.
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In the Heart of Horse Country
By Linda Tancs
In the heart of horse and bourbon country in Lexington, Kentucky, is Gratz Park. One of the city’s oldest neighborhoods and a historic district, it’s named after early Lexington businessman Benjamin Gratz. Other luminaries who once graced this area north of Main Street include Mary Todd Lincoln, Horace Holley and horseman John Gaines. Colorful houses from the 1800s join stately dwellings like the Hunt-Morgan House, built for millionaire businessman John Wesley Hunt. His great-grandson Thomas Hunt Morgan was the first Kentuckian to win a Nobel Prize for medicine. The home is also the site of the Alexander T. Hunt Civil War Museum, a great resource for Civil War researchers and enthusiasts.
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A Goliath in New Jersey
By Linda Tancs
In New Jersey, a Sussex County zoo held the Guinness World Record from 1967 to 1991 for the world’s largest bear in captivity. That was Goliath, a Kodiak weighing 2,000 pounds and standing 12 feet tall. He still greets visitors to Space Farms—stuffed, of course. But nowadays it’s the live action that keeps visitors coming back. Boasting more than 500 wild animals (including more than 100 species), the countryside zoo in Beemerville hosts bobcats, tigers, lions, buffalo, hyena, wild ponies, timber wolves, foxes, bears, deer, leopards, monkeys, jaguars, coyotes, llamas, yaks, snakes and hundreds more. Internationally famous for their bear and lion cub breeding programs, Space Farms has the largest private collection of North American animals in their natural surroundings in the United States.
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Light City USA
By Linda Tancs
The light (no pun intended) shines on Baltimore, Maryland, today through April 3 as the city hosts the first large-scale, international light festival in the United States. Light City is a premiere event, a festival of light, music and innovation. During the day a series of conferences will explore social, medical and ecological innovation; lights, performances and live music will enliven the Inner Harbor at night. Featured art includes glacier-like installations, floating lights, interactive sculptures and 1,001 LUX, a large scale video project that uses light forms such as fireworks, car lights, flashlights, candles, torches, cigarettes, the sun, the moon, the stars and lightning with self-produced sound material.
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An Open Door in Wisconsin
By Linda Tancs
Resembling the jagged blade of a knife, Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula separates Lake Michigan from Green Bay. Its sandy reefs and shoals present a hazard for mariners, especially around the treacherous strait between the tip of the peninsula and Washington Island. The number of shipwrecks in this area accounts for its moniker, Death’s Door. It should come as no surprise, then, that lighthouses adorn the area. Some are accessible during the summer months. But three (at Plum, Pilot and Chambers islands) can be reached only during Door County Maritime Museum’s annual Lighthouse Festival in June. Those opportunities include a highly anticipated cruise through the middle of Death Door’s Passage to a tour of the ruins of an 1848 lighthouse, a visit to an 1868 lighthouse and a hike to the 1837 Pottawatomie Light (Wisconsin’s oldest). Tickets for these three tours go on sale the first week of April and sell out quickly.
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New Jersey’s Wild Spring
By Linda Tancs
Part of the Delaware River floodplain, Bulls Island Recreation Area in Stockton, New Jersey, is a wild place each spring. Specifically, it’s a hotspot for migration. Watch out for 32 species of warbler, along with vireos, swallows, flycatchers and gulls. Another thing blooming this time of year is the ostrich fern. Its unfurled frond appears now as fiddlehead. Although protected in this area, cooked fiddleheads are a wild spring delicacy.
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History on the Waterfront
By Linda Tancs
History awaits along the waterfront at Patriots Point in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. That’s where you’ll find the USS Yorktown, the 10th aircraft carrier to serve in the U.S. Navy. Originally named Bon Homme Richard, it was renamed Yorktown in honor of the Yorktown that was sunk during the Battle of Midway in 1942. The carrier participated significantly in the Pacific Theater, earning 11 battle stars for service during World War II. It was decommissioned in 1970 and later towed from New Jersey to Charleston to serve as the centerpiece of Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum.
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