Travel Blog Posting Contest

Here's a chance to win a trip around the world

Does the world need more travel blogs? Probably not. There are already way to many unenlightening "what I did on my vacation"-type blogs out there. Does the world need more informative, insightful, well-written travel postings in cyberspace? Maybe "need" is too strong a word, but armchair and actual travelers alike can never read of the latter. I applaud any medium, traditional or not, that tries to get more quality writing out there.

A British site called My Life of Travel, a searchable online, anthology of travel journal postings, seems to want to elevate the content on the site that currently includes a lot of pedestrian prose. It is trolling for more inspiring words than this sampling I just pulled up from some posts that are on the home page:

• "Annie and I left Grand Junction, CO on the 22nd of June and drove until 4:30 a.m. to get to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We spent Sunday biking with the Lohans and enjoyed ourselves as we biked past waterfalls, parks, rivers, and vagrants... (the vagrants are wild here so it is suggested that you don't feed them) :0) We then drove north to I'falls..."
• "So we headed for Mancora, a small beach resort in the North of Peru which at the right time of year is a great destination for surfing and general sun lovers! ...."
• "Well, we've done it. Exactly four months and 18,741km after arriving in Cape Town to start my African adventure, we arrived safe and sound in the bustling metropolis of Cairo."

In that context, it shouldn't be too difficult for a talented writer to come up with at least 100 well-chosen words and a photograph s/he has taken while traveling to have a shot at winning one round-the-world trip in a contest that My Life of Travel is promoting. The rules are simple:

How to Win
Create at least 1 journal entry about any location you have visited.
Your entry must contain at least 100 words.
Your entry must
contain at least 1 photograph that you have taken.
Entry Closing Date
September 26, 2008

There is a link you can click on to enter, and you must register in order to do so. My Life of Travel does not indicate who the judge(s) might be, but if my quick scan of the posted journals from the land of Shakespeare and Byron and Austen are any indication, the competition might not be too stiff. Good luck.

Site Features -- Contest or Not

The My Life of Travel site has some intriguing features, including each contributor's ability to create an interactive map to accompany his/her journal entry. And if you are planning a trip somewhere, finding what others have posted there. The search function is easy, and even if some of the prose is snooze-encouraging, you might just find useful gems there. And if you are lusting to launch to your words about travel into cyberspace, paid or not, you might explore My Life of Travel as a way to do it.

It's Elk BuglingTime

The haunting mating call of bull elk attracts cows -- and spectators

During the autumn rut, bull elk battle each other for dominance over a harem of cows. Their haunting, almost plaintive cry resonates from the mountainsides that enfold Rocky Mountain valleys. At dusk, the animals emerge from the high country and the forests to tussle and to mate. When you see them, you marvel that such large, stately animals could utter such a high-pitched shriek. The bugling, the fighting and the mating go on at night, and as the sun rises, the animals begin retreating again and the valleys fall quite for the day.

For us, a drive to Rocky Mountain National Park is an easy destination for this annual spectacle. It think of it as an accessible wildlife experience, sort of like a "National Geographic Special" come to life. For us, coming from Boulder for an evening, the park's prime elk-viewing is Horseshoe Park, a huge, riparian meadow conveniently visible directly off US 34 not far from Estes Park. You can hear the bulls' eerie sound on the Rocky Mountain Drama website.

With no natural predators in or near the park, other than a few coyotes and hunters who take out animals that stray beyond the park boundaries, the elk population is enormous, so visitors are almost sure to view the herd in action. In fact, there are so many elk there now that the vegetation is suffering, the park service is embarking on a "management plan" to try balance a healthy, sustainable herd and the aspen and willow that they feed on.

Rangers who have to balance flora, fauna and visitors, but for us who love to see animals in the wild, elk encounters are thrilling, no matter how many times we have experienced them. In addition to Horseshoe Park, we have also seen/heard bugling in Moraine Park and Upper Beaver Meadows. And beginning in fall and continuing through the winter, we have seen elk right in Estes Park. If you're driving through, note that they don't always wait for the light or cross at crosswalks.

