Jess and I have spent the last two days driving across Missouri and Kansas.  It’s mostly flat and rural and we were prepared for this to be the most boring leg of our journey.  Perhaps we were just punchy from the monotony of the road, but we’ve LOVED the roadside attractions along I-40 in Missouri and I-70 in Kansas.

We started seeing billboards just outside of St. Louis for two stops that looked promising:  Nostalgiaville and Ozarkland, both located right off I-40 in Kingdom City, MO.  Nostalgiaville had tons of 50′s and 60′s kitsch, but nothing we needed to buy.  Ozarkland was another story.  This two-story tourist trap was full of exactly the kind of ridiculous souvenirs we wanted.  I considered buying a stylish hot dog hat, but in the end went with a more subdued cowboy hat as a memento of my drive through Missouri.

I think we killed about an hour browsing at Ozarkland, and both of us left with bags full of excellent souvenirs.  We stopped for the night in Kansas City, but didn’t do any exploring there.  We were weary and anxious to get to bed so we could get up early the next day and make our way across Kansas.  We’d been warned this would be a long, boring stretch of road.

I think the way to make the most of the drive across Kansas is to be prepared for it to suck a lot.  We were actually quite pleasantly surprised with all there was to see and do on the road through the Heartland.  First we pulled off at the Oz Museum in Wamego, KS.  They love their Dorothy in Kansas, and we knew we’d be able to score some great postcards at this roadside attraction.  For $7 (cheaper with student ID’s or AAA), you can tour the Oz Museum, featuring over 2,000 artifacts from the classic story, and quite the gift shop as well.  Jess picked up a great Wicked Witch t-shirt.

Our next stop, a few hours later in Oakley, KS, was Prairie Dog Town USA.  I was particularly excited about this stop, because I’d written about the place before — little did I know I’d soon be seeing the 6-legged steer, miniature donkey, and world’s largest prairie dog up close and in person!  It was $6.95 per person to enter the site, and for 35 cents, you can buy a bag of food to feed the animals.  I had baby goats, lambs, and a donkey eating out of my hands.  There were tons of animals of both the normal and freak-of-nature varieties, and it was a really cool place to stop.  I chatted with the owner for a while after we went through.  She and her husband have been running the place for over 20 years, and you can tell they love the animals very much.  Prairie Dog Town also had an excellent gift shop.  If you’ve ever wanted jewelry made out of rattlesnake heads, this is the place to go….

Driving non-stop across Kansas would take about six hours, but I definitely recommend breaking up the trip with stops wherever the billboards catch your eye.  The Kansas tourism industry is built on people “just passing through,” and every highway exit has something to entertain you for 30-90 minutes while you stretch your legs.

To keep costs down on our two-week journey across America, we’ve been staying in cheap motels, camping, and CouchSurfing wherever we can.  Jess has used the CouchSurfing website in the past, with varying degrees of success, and she lined up our hosts in St. Louis.

CouchSurfing.org is an online network designed to unite travelers and hosts.  You can use the site to find places to stay for free, or just to find people willing to show you around a certain town.  Jess’s experience has been that it’s difficult to line up a couchsurfing host very far in advance, and it’s hard to find people in smaller areas, so you can’t always count on it, especially when you’re trying to plan a trip way in advance, but when it works out, it’s great.  She tells me that she’s always had great experiences with her CouchSurfing hosts — the hardest part is just lining someone up.

Katie and Elizabeth were our hosts in St. Louis, and we loved them!  Jess said she knew it would be a good arrangement because Katie’s profile on CouchSurfing.org said she was a Dar Williams fan.  We immediately bonded over our shared love for folk music, and our hostesses took us out to their neighborhood coffee shop for trivia night.

Bar and coffee shop trivia nights are a great way to bond with new people.  We met up with some of Katie and Elizabeth’s friends there, and over the course of conversation, we realized that we have some mutual friends.  It’s quite a small world, really, and St. Louis is a Big Small Town.  It’s true what they say about people in the midwest — everyone was super friendly, and hanging out with this crowd was like hanging out with old friends.  By the end of the game, our team, the New Directions (try saying it out loud), had amassed 108 out of a possible 110 points and run away with the victory.  Go team!

