Stunning! Roseate spoonbill alights in the Florida wetland.
Photo courtesy Floridastock/Shutterstock.

America loves its birds. We spend a fortune on them—$4 billion a year just to feed wild ones and another $1 billion annually on feeders, birdbaths, and birdhouses. All told, 46.7 million Americans consider themselves birders, according to the most recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey. As astoundingly large as this number is, the activity continues to surge, growing faster than mountain biking or skiing. Bird watchers, ahem, birders (the preferred modern term) have their pick of well over 200 festivals devoted to birds each year.

[Want to test your bird knowledge? See how many bird calls you recognize in this audio quiz.]

What exactly is it about our winged friends that makes them so appealing? Well, they’re pretty, for one. “Everybody loves birds,” ornithologist John Fitzpatrick tells me. He’s director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, popularly known as the Bird Lab, which is ground zero for most things avian in North America. “You don’t need to know a thing about them to enjoy them. They enjoyed birds in the days of the ancient Egyptians and in caveman days.”

Fitzpatrick goes deeper than your average backyard enthusiast. He’s helped discover seven species of birds in South America and is a central player in the ongoing controversy over whether the ivory-billed woodpecker, long believed extinct, has been rediscovered in Arkansas. But he gets the purely visceral appeal of birding: “Birds are colorful. They sing and fly and migrate so they join us in different parts of the world. They move enough annually so they mean seasonally different things for us.”

Another part of birding’s pull is social. “People want to share what they’ve seen with other people,” Fitzpatrick says. “That makes it a communal action. At Cornell now, we’re getting dozens of freshmen every year coming here because of the Bird Lab. Many of these are teenagers who are just superb birders.”

Take Luke Seitz, for example, a 19-year-old Cornell freshman who was an accomplished bird photographer and painter (lukeseitzart.com) before he went to college. When he was 16, Seitz graduated early from high school and landed a job on a whale-watching boat. He socked away money all summer to finance the first of several trips to photograph birds—in Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. He then volunteered as a guide at eco-lodges that cater to birders. Sometimes, he would offer one of his paintings in exchange for a few nights lodging. “Birding makes me feel like I have a connection to nature,” he says.

Just as important to birding’s appeal is the sheer joy of being out in the wild with a purpose—namely to track, record, and study wildlife. “Experiences are becoming more valuable than things,” says Courtney Buechert, a birder who has led the Christmas Bird Count in southern Marin County, California, since the 1970s. (His day job is CEO of Eleven Inc., one of the top ad agencies in San Francisco.) “People realized you can buy stuff, but other people can buy stuff too. Experiences are something that are uniquely yours.”

It doesn’t hurt that birding is a lot easier to get into than many other pursuits—you don’t need to be in great physical shape, invest in a lot of equipment, travel far, or wait for the right kind of weather. “I can do this anytime, anywhere I am,” says Buechert. “I was once sitting in a conference room having a meeting with a client and a red-tailed hawk came and landed on the railing. You’re talking about a bird that is a foot high with a can opener attached to the front of its face.”

Birding, like the environmental movement, is largely a product of the 20th century and has run parallel to the country’s rapid urbanization. In 1900, less than 40 percent of Americans lived in an urban setting, and birding—often done with a shotgun rather than binoculars—was still largely the domain of naturalists, artists, and egg collectors. More than a century later, nearly 80 percent of Americans are urban dwellers, and birding provides us a perch in the world of plants and animals.

Northern hawk owl: Day hunter can spot prey half a mile away.
Photo courtesy Luke Seitz/lukeseitzart.com.

To better understand the possibilities of urban birding, I drop in on Dominik Mosur, a 35-year-old Polish emigré who works as an animal care attendant at San Francisco’s Randall Museum and as a volunteer for the Golden Gate Audubon Society. In 2011, Mosur set a single-year record (what birders call a “big year”) by spotting 273 species in the county of San Francisco, everything from an American avocet to a common yellowthroat. He invites me to join a monthly bird walk that starts at the museum and meanders through the surrounding parkland.

We meet at the entrance at 8 a.m., a dozen early-risers led by Mosur and his Audubon colleague Brian Fitch. It is a crystal-clear autumn morning, but it also happens to be one in which Bay Area birds would share the sky with space shuttle Endeavour. (It is scheduled to fly, piggyback on a 747, over the Golden Gate Bridge and around the city on its final journey before heading to the California Science Center in Los Angeles.)

We spend the first 15 minutes sweeping the nearby trees and telephone lines, spotting an American goldfinch, a pair of pine siskins, and a young red-shouldered hawk, among others. But the action doesn’t really take wing until we arrive at a large patch of poison oak that occupies a spot near the top of Corona Hill. A Lincoln’s sparrow perches on a branch, and then someone spots a savannah sparrow. Mosur, excited, stage whispers, “It’s picking up.” A warbling vireo lands in a bush near a golden-crowned sparrow. “That’s a pretty good sparrow flock right there, even if it’s only three birds,” Mosur says, noting that each of the sparrows is the first of fall for Corona Hill. “Good variety!”

At that point, more and more people armed with binoculars and long-lens cameras start trudging up the hill. These late arrivals are what birders might call accidentals or strays. They are here to see the Endeavour.

The birders, unflappable, stay focused on their LBJs—little brown jobs. While most of the day’s visitors to Corona Hill will view but one flying object, our little group of birders tally 46 avian species and the Endeavour.

The walk unequivocally demonstrates one other facet of birding, which I call connoisseurship—not in the sense of ever-more rarefied taste, but in the sense of a densely layered appreciation for nuance and subtlety. Wine enthusiasts like to ponder the importance of terroir and to argue over whether the 2005 Bordeaux will be the match of the 1982s. Long-time baseball fans can expound on the details of the infield fly rule and debate which left-handed pitcher has the best move to first base. Avid birders, as I had seen, have the expertise and enthusiasm to differentiate between the Lincoln’s sparrow and the savannah sparrow and to get excited about it. They can deftly juggle the differences between the immature and adult plumage of hundreds of species or passionately discourse on the benefits of roof prism binoculars over Porro prism pairs; they can look at a bay full of rafting ducks, as Buechert did when 