Other places offering such elk encounters include Glacier National Park, MT; Grand Teton National Park, WY; Wind Cave National Park, SD; Yellowstone National Park, WY/MT; and in Canada, Jasper National Park and Banff National Park, both in Alberta. There are of course, millions of acres of other public lands where elk abound, but so do hunters, so I'd rather direct you to places where you're more likely not to get shot.

Some years ago, while visiting along the coast of Maine, I heard the unmistakable sound of bugling elk. I thought I was hallucinating, but it turned out that I was near the Bayley Hill Elk & Deer Farm!

'Parade' Cites Flaws in Airport Security

Sunday supplement piece on America's wasteful and ineffective airport security system

When bloggers write, thousands read. When Parade, the Sunday supplement, publishes a story, it reaches millions. Today's issue contained a piece called "The Wrong Way Protect Airports?", with a title phrased as a rhetorical question to which many of us answered "yes" even before it was asked.

Writer Lyric Wallwork Winik compared Transportation Security procedures, which since the agency was established have involved an increasing amount of technology (X-rays, metal detectors, chemical sniffers, "puff portals" and such, with the Israeli system. She wrote:

"Israel, home to many of the world’s most devastating terror attacks, has a
different approach to security. Liquid sizes are restricted, but first-class
passengers are given steak knives. Travelers in Israel are interviewed by highly
trained security experts.

In the U.S., billions are spent instead on scanning machines and other
technology to detect weapons. 'The Israelis ask questions, and they profile the
situation, not the person,' explains Seth Cropsey, a former Defense Department
official. 'It’s often a much more thorough approach to
security.'”

The TSA, she writes, "is rolling out new procedures that it says will keep us safer when we fly... Some specifics? New shirts and headsets for checkpoint workers, plus two days of specialized training in how to keep passengers calm."

Winik reported that the agency stationed placed "more than 2,000 behavior-detection experts at airports across the country,' but critics say U.S. security strategy still focuses too much on finding bombs rather than bombers." Israel is certainly a far smaller country than the US and it has a small fraction of the total number of America's airports and airplanes, but it also has a far smaller popular from whom to draw security personnel and train them in "behavior detection" -- and I'm willing to bet that the training takes longer than two days or even the length of time US agents are trained in these skills.

TSA defenders claim that the near seven-year period between 9/11 and now proves that the agency's policies have been effective. Others of us would argue that international terrorism has gone after non-US targets to keep everyone guessing -- or that the US government, with the support of sensationalist mainstream media, has fomented such a climate of fear that no further attacks on "the homeland" are necessary.

Seth Cropsey, whom Winik identifies as "Seth Cropsey, a former Defense Department official," told her, that we really don’t know if “the massive amount of technology that we have thrown at the problem actually works or whether it has been intelligence and other methods overseas that have prevented another air attack. I hate to speculate on that answer, because I fly.”

Whatever the reality, I glad that a mass-market publication has introduced this topic to the general public. Is the public buying the TSA line? Perhaps not. Parade included a reader poll asking the question, "Does America have the right approach to airline security?" As of now, 94 percent of the respondents replied "no" with only 6 percent replying "yes."

Summer Waning in Beautiful Boulder

Colorful plantings in Boulder's pedestrian zone attract photographers

Tens of thousands -- probably more like hundreds of thousands -- of visitors come to Boulder, CO, every year: vacationers en route from Denver to Rocky Mountain National Park, parents of University of Colorado students, fans of CU (not UC, but CU) football and other teams, scientists visiting the city's prestigious laboratories, business travelers and folks from elsewhere in the Rockies in town for a getaway at the foot of the Flatirons. Sooner or later, everyone visits the Pearl Street Mall, a beautifully landscaped and immaculately maintained pedestrian mall along a four-block stretch of Boulder's historic downtown.

Visitors and locals alike love to hang out on "the Mall," watching buskers perform their acts, listening to street musicians, attending one of several warm-weather weekend festivals, attending free Wednesday evening Band on the Bricks and Friday Noon Tunes performances in summer, or just strolling to or from dozens of intriguing places to drink, dine and shop. The floral display, from the tulips of spring to blossoms that linger until the first hard frost, are the warm-weather backdrop for all of these other attractions (in winter, little lights are strung on bare trees, but that's still a few months off).