We only had about 18 hours in St. Louis, but we didn’t want to leave without doing something touristy.  We decided to take a riverboat tour on the Mississippi down by the famous Gateway Arch.  Our tour on the Tom Sawyer lasted about an hour, and we learned lots about St. Louis and its history.  It was a great way to squeeze in some culture in our very short visit.

Did you know the Gateway Arch is made of metal? I always thought it was concrete.

We left St. Louis wishing we’d had more time there, we both loved it so much.  Our CouchSurfing hosts deserve a huge thank you for showing us such a wonderful time.  That experience inspired me to sign up for my own CouchSurfing account so that I can host travelers passing through Portland.  It seems like a great way to meet people from all over the world.  There was just one minor bit of sketchiness with our experience.  All was fine and dandy until I went to get some ice out of our hosts’ freezer and found this:

That’s a squirrel, a frog, and a kangaroo with a rosary and some Mormon propaganda.  In the freezer.  That was unexpected.

We did not have time to tour the Anheuser Busch facilities, but the locals recommended it — maybe next time.  Apparently there’s free beer at the end of the tour.  We did get lots of pictures of the Arch from our riverboat tour, but we opted not to go up inside it.  The locals warned us that this is not a pleasant experience — it’s cramped at the top, and can be terrifying when the Arch sways with the breeze.  I was happy to snap some photos from down below.  Shortly after lunchtime, we hugged our hosts goodbye and hit the road for Kansas City.

The drive wasn’t nearly as boring as we’d expected it would be.  Stay tuned to read about our roadside shenanigans in my next post.

Jess and I have scheduled our cross country drive with lots of flex time each day.  We’re only driving a few hundred miles at a time, so that if we see anything cool on the side of the road, we’ve got room in our schedule to pull off and do some exploring.  We woke up yesterday morning in Lexington, KY, and had to get to St. Louis by the evening.  We decided to stop for a little while in Louisville along the way.

Two separate Louisvillians actually recommended the same eatery to us, so the choice was obvious.  We arrived at Lynn’s Paradise Cafe in time for brunch, and we knew immediately that we would love it.  The super-kitschy diner had a gift shop inside and lots of weird art and photo-ops outside, which we enjoyed while waiting for our table.

Once seated, the servings were huge, the food was delicious, and our waitress had purple eyes.  Even at 11:30 on a Wednesday, the place was hopping.  It seemed like a hot tourist destination as well as a local hangout, and I’ve never had a better buttermilk biscuit.

After brunch, it was back on the road.  Driving on I-64 through Indiana, we saw a road sign for Marengo Cave, a US National Landmark.  Annoyed with road construction and slow traffic, it was the perfect place to pull off and be tourists.  It was a bit of a detour (the signs say five minutes off the exit, but it was more like ten or fifteen), but a worthy side trip.

In addition to cave tours, visitors can camp and go canoeing at Marengo Cave.  We just took the $13, 30-minute Crystal Palace tour, which is a short loop through several large rooms at the front of the cave.  The longer Dripstone Trail tour is $14.50 and goes through much more of the cave, but we didn’t have time for that.  I don’t know what we missed by skipping the longer tour, but I felt like we saw a lot on ours.  This was a great way to break up our drive, too, as the caverns are located in the middle of a long stretch of rather boring roadway (and road construction).

All in all, it was a great day for side trips, and I hope we can find some equally exciting roadside attractions today.  Stay tuned…

In Charlottesville, I was what’s known as a “townie.”  As in, not a UVA student.  I grew up in Charlottesville, and except for a few years after college and a few summers away, it’s been home for me my whole life.  Yesterday, I packed the last of my things into my car and said goodbye to good ol’ C-ville.  I’ve got an Oregon address now.

As a tribute to my hometown, I thought I’d write a little bit about my favorite places to go and things to do in Charlottesville.  It’s never to early to get nostalgic.

Here are the things I’ll miss the most, in no particular order:

Fridays After Five.  This is Charlottesville’s free concert series every Friday in the summer.  It’s so much more than just music, though.  It seems the whole town turns out to the Downtown Mall to kick off the weekend with good food, good music, and good shopping.  The professional musicians play their free concert down at the Charlottesville Pavilion on one end of the mall, but all up and down the six-block open-air strip, amateur musicians are doing their thing, too.  And there’s always some businessman who just got off work for the weekend who drops his briefcase, kicks off his expensive, shiny shoes, and busts a move to the beat.  It’s an all around feel good experience.

