Brilliant blooms at the Desert Museum
For the past decade, I’ve headed to Arizona in midwinter to visit family and catch a respite from cold weather. Each year, as I leave its warm, dry air to return to my snowy home, I’m told, “You really should come when the desert is in bloom. It’s spectacular.”
LONE PINE, Calif. — As howling winds tore through the eastern Sierra, Dan Gillespie and his wife Carol trudged along a narrow gravel path, their eyes alternating between photos they carried and the contours of a cove guarded by granite walls.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Striped balloons dot a bright blue sky. Red rocks silhouette a lone dead tree. A white ladder leans on a brown adobe dwelling.
DUMAGUETE CITY, PHILIPPINES – If you’re looking for a tropical adventure to add to your bucket list, a trip to the island of Negros in the Philippines might be just the ticket.
Circling an entire city block at Southwest 10th Avenue and Alder Street in downtown Portland is an outdoor food court like none other. About 60 tiny restaurants are scrunched together, offering diners four styles of falafel, Thai street food, fried Scottish fish, pierogi and dumplings.
Rose City’s big, blooming bounty Portland’s location at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette rivers and a good 100 miles south of Puget Sound gives it a leg up on the growing season. Naturally, it’s a gardener’s paradise.
Few things celebrate the end of winter like a great drive and enjoying the beach. Whether you can put the top down or not, members and editors of travel website VirtualTourist.com are sure you’ll enjoy any of their top 10 coastal drives.
BURLINGTON, Vt. — There was a McDonald’s downtown in Vermont’s largest city for years, but then Vermont’s largest city decided it didn’t want McDonald’s anymore. So the McDonald’s closed.
MAUN, Botswana – If you’ve paid for an African safari, but you’re still not clear about the details, bad on you. Making the same mistake, I didn’t dig into the heart of the adventure before I headed to southern Africa for my first wildlife safari because I was always too busy. Bad on me!
CHARLESTON, S.C. – Charleston is awash in history and Southern charm and becoming widely known as a culinary town. Each year it hosts major events ranging from the Spoleto Festival USA to the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition and the Family Circle Cup Tennis Tournament. But there are a lot of free things to do for visitors drawn to the city founded in 1670. Here are five suggestions:
It’s no secret that the flat Skagit Valley looks a lot like the Netherlands. It also is filled with that über-Dutch crop – tulips. Now that April is here and all those blooms are painting the fields with vivid yellows, reds and pinks, it makes sense to tour around them on that quintessential Dutch form of transport: the bicycle.
ILULISSAT, Greenland — It’s so cold, they closed the igloos. The icebergs are shivering. Two of my toes are slightly frostbitten. Yesterday my life seriously flashed before my eyes on a dog sled ride through the mountains.
KIRKENES, Norway – It’s nearly 10 on a Friday night and an eerie silence has descended over the 24-room hotel I’m booked into deep in Norway’s northern Finnmark County. The usual racket like dinging elevator doors, the din of the city and faint laughter filtering from the hotel bar simply don’t exist here. Lying in my army green sleeping bag, the only sound I can hear is my own breath pushing against the cold air of my frosty digs.
The same storm that’s set to bring heavy winds to Western Washington this week will also dump up to two feet of snow in the mountains, forecasters said.
“I would argue Europe is better in the shoulder seasons,” said Amy Farley, news editor at Travel + Leisure and author of the magazine’s “Trip Doctor” column. “I was in Florence in October, and it was extraordinary. That said, if you have children and want the ideal weather, summer it is.”
NILEGUIDE BLOG
▶ Wows and Vows: Planning a Wedding in Telluride
▶ Hard Days, Soft Nights in Peru
▶ Postcard Perfect: Blue Ridge Parkway
▶ Hard Days, Soft Nights in Peru
▶ Postcard Perfect: Blue Ridge Parkway
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