Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Art, Culture and Nature
By Linda Tancs
The Royal Ontario Museum is Canada’s largest and most comprehensive museum. Located in the heart of Toronto, it boasts a collection of 13 million artworks, cultural objects and natural history specimens, featured in 40 gallery and exhibition spaces. Art and cultural objects from around the world date from pre-historic civilizations to present day contemporary artworks. Recognized internationally, the natural history collection features fossilized plants and animals from all over the world as well as the best examples of minerals, gems, meteorites and rocks from our planet and solar system. Founded in 1914, the museum is among the top 10 cultural institutions in North America.
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National Aviation Heritage
By Linda Tancs
The National Aviation Heritage Area encompasses an eight-county area in Ohio (Montgomery, Greene, Miami, Clark, Warren, Champaign, Shelby and Auglaize counties). Managed by the Aviation Heritage Alliance, the assets of the region include the National Museum of the United States Air Force (which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year), historic Grimes Field (the legacy of Warren Grimes, “Father of the Aircraft Lighting Industry”) and the Airstream Heritage Center, celebrating over 90 years of airstream history.
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Remembering the Gold Rush
By Linda Tancs
The promise of gold brought thousands of people to Alaska and the Yukon Territory in 1897-98. Their search for riches is commemorated at Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway, Alaska. The park is made up of three units in Alaska and one unit in Seattle, Washington, each playing an integral role in the stampede to the Klondike. The three units in Alaska are the Skagway Historic District, the White Pass Trail and the Chilkoot Trail (which began at Dyea, once a booming town as a route to the gold fields). The Chilkoot pass is one of only three passes that can be used all winter in the northern Lynn Canal area. If you visit this time of year you’ll avoid the hustle and bustle of the cruise ships that dominate Skagway during the summer season.
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Tea Burners in New Jersey
By Linda Tancs
A precursor to the American Revolution, the Boston Tea Party was a protest that occurred in 1773 when a cadre of colonists threw over 300 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest what they viewed as taxation without representation. A lesser-known event is the protest that took place one year later in Greenwich, New Jersey, when a group of revolutionaries burned a haul of tea headed for Philadelphia. The occasion is marked by the Tea Burners Monument, erected in 1908 on Ye Greate Street.
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America’s First Art School
By Linda Tancs
Founded in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia is the first art school and art museum in the United States. Its Historic Landmark Building, considered one of the finest surviving examples of Victorian Gothic architecture in America, houses exhibition space as well as classroom space for the school, which is primarily located at the Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building. Between those two buildings is Lenfest Plaza, a year-round gathering space featuring a three-part serpentine bench, mosaic pavers, plantings and rotating works of emerging and established artists.
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Quokkas and Bandicoots
By Linda Tancs
Quokkas and bandicoots are two marsupials that call Waychinicup National Park home. Located in Western Australia, the park extends from Normans Beach and the Waychinicup River mouth to Cheynes Beach, not far from Albany. The area boasts dense vegetation, a haven for threatened species like scrub birds, western whistlebirds and whipbirds. The inlet of the camping area has a river with polished granite rocks on both sides, transforming an ordinary stream into a stunning landscape with plants found nowhere else. Take a coastal walk along Normans Beach East or Normans Beach West and enjoy the stunning scenery.
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A Boomerang in Singapore
By Linda Tancs
Shaped like a boomerang, Pulau Ubin is a lush island off the mainland of Singapore, just a 15-minute bumboat ride from Changi Point Ferry Terminal. A must for nature lovers, the site boasts the Chek Jawa wetlands, one of Singapore’s richest ecosystems. In fact, six major ecosystems – sandy beach, rocky beach, seagrass lagoon, coral rubble, mangroves and coastal forest – meet there. Be sure to climb Jejawi Tower, where you’ll enjoy panoramic views and irresistible bird watching.
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Red River Art
By Linda Tancs
Formerly known as the Red River Art Center, the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota, is the largest and only accredited art museum in the state. Housed in a renovated, turn-of-the-century warehouse downtown, it features special exhibitions of 20th- and 21st-century art as well as a permanent collection containing approximately 4,000 works of national, international, regional fine art and ethnographic objects. In addition to its collections, the facility offers art classes as well as studio and exhibition space for learning, discussion and display of creative work.
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A Belgian Beach Gem
By Linda Tancs
Close to the French border, De Panne is a Belgian town on the North Sea known for its beach. You won’t be swimming there this time of year, but you’ll have peace and quiet to enjoy the wide and clean sandy beach, arguably one of the best in Europe. The area features the Dumont Quarter, a series of 19-century summer houses built in the dunes that resemble English cottages. The summit of Kykhill Dune Park offers views of the historic quarter as well as the sea.
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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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The Straw Bear of Whittlesea
By Linda Tancs
In the market town of Whittlesea (or Whittlesey), England, don’t be surprised to see a straw bear paraded through the streets. The custom dates back to the 1880s, when the Tuesday following Plough Monday (the first Monday after Twelfth Night) would be marked by getting one of the members of the plough to dress in straw. Once in decline, the tradition is alive and well thanks to the Whittlesea Society. The procession these days includes over 250 dancers, musicians and performers accompanying the straw bear and a decorated plough, making its way up Market Street. This year’s Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival takes place from January 12 to January 14. The bear appears on Saturday.
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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.
Travelrific® Travel Journal 