The Downtown Mall.  It’s not just a great place to be on Fridays.  This pedestrian mall is not a shopping mall in the traditional sense.  Instead of chain stores, it’s lined with art galleries, trendy boutiques, and some of the best restaurants you’ll find anywhere.  You have literally dozens of dining options on the Downtown Mall, but my all-time favorite is Himalayan Fusion, an Indian/Nepalese restaurant with a fabulous lunch buffet and just as fabulous fine dining at night.  The shopping experience is best on nice spring and summer days, when the whole mall has table after table of craft vendors peddling handmade jewelry, clothing, and accessories.  I love shopping there.

My friend Adam jumps in at Sugar Hollow's Blue Hole

Sugar Hollow.  Sugar Hollow is about a 20-minute drive beyond the city limits, and not many townies know about this great little escape.  I’ve linked to the Inn at Sugar Hollow because the hollow itself doesn’t have a website, but keep driving just a little way past the Inn and you’ll come to a parking area on a gravel road by the river.  This is a great place to hike, jog, or just play in the water.  Cross the river and follow the hiking trail for about a mile and you’ll come to Blue Hole, a shaded swimming hole with a rope swing and some good, high rocks for “cliff” diving.  The water is always freezing up there, but after a long, uphill hike, it feels great.  After a day hiking at Sugar Hollow, it’s traditional to stop at the Dairy Queen in Crozet for ice cream.  In fact, I think this is a requirement.

My BodyFlow class at Gold’s Gym.  BodyFlow is a combination of tai chi, yoga, and pilates, and you can find these classes at gyms all over the world, but I will really miss my Charlottesville class.  All the teachers there are fabulous, but Jennifer and Brooke were usually the ones teaching my classes, and they’re especially wonderful.

Bodo’s Bagels.  Bodo’s is a Charlottesville institution.  Their bagels are the best around, so it’s not unusual for the line to be literally out the door and down the block.  But they’re efficient in there, so you won’t ever have to wait long for the best bagel sandwich you’ll ever eat.  It’s by far the best place to go for a meal under $5.  Try their signature cream cheeses.  My favorite is olive.  There are three locations in Charlottesville, and only in Charlottesville.  Just look for the big bagel.

High Tide Burrito.  High Tide is new to Cville as of September 2008, I believe, and I just discovered the place a few months ago.  Their burritos are so good, I seriously almost reconsidered this whole moving thing.  Two brothers own the place, making everything from scratch.  My mouth is watering just thinking of it…try the high tide burrito with veggies.  Definitely Charlottesville’s best meal under $10.

There’s so much to love about this city — this list barely scrapes the surface.  I’m excited to get on with my next adventure, but I’ll always be happy to return to my first home.

I spent last week in beautiful, sunny southwest Florida, taking advantage of a rare opportunity to spend a whole week doing nothing.  It was glorious.  If you ever need a good place to do nothing, Naples, Florida is perfect for it.  I did a lot of nothing on the beach, and when the thought of going to the beach was just too much, I did a lot of nothing by the pool.  Well, not quite nothing — I tanned.

After almost a whole week of doing nothing, though, my husband and I did want to see some more Florida sights, like maybe an alligator.  My aunt, our gracious host, recommended a visit to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, where we’d be most likely to see gators and other native Florida wildlife.

Our first Florida gator sighting

The sanctuary opens at 7am every day, except during violent weather, and closes at 5:30pm in the winter and 7:30pm in the summer, but the best wildlife sightings and the most pleasant temperatures tend to be in the early morning.  Admission is $10 for adults, with discounts for students, children, and Audubon Society members.  There are some special programs, but most visitors simply enjoy a self-guided tour through the 11,000-acre park.

This yellow rat snake wanted to take the boardwalk tour, too!

A 2.25-mile raised boardwalk leads visitors through the sanctuary.  It’s mostly shaded, but there are some open spaces where the sun is strong and hot, so check the weather forecast and try to avoid visiting on a day that will be a real scorcher.

