When architect Oscar Ruffini stepped out of a stagecoach in the tiny West Texas town of San Angelo, he was very sick. His last hope of getting well in 1884 was the hot, dry air of this rowdy frontier town beside Fort Concho. It worked...
A collection of grand structures within the national parks pays tribute to the pioneering architects who embraced the harmony between rustic design and first-class comfort. Many of these structures have been restored to meet modern building criteria, and adventure travelers who favor wilderness luxury over...
In an era of same-day package deliveries and instantaneous texting, taking it slow seems counterintuitive. However, the region hugging California’s Central Coast delivers a sublime “relax-cation” where everyone agrees that going SLO (as in the initials of San Luis Obispo County) is vital for well-being....
Alaska, nearly two and a half times the size of Texas, remains a land of seemingly endless open space. It’s also a destination of misconceptions by those unfamiliar with what’s known as “The Last Frontier.” Most notably, the icy igloo, thought to have been built...
Things were going great in the nascent days of Aspen, Colorado. Silver mining in 1879 created a boomtown out of sleepy “Ute City,” as it’s often referred to. The population swelled to an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 residents, and schools, homes, and new roads proliferated....
If you think Nashville is just about the music, you’d be right — and wrong. The city embraces the soubriquet “Music City U.S.A.,” but it’s so much more. Long before it became the home of country music, it was known as the Athens of the...
[caption id="attachment_18314" align="alignleft" width="249"] At Allerton Garden, roots of the rare Moreton Bay fig tree stand several feet high. Courtesy of National Tropical Botanical Garden[/caption] A little more than 25 years ago, actress Ariana Richards screamed and trembled her way into our hearts in the movie...
When Kathy Fang was only 6 years old, she peeled eggs, wiped down tables, squeezed bags of soybeans for fresh soy milk, and did everything a kid could possibly do at House of Nanking, her parent’s restaurant in Chinatown in San Francisco, California. When things...
MY FRIENDS WHO WERE HOSTING MY VISIT HAD TO SHOW ME THE DOLPHINS, of course. We’d just taken a lovely stroll along the downtown Kelowna boardwalk and Waterfront Park, feeling the soft breeze off Okanagan Lake and stopping to watch ducks and turtles at Rotary Marsh. We’d...
His name was Gus. Throughout our afternoon hike, he never judged me or complained. I could unburden my innermost secrets, and he would be as calm as a sailboat on a windless day. Gus works for Paragon Guides, and he is a llama. Global visitors come...