We are lucky enough to live just a few blocks from the Mall, and as I was walking downtown the other day, admiring the plants, I was taken by the stunning array of healthy coleus plants. I took a number of closeup pictures, which I present here now on a misty romantic day that is a souvenir of the sunny summer days that are about to give way to autumn. I leave it to the gardning enthusiasts among you to ideintify exactly which coleus varieties I photographed. The coleus are still there, and will be until they freeze or are are snowed on.

Skiing in Colorado This Winter? Buy a Season Pass

Vail Resorts and Intrawest sell such inexpensive season passes that even vacationers benefit

If you are planning to ski Vail and/or Beaver Creek and/or Breckenridge and/or Keystone and/or Arapahoe and/or Heavenly Resort, CA, an EPIC pass is a great value, because it buys a season full of unlimited skiing/riding at all those resorts for $579 per adult and $279 per child. You must buy it before November 15, and the only other hitch is that it is non-transferable and non-refundable. You can even purchase it online. The ""smart pass" comes with an embedded chip for no-hands scanning; keep it in your pocket, and a scanning device at the gate at the bottom of the lift logs you in.

Vacationers do not typically show up at a ski area and purchase a one-day lift ticket, so even if that rarely purchased ticket price were already announced, it wouldn't be relevant. But to underscore the EPIC pass' value, consider that an advance-purchase six-out-of-nine-day lift ticket will be $564 per adult and $522 per child; a seven-out-of-10-day adult ticket will be $658. For overseas visitors who typically take longer ski vacations, the value is even greater.

Intrawest's Colorado resorts (Copper Mountain, Winter Park and Steamboat) offer similarly attractive deals. The Rocky Mountain Super Pass Plus is good for unlimited skiing at Winter Park Resort and Copper Mountain, plus six unrestricted days and unlimited free Friday afternoons throughout the season at Steamboat. It is just $439, which is $50 less than last winter's. If you will not get to Steamboat, the Rocky Mountain Super Pass offers unrestricted access to Winter Park and Copper for just $399.

It's worthwhile for you out-of-staters to buy one of these passes even if you're planning just a five- or six-day ski vacation but might be able to sneak off to Colorado for a long weekend sometime during the winter. Since the passes are unrestricted, that includes holidays. AND you get four $50-off coupons to be used for lift tickets for friends and family, plus discounts on rental/retail, food and beverage and Ski & Ride School lessons. These passes are also available online or at Christy Sports Front Range locations

And, if you are lucky enough to live in Colorado and ski, you can't afford not to glom onto an offer like this -- maybe even both if you get to lots of days or partial days.

Dollar Gains Strength

International travelers might benefit from stronger dollar

If you're thinking about traveling to Europe or Great Britain this fall, and you can find an affordable air fare, you might want to jump on it. The dollar closed stronger against the 15-nation euro than any time in the last seven months (closing at $1.00 = .69€) and also rising against the British pound (closing at $1.00 = £.65). When my husband and I visited England earlier this year, the dollar-to-pound ratio was practically two to one. The current exchange rate doesn't approach the strong dollar that American travelers benefited from several years ago, but it is more favorable to travelers than it was earlier this year. What goes up can go down again, so if you have the time and the budget to go overseas, this might be the time to do it.

United Backpedals on One Extra Fee

Airline rescinds plan to charge economy passengers for meals on international flights

Airlines have been tromping all over themselves with unpopular add-on fees, one of the more recent of which was United's plan to start selling meals to international passengers. The airline polled passengers who seemingly howled their disapproval of this new fee. Mark Ashley who writes the "Upgrade: Travel Better" blog is skeptical that United is responding to its customers.

"What I’m also hearing is that the airlines’ partners in the Star Alliance
are another major source of the pressure," he wrote. "Disgust at the dilution of
the Star Alliance brand? Fear of reprisals from their own customers on
United-operated codeshares, enraged at having to pay a fee to eat a hockey-puck
sandwich? Or just the last straw, after seeing more and more fees pile
up?... Bottom line: The international meal fee is dead. For now. But don’t
expect this to be the last time you hear this concept floated, at United or
anywhere else. This is guaranteed to be one of those zombie ideas you think
you’ve killed, but it just keeps rising again, under the guise of “'testing new
ideas.'”