Corkscrew is a bird watcher's paradise -- here's one of many hawks we saw on our visit.

Walk slowly and quietly and keep your eyes peeled for the wildlife.  It would be easy to miss a lot of great sightings if you don’t take your time.  We spent about three hours on the boardwalk, and even though Florida is going through a terrible drought right now and the swamp was dry, we saw lots of interesting (and in some cases, adorable!) wildlife all throughout the park.

We almost missed a pair of barred owls hanging out in the woods. It's good to go with a group so you have more eyes on the lookout for wildlife hiding in the trees.

The virtual boardwalk tour on the Corkscrew website will give you an idea of some of the wildlife you can see when you visit, but nothing compares to seeing it all up close.  I definitely recommend a trip to Corkscrew Swamp any time you are in the Naples, Florida area.  There’s much more to south Florida than just the beautiful beaches and gorgeous weather!

Though she’s been particularly moody so far this April, Mother Nature has, at long last, stopped smacking us around.  As the Brady kids once sang, the sunshine’s calling.  Any excuse will do to get outdoors and soak up some rays.

Schools are starting to let out and travel season is upon us.  That means the festivals have begun.  I’ll be attending an east coast festival this weekend, which you’ll get to read about next week, but if you’re on the left coast and need something to do, check out the Stockton Asparagus Festival in Stockton, California.

Why asparagus?  Well, why not?  They’re celebrating it in Stockton because it’s the premier agricultural product of the area.  Whether you’re an asparagus farmer or not, you’re also welcome to celebrate simply because asparagus is flipping delicious!

Asparagus Eating Competition

The 3-day festival begins tomorrow, April 24th, and runs through Sunday the 26th.  Attractions include two performance stages with music and dancing, a celebrity kitchen, river cruises, a deep fried asparagus eating competition with cash prizes, Tyson the Skateboarding Bulldog (wtf? not sure what Tyson has to do with asparagus, but hey, cool, a skateboarding bulldog), a 5-mile Great Spear-It Run, the Hole-In-One Golf Contest, the Spear-Its of the Valley alcohol pavilion, featuring wine, beer, and the Asapra-Mary, a recipe contest, a craft fair with over 600 booths, and plenty of kid- and family-friendly activities.  It sounds like it could be a great time even if you don’t like asparagus (but you might want to keep that to yourself).

Perhaps the coolest thing about the Asparagus Festival is that it’s a charitable fest.  Proceeds are distributed based on volunteer hours.  Last year, $461,912 was shared among 100 charities.  If you want your charity to get a cut, check out the volunteer info here.  Tickets to the festival are just $12 for adults and $7 for children, students, and senior citizens.

We’ve heard of the contact high, but is it possible to get contact drunk?  A temporary bar in London is experimenting with that idea now through April 25th.  Dubbed Alcoholic Architecture, the small storefront at 2 Ganton Street has been transformed into a literal walk-in cocktail.

The experiment is the brainchild of Sam Bompas and Harry Parr, best known for their work in the jelly medium, as well as scratch and sniff cinema.  This time, they’ve teamed up with JS Humidifiers to create a machine (the aptly-named Mistifier) that pumps a gin and tonic mist into the air.  Visitors to the bar put on white jumpsuits and pay $7 for an hour in the mist, which has been described as tasting of sweet lime with a hint of gin, a pleasant sensation not unlike what you’d expect breathing in a G&T to feel like.

The two week experiment is sold out, but if it’s a hit, it could be the next big trend in barhopping.  It’s estimated that about 40 minutes in the mist is equal to one cocktail, and the reviews from folks who’ve been there say that most people left feeling pleasantly buzzed after their time in the chamber. Watch a video of some first impressions here.

It’s a neat idea, but who knows if it will really take off?  It’s not at all how we’re accustomed to experiencing bars.  Forget about dressing up in your cutest outfit to pick up a hottie — you’ll all be wearing the same jumpsuit (it’s not very sexy), and even the finest hair gels won’t hold up to the alcohol air.  And what to do if you don’t like gin?  I like having more than one option when I go to a bar.  This seems like the kind of bar you’d go to once, just for the experience, but probably wouldn’t become your favorite hangout.  However, I can see the Mistifier taking off as a frat party staple, once the techonology is perfected.  Since it’s never been tested before, Alcoholic Architecture has an ambulance on standby, and Bompas and Parr had to consult with a chemical explosives expert to make sure the heavy alcoholic fumes wouldn’t explode — so it doesn’t seem like this will be commercially available anytime soon.

