Section of Florida I-95 Closed
A section of Interstate 95 has been closed overnight for construction work, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. I-95 southbound to westbound I-10 is closed for construction until 5:30 a.m. Traffic will be detoured from southbound I-95 to the San Marco exit then back to northbound I-95 until it connects with westbound I-10.
The Arizona Grand Resort - You Really Should Go!
Fountain at the Arizona Grand Resort
The Arizona Grand Resort, located in Phoenix, Arizona, just completed a 52 million dollar renovation. This AAA Four Diamond Preferred all-suite hotel is offering the “Grand Opening Summer Splash”, from Thursday May 21st through Monday September 7th, with rates starting at $129 per night. Visitors who stay for two or more nights receive a $50 gift card that can be used toward any of the numerous resort services and amenities.
The Arizona Grand Resort has something for everyone in the family. The full service spa and salon can be enjoyed after a round on the resort’s 18-hole golf course. The Lobby features a bar and grill, and a marketplace with everything you might need, and a few things you might just want. Aunt Chiladas Mexican Restaurant is within walking distance, and the Phantom Horse Grill and Sports Bar is on the resort property. For the fitness minded, a 20,000 square foot athletic club is available, complete with 45 fitness classes offered per week. The 17,000 acre South Mountain preserve is right at the back door, with 60 miles of trails for hiking, horseback riding, and mountain biking. The Oasis Water Park, rated among the top 10 resort water parks in the nation by The Travel Channel, has water slides, a “river ride”, and an enormous wave pool. During the “Island Nights at the Oasis” visitors can enjoy a “dive-in” movie on the big screen behind the pool.
The Arizona Grand Resort
The Arizona Grand Resort is located just six miles from the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, right at the Baseline Road exit off of I-10. It’s a vacation destination in and of itself, and even if the summer months are fantastically hot, the resort will help keep you cool and entertained.
Florida I-75 Closures This Week
Each night/overnight 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., from Monday, June 1 through Friday, June 5, bridge construction will require various lane closures on Immokalee Road at the Immokalee Road/I-75 interchange (No. 111).
Historic Ernest Hemingway House, Key West, Florida
by Barbara Ann Weibel at Hole In The Donut Travels
Key West has always attracted characters. From early settlers who salvaged goods off sunken vessels to present day drifters who exist on tips from their nightly acrobatic and juggling performances at the Sunset Celebration, this tiny island seems to welcome all manner of souls. While this wealth of local color ensures Key West will always be a popular tourist destination (where else can you see a half naked man riding down the main drag on a motorcycle, with a cat sitting on his head?) it has another effect: Key West has attracted some of the world’s greatest writers.
With no slight intended to Robert Frost, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder, Gloria Swanson, or Sally Rand - all famous authors who lived or spent time in Key West - Ernest Hemingway was undoubtedly the island’s most famous resident writer. Hemingway ended up in Key West by accident. During a trip between Cuba and the U.S., he stopped in Key West to pick up a new Ford Roadster that his wife’s wealthy uncle had purchased for them. The car had not yet arrived and the Ford dealership insisted the couple stay in the apartment above the showroom while waiting for it. By the time the Roadster arrived, Key West had charmed Ernest.
Ernest Hemingway historic house and museum, Key West
The Hemingways purchased a home and settled into island life. Ernest spent mornings writing and afternoons at Sloppy Joe’s Saloon, chumming it up with the locals. Evenings, he retired to his private studio above the old coach house to record the stories he’d heard while perched on his favorite bar stool. From from wealthy merchants to down-on-their-luck fishermen and wreckers, Hemingways books are filled with Key West characters. His contentment was so great in Key West that more than half of his published novels were written during the ten years he resided on the island.
Hemingway's master suite is furnished in the heavy Spanish mediterranean furniture he so loved
Today the historic residence has been converted into the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum. The house and grounds provide a fascinating glimpse into the life of the author - visitors are allowed to wander through rooms filled with his collection of hand-carved Spanish furniture, peer into the studio where he wrote “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” and roam perfectly manicured yards in search of one of the six-toed cats descended from a single six-toed feline gifted to Hemingway by a local sea captain.
