Category: Nature
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Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
Near Traverse City, Michigan; September 2000 Glaciers scoured the Great Lakes region during the last Ice Age. This mighty forces inundated the countryside, carving out many areas while leaving deposits behind in others. Sleeping Bear Dunes became one of those locations that happened to gain land, and presents rare examples of what are known geologically…
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Beaver Island Travel Index
Beaver Island, Michigan, USA (September 2000) Beaver Island is the largest island in Lake Michigan and the third largest in the Great Lakes, at about 6 miles wide and 13 miles long. It is located 18 miles from Michigan’s lower and upper peninsulas. Native Americans settled Beaver Island originally and Irish immigrants began arriving by…
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Bermuda Shorts, Part 8 (Museums & More)
With an area as small as Bermuda — just over 20 square miles (53 square kilometres) — one might conclude it wouldn’t need a lot of museums. Well, as it turned out, a lot of history happened there. Plus the tourists needed something to do. Maybe they couldn’t golf or lounge at the beach the…
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Atlantic Puffins in Maine
Muscongus Bay, Knox Co., Maine (August 2009) We left out of Port Clyde on an afternoon excursion to see an Atlantic Puffin colony. They live on nearby Eastern Egg Rock, a 7-acre island on the outer edge of Muscongus Bay (map). Puffins disappeared from the Eastern Coast of the United States for a long time.…
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McIlhenny Co.’s Tabasco® Factory
Iberia Parish, Louisiana, USA (March 2007) Tabasco peppers grow commercially in several places including Louisiana, Central America and South America, but the bottling of the famous Tabasco® Sauce traces to only one location: Avery Island, deep in the heart of Louisiana’s Cajun country (map) Making the Sauce This sign welcomes visitors to the McIlhenny Company’s…
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The Jungle Gardens of Avery Island
Iberia Parish, Louisiana, USA (March 2007) The Jungle Gardens cover more than 250 lushly landscaped acres on Louisiana’s Avery Island (map). It is part of the McIlhenny property where the world-famous Tabasco® Sauce originates, and is open to the public for a modest fee. The gardens arose from the visionary efforts of Edward Avery McIlhenny…
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Global Wildlife Center
West of Folsom, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana (April 2010) We’re always looking for fun things to do while visiting family in the New Orleans area. They’d been talking about how wonderful the Global Wildlife Center was, and how much fun the kids had on their visits there (map). We hadn’t visited it before so we stuffed…
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Effigy Mounds National Monument
Harpers Ferry, Iowa (June 2009) Few people seem to know much about Effigy Mounds National Monument except for those who happen to live along these magnificent stretches of the Upper Mississippi River (map). It is practically unrivaled for its amazing combination of natural beauty and historical importance, with its scenic vistas above the river and…
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Minnetonka Cave
Caribou-Targhee National Forest , Bear Lake, Idaho, USA (July 2011) We’d heard about Minnetonka Cave while we were visiting Bear Lake and decided to check it out. It’s set high within the Bear Lake Range in Cache National Forest (administered by the Montpelier Ranger District of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest) at an altitude of 7,700…
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Bird House Flight Cage
Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Washington, DC (2007) The Smithsonian’s National Zoo Bird House (map) hosts many avian species, either within the building, the large flight cage or in the attached outdoor exhibits. This is one of the quietest parts of the zoo, a bit off the beaten track, and visitors have to really make a…