What do Elizabethan pirates, Spanish missionaries, gunslingers, cowboys and Indians, the Barbary Coast and rambunctious settlers have in common with majestic peaks, dramatic coastlines and vast expanses of desert?They are all the unique elements that make up the Far West of the United States.The region’s history extends much farther back then the rapid westward expansion that followed Califo...
Tour Host Review
In this month’s lead story, “Are you a Buffet Traveler” we discuss how tour hosts are increasingly developing alliances that benefit from joint marketing and cross-selling functions. As a founding member of the Adventure Collection, a group of eight active travel companies, Off The Beaten Path (OBP) is a perfect example of such a company.
Offering more than 50 guided and custo...
Host of the Month
Shakespeare is no rarity in the West. San Diego and Orinda in the Bay Area have put on splendid productions for years, and the legacy of the Bard is robustly preserved through the efforts of drama departments at dozens of western universities and colleges.Still, for location, atmosphere, tradition and renown, Ashland, Oregon’s annual Shakespeare Festival has to be the West’s best regar...
Festival Pick
Over the years the inevitable sandstone grit in their food wore at their teeth. By age 30, most of them had severe dental problems.The climate, though benign enough to let them raise good summer crops, was cold in winter. The chill, combined with the hard surfaces they lived and slept on, often led to arthritis well before what we moderns would have considered middle age.They were simple farmers w...
World Heritage Site
If the theme of this month’s issue is “Meet the People,” then museums are a neat fit, a gathering together of people across time and space and culture in an attempt to understand and perhaps bridge differences and to share in the ongoing discovery of humankind’s collective heritage.
There is a small historic land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean S...
Museum Pick
Most people put pedal to the metal when traveling through Nevada, hoping to spend the least time possible traversing its seemingly endless and barren desert basins and mountain ranges. But a smaller group knows that this driest and emptiest of the Lower 48 states holds great rewards for those patient enough to find them.
Perhaps the greatest of Nevada’s hidden treasures – th...
What do Elizabethan pirates, Spanish missionaries, gunslingers, cowboys and Indians, the Barbary Coast and rambunctious settlers have in common with majestic peaks, dramatic coastlines and vast expanses of desert?
They are all the unique elements that make up the Far West of the United States.
The region’s history extends much farther back then the rapid westward...
In this month’s lead story, “Are you a Buffet Traveler” we discuss how tour hosts are increasingly developing alliances that benefit from joint marketing and cross-selling functions. As a founding member of the Adventure Collection, a group of eight active travel companies, Off The Beaten Path (OBP) is a perfect example of such a company.
The Colorado River system has sculptured a maze of rugged tablelands in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah (the fabled Four Corners area) known as the Colorado Plateau – the canyonlands.
It is a landscape of deep canyons, punctured by mesas, buttes and wildly eroded monoliths. The explorer John Wesley Powell aptly described this region in 1870 when he said, “All...
Los Angeles’ sprawling Griffith Park has always been an odd duck among such urban gems as Central, Balboa, Stanley, Golden Gate and Forest parks. Where the former are beautiful woodlands and meadows, dotted with lakes or bounded by water, Griffith Park is a huge 4,200-acre (6.5 square miles) chunk of chaparral-covered hills. There are few bosky dells in...
Shakespeare is no rarity in the West. San Diego and Orinda in the Bay Area have put on splendid productions for years, and the legacy of the Bard is robustly preserved through the efforts of drama departments at dozens of western universities and colleges.
Still, for location, atmosphere, tradition and renown, Ashland, Oregon’s annual Shakespeare Festival has to be the...
Where burning brakes bring to mind a secret town and John Galt
Like pain, the odor of burning brake linings is a sensation your brain keeps you from remembering well. That small mercy was one of several thoughts I had as I tried not to descend too rapidly down Highway 550 into Silverton, Colorado. The year was 1992 and my wife, son and I, in a rented Ford, had just...
The tour I’m taking this summer will be a grand sightseeing experience through some of the greatest scenery in the West by train and motor coach. It will include spectacular rides in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, and feature the scenic Columbia River Gorge, Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, and the Rockies of Montana and Colorado.
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In this month’s lead story, “Are you a Buffet Traveler” we discuss how tour hosts are increasingly developing alliances that benefit from joint marketing and cross-selling functions. As a founding member of the Adventure Collection, a group of eight active travel companies, Off The Beaten Path (OBP) is a perfect example of such a company.
Offering more than 50 guided and custo...
Offering more than...
The Colorado River system has sculptured a maze of rugged tablelands in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah (the fabled Four Corners area) known as the Colorado Plateau – the canyonlands.