If a breathable cocktail bar came to your town, would you go?  I think I would try it if the mist were something more like bourbon and ginger, or perhaps rum and coke…but I’d expect to leave feeling sticky and gross.  I’d be willing to try it once, though.  I appreciate the creativity.

We’re all looking for ways to ease our concerns over the state of the economy.  Though lots of people advise tightening your pursestrings in times like these, others are saying it’s more important than ever to take vacations, to let yourself relax.  The AANR — that’s the American Association for Nude Recreation — suggests nakations.

Photo courtesy of aanr.com

They say it’s the perfect escape for the recently laid-off.  Their attitude is that the best thing to do when you lose the shirt off your back is to go nude.  Fair enough.  Not all nude resorts are thriving, but many are truly capitalizing on the bad economy and expanding their services as more people try nakationing.  AANR director Erich Schuttauf explains that nude resorts are a great escape from the stress of the working world, because when you remove your clothes, you remove your ties to that world.  He says that getting naked helps put you in a relaxed state much faster than when you go on a regular, fully-clothed vacation.

Photo courtesy of aanr.com

If you’re going to go nude, you probably want to go someplace warm for your nakation, though the AANR says you can find some great cool-weather nude resorts as well, like Turtle Lake Resort in Michigan or Sun Meadow in Idaho, both of which are equipped with spacious, well-heated indoor facilities.  You can find a list of nude resorts by region in the US and Canada here.  Unsurprisingly, you’ll find some of the biggest and best properties in Florida.

Some of the most popular nude resorts are outside the US.  To find a clothing optional resort in the Caribbean, check out A Bare Affair.  Of course there are nude beaches all over Europe as well.  Find a good list here.

Photo courtesy of aanr.com

If you want to do more than just lounge around naked on vacation, check out the AANR’s calendar of events, which has a surprising number of upcoming nude 5K races.  Keep in mind that some events and destinations are for adults only, while others are family friendly.

Whatever you do, wherever you go, don’t forget your sunscreen!

This past Saturday was Opening Day at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, an amusement park in southeastern Virginia that I’ve visited many times, though not at all in the last decade.  I love amusement parks, but Kings Dominion is more convenient for me, so it’s been my park of choice all along.  After last weekend, Kings Dominion remains my park of choice.  I was less than impressed with Busch Gardens.

My group arrived at the park early.  We were some of the first ones in, and the crowds weren’t too bad for most of the day, thanks to an ugly weather forecast.  We started our day at Corkscrew Hill, a “3D simulated adventure,” where you put on 3D glasses and sit in a chair while they tell you a story and jerk your seat around.  It’s actually a pretty good ride, and a great way to get out of the heat in the summertime, but only if the ride is actually working.  Given that it was opening day, I guess one has to expect some snafus in park operations, but when the very first ride you try gets stuck in a loop while blaring high pitched noises at you, that doesn’t bode well.

They kept us in the holding area for about 15 or 20 minutes while they tried to get the effects working.  “Any second now” turned into “just a few more minutes,” and then finally it was working.  A cute ride, but not worth the wait, really.

One thing that has kept me choosing other parks over Busch Gardens over and over again is Busch Gardens’ lack of rides.  The park has only five roller coasters and a handful of other rides like swings and a water ride, but nearby King’s Dominion has well over twice the thrills for a comparable ticket price.  Busch Gardens has better landscaping — it is a beautiful park — but is that why we pay so much for tickets?  I can go to a community garden for free.

