By Rich Grant “Wild Bill” Hickok, of Dakota’s most boisterous boomtown, was such a romantic figure that it is hard to believe he really existed. Of course, through dime novels, movies, HBO, television shows and merchandising for 155 years, his image has become a caricature of the real thing. Look back at what contemporaries wrote…
By Larry Bleiberg Everyone, it seems, has a theory about Peru’s Nazca Lines. The mysterious markings on the desert floor are a massive astronomical calendar. That’s a popular one. Or maybe they point to hidden reserves of water, the source of life in the desert. Then there’s my favorite: a UFO landing site. More than…
By Nancy Wigston Famously long and narrow—2,653-miles long with an average width of only 110 miles–Chile has been jokingly called the barrier that keeps Argentina from the Pacific. The Andes Mountains across Chile’s eastern frontier do a fairly good job of separating the two countries. The first Europeans arrived here in 1520 when Ferdinand Magellan…
A wave of terror washed over me as I squinted through the windshield and drove a Trabant in Berlin, Germany. There were other cars on the street around me, and hordes of pedestrians crowded the sidewalks. This was no time to be faint-hearted! My damp hands clutched the steering wheel with a death grip as…
Toronto’s skyline is dominated by its signature structure, the CN Tower. At 1,750 feet high, it’s the tallest tower in the Western Hemisphere. Below are the office towers that have made the city the business center of Canada. Photo by Francesca Saraco, Unsplash By Jacqueline Swartz I’m looking down at Toronto from its most prominent…
Built in 1936 to mark the quadricentennial of the city’s founding, The Obelisk is located at the intersection at 9th of July and Corrientes Avenue in the Plaza de la Republica in central Buenos Aires. By Nancy Wigston Imagine a chunk of 19th-century Europe breaking off and floating to South America where it lands at…
Not every guest at White Stallion Ranch schedules an equine-intensive day, but for me, horses, horses and more horses is what a dude ranch vacation is all about. So last year before Covid-19 descended I decided to visit three Arizona ranches close to Tucson. Its not as if I don’t get enough equine action;…
By Peter Greenberg The hospitality industry is hurting because of the coronavirus, but despite lower occupancy rates a number of new hotels are on the verge of opening. Buit what attracts me isn’t the newest construction but hotel properties with a lot of history. There are historic hotels throughout the world, but the ones below…
By Justin Noah and David DeVoss No structures better captured the spirit of America than airports. When it opened in 1960, Idlewild’s Pan Am Worldport embodied the Space Age with a circular roof that projected outward like a hovering flying saucer. TWA asked Finnish American architect Ero Saarinen to “capture the spirit of flight” and…
The Greatest Show on Earth may be the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, as seen from the hills around Dawson during the winter. I’m sitting in the Sourdough Saloon at the Downtown Hotel, in Dawson City, Yukon, about to drink neat gin containing a preserved human toe! No, I haven’t stumbled into a crazy community…