Hemingway's studio, where he wrote more than half of his published novels
Hemingway’s House is located at 907 Whitehead Street, in the center of Old Town Key West. Admission is $12 for adults and $6 for children (under six free).
Photos courtesy of Barbara Weibel
Prout’s Neck, Maine
Prout's Neck at dusk
Michigan I-75 Bridge Rehabilitation Starts
The Michigan Department of Transportation is schedule to begin bridge work in Genesee and Lapeer counties on Wednesday. MDOT said work includes structural steel repairs and painting.
Bunker Hill Monument - Charlestown, Massachusetts
Bunker Hill Monument - Charlestown, MA
By Molly G. @ The Bumbles Blog
Boston is a great walking city. In fact, you can see some of the most historic sites just by walking along the Freedom Trail. If walking the Freedom Trail isn’t enough exercise for you, one of the stops along the way provides a good old fashioned stair master workout.
The Bunker Hill Monument is one of two sites along the Freedom Trail that is actually located in Charlestown, just across the Charles River. The hill that it resides on provides a perfect spot for a picnic, or to rest your weary feet. It also marks the site of one of the first major battles against the British forces in the American Revolution which let the British know that these Minutemen meant business.
This early battle made famous that familiar phrase not to fire until seeing “the whites of their eyes.” An inexperienced and diverse militia made up of everyone from farmers to prominent society members from across New England snuck into Charlestown one night and surprised the rival British by digging in on Breed’s Hill. The British didn’t take too kindly to being surrounded so they came on over and wreaked havoc. It took them 3 attempts but the British finally took the hill and won the battle. But in the process they lost almost half their soldiers in the fight and faced the harsh reality that they had underestimated their foe.
View of Boston from the top
But where is Bunker Hill in all of this story? It was passed over on the way to Breed’s Hill and the majority involved didn’t realize the difference. The monument itself stands over 200’ high on Breed‘s Hill. There isn’t an elevator so you have to climb almost 300 steps to get to the top. But there is no charge for this pleasure and on a clear day the views of Boston and the rewarding breeze are worthwhile. And you can look down at the site where over 1,500 men from both sides became casualties, yet the courage and confidence of a Revolution gained steam.
QUICK HITS:
- COST = Free.
- DURATION = Depends how easily you tire of stairs. No big lines.
- HOURS = Daily, 9AM - 5PM (the stairs close at 4:30, the museum is open until 5:00)
- ENVIRONMENT = Family friendly. Not handicap accessible.
- ACCESSIBILITY = By foot and is near public transportation. Limited parking options.
- WEBSITE = http://www.nps.gov/bost/historyculture/bhm.htm
- FUN FACTS = It took a bake sale by the women in the community to get the monument completed - typical. The Washington Monument of similar design is more than double the height and was completed about 40 years later - copy cats.
Rules of the Road for Cell Users
Safety comes first; keep those calls short
B ack in prehistory, say the early 1990s, those devices we today call cell phones were more commonly called car phones.
Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, Texas
Fossil Rim Wildlife Center is an amazing place to spend time with your family while enjoying a scenic drive in an African-like setting with wild animals galore. They are an endangered species research and conservation center in Glen Rose, Texas with over 1000 animals from 50 different species.
Fossil Rim
You have the choices of exploring on your own, taking a guided tour or even spending the night on site. They have a lodge that operates as a bed & breakfast and tent cabins for more rustic camping.
The guided tours available consist of behind-the-scenes tours, adventure tours, family tours, after dark tours, accompany the feeders tour & bike tours. These usually need to be booked in advance.
Fossil Rim
Giraffes, wildebeests, zebras, five kinds of deer & rhinos are among many of the unique animals on site. You can buy a bag of food to feed the animals for $7.95. Imagine the photo opportunities of animals coming right up to your car!
Fossil Rim
Fossil Rim is located about one hour southwest of Fort Worth, and around an hour and a half from Dallas. Wednesdays are discounted, and they have different off-seasons and peak-season pricing.
My 7-year-old received a trip here as a gift for his birthday from his grandparents. He hasn’t stopped talking about it since!
Photos curtesy of Carlock Family
Arizona’s Kartchner Caverns
Kartchner Caverns Entrance
Kartchner Caverns State Park is located in Benson, Arizona. The “live” cave system was discovered in 1974, and extraordinary lengths have been achieved to preserve the fragile state of the cave’s environment.
Upon arriving at the park, visitors first enjoy a “Discovery Center” where they can peruse displays showing the different formations, minerals, and photographs of the original expeditions into the cave. A 15-minute video is played while people await their tour to begin. It describes how two intrepid amature spelunkers discovered an opening the size of a stretched-out coat hanger, wiggled their way along a shaft 200-feet long on their bellies, and discovered one of the most important series of caves in recent years.
This cave is “living”, meaning it still supports bats, and is still “wet” (limestone formations are still forming drop by drop). The explorers knew that once the word got out that the caves exist, they (the caves, that is, not the explorers) would be converged upon and killed in short order. So they, along with the Kartchner family (the landowners) appealed to the State government and made it into a State Park. They kept the modifications as subtle as possible to preserve the caves as they were when they were discovered. As it is, 85% of the cave network has never had a human foot upon it.
Karchner Caverns Formations
Once the tour guide gathers the group together at the Discovery Center, everyone boards a tram which winds around the back of the complex and up a trail to the side of a hill. A path approaches a set of large metal doors, which when opened reveal a short passage and another set of large metal doors. The system is kind of like an air lock, which keeps the caves at sixty-eight degrees and 99% humidity. The tropical conditions are integral to the health of the cave system.
The first cavern is called “The Rotunda”. The ceiling soars above, and drips with stalactites, “soda straw” formations, and “bacon” formations. Stalagmites reach up from the floor, stretching to meet its mate descending from the cave ceiling. It takes a formation a thousand years to grow one inch - the formations in The Rotunda are ten and twenty feet long (or high). A path winds down to the cave floor, which is covered in very deep mud. Apparently when contractors were working in the area, they pushed a 20-foot long piece of PVC pipe into the mud, and didn’t touch bottom. The trail through the mud that the original explorers used is still the only one that is used today.
The celebrated “Throne Room” is one of the most dramatic sights in the cave system. Visitors are directed through the dimness to a theater type seating area, and the tour guide’s hushed voice describes what it was like for the first explorers to first step into this cavern. A vivid picture is painted of hours of struggle through tight spaces and mud, and a burgeoning sense of anticipation as they finally broke through the last few feet of passage, and saw…
The lights come up, and the visitors find themselves facing an enormous cavern. Directly in the center of the cavern is one of the largest limestone columns in the world, called Kubla Kahn. Six stories high, twenty feet in diameter, it soars and flows and towers above the cavern floor. Blue, cream, butterscotch, white, black, pink - sparkling with mineral deposits. All around it are other formations reaching from the floor and ceiling. Soft music plays Native American chants, and the lighting is timed with it to backlight, highlight and shadow various areas of the cavern. Visitors sit in awe for far too short of a period of time, before the tour guide leads them back out of the caves.
This describes one of the extraordinary tours of the cave system - that of the Rotunda and Throne Room, which opened in 1999 and is available all year round. Visitors can also go on a tour of the “Big Room”, another section of the cave system that was opened in 2003, which is only available from October through April annually (I believe because of the bat migration). Each tour lasts for about an hour and a half. Children aged six and under are not allowed on the “Big Room” tour.
The park operates from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. all year round. Reservations for cave tours are mandatory and should be made at least a month in advance of your planned visit. Children six and under are admitted for free, prices for children 7-14 range from $9.95 to $12.95, and adult prices range from $18.95 to $22.95. Prices depend on which tour you take.
From June 1st through September 4th 2009, discounted admission is being offered for the Rotunda/Throne Room tour. So take advantage of that! Even if the temperature is over a hundred degrees outside, it’s always cool and comfortable inside the cave.