Another black mark against BG is the nickel and diming.  When you go to an amusement park, you have to be prepared for a certain amount of price gouging.  You’ll pay a huge fee just to get in (though season passes are almost always a good deal if you’re going to be a regular visitor), and once inside, you’ll pay $5 or more every time you need to quench a thirst or grab a snack.  Souvenirs are outrageously expensive, and it’s amazing how much crap they’ll try to sell you in there.  But you know it’s like that, so you’re prepared.  Busch Gardens was worse than this, though.  In addition to the $8 tasteless baked potato I had for lunch, they ripped me off in ways I was not expecting.  For example, they don’t let you take purses or backpacks with you on roller coasters.  At other parks, you just place your bags in a cubby when you get on the ride, next to a sign that says “This park is not responsible for lost or damaged items.”  But at BG, they don’t even let you get in line with a bag.  You are required to place all loose items in a locker at the ride entrance.  Those lockers cost a dollar per use, and they’re not big enough to double up with your friends.  So basically every time you ride a coaster, you’re paying another dollar.  (Had I known this, I would have tried not to bring a bag, but I really needed it for my raincoat, water bottle, sunglasses, and wallet.  Perhaps on a nicer day, I wouldn’t have needed so much extra stuff.)

When I bought some popcorn to share with my friends after lunch, I was hit with another surprise.  The menu board said popcorn was $3.49.  But when she rang me up, it was $6.  Why?  $3.49 is the price for Passport holders, which I am not.  Was this advertised anywhere, even in the smallest of small print?  No, of course not.  I thought maybe my cashier just got it wrong, but I saw the same thing happen to other people at other snack stands throughout the park.  What an annoying policy!

As our day wound down, a friend and I decided to try one last coaster before leaving the park.  We paid our dollars and put our bags in another locker and went to join the line.  As we were very near the front, the girl running the ride announced that they were having technical difficulties and would need to send the next car without any riders.  She repeated this story a few times as empty cars would come through the loading zone, but wouldn’t give a time estimate.  We ended up spending our last half hour in the park waiting in line for a ride we never got to enjoy, because we gave up and left before it was up and running again.  Who knows how long that took.

All told, I enjoyed the company, but was less than impressed with the park.  The Williamsburg area has plenty of great activities for a family vacation, but if you want a good amusement park experience, I recommend going somewhere else.

When Disney opened its theme park in Hong Kong in 2005, the company had high hopes of capitalizing on the booming Chinese market.  Disney hoped to attract waves of Chinese tourists to their new park, with plans for fast expansion following the grand opening.  But it seems now that Disney is balking.  A statement earlier this week from the Disney offices paints a bleak picture for the park’s future.

The Hong Kong government funded nearly 80% of the project in exchange for a 57% share in the theme park — an agreement that has been highly controversial in Hong Kong from day one, and even more so now that the park is hemorrhaging money.  Visitorship has never lived up to the original expectations, as many Chinese residents find it too much of a hassle to get to Hong Kong to enjoy the park, and the current economic situation has severely altered the company’s expectations.

In the recent announcement, Disney cited an inability to reach an agreement with the Hong Kong goverment on park expansion, saying “the uncertainty of the outcome requires us to immediately suspend all creative and design work on the project.”  Three quarters of Disney Hong Kong’s “imagineers” will be laid off.  Given that executives have said expansion is vital to the park’s success, what does this mean for the future of the smallest Disney theme park?  It’s not looking good.

While Disney and the Hong Kong government remain at an impasse over park expansion, they have funded small changes within the park’s existing boundaries already.  The “It’s a Small World” attraction was added in 2008, and helped boost visitors by 8% over the disappointing 2007 numbers, but it’s not enough of a jump to encourage the $500 million or more expansions that were originally in the plans.

If Disneyland Hong Kong closes, it will be the first Disney theme park in history to do so, but as the park continues to lose money as it has from day one, Disney might be willing to walk away, especially with negotiations for a new theme park in Shanghai ramping up.  Shanghai is much more easily accessible for Chinese tourists than Hong Kong, and Shanghai mayor Han Zheng insists that the recession is not going to put the brakes on this project.

There is no firm timetable for Disneyland Shanghai — mayor Han quips that Shanghai and Disney are in a serious relationship but have yet to tie the knot — but the park could be open within the next five years, and could be more than six times larger than Disneyland Hong Kong.  Hong Kong would have serious trouble competing with something like that, especially with Disney shifting all its support to the more viable venture.

If you want to see Disneyland Hong Kong, you might be running out of chances — but it sounds like there’s something much bigger and better waiting just around the corner with Disneyland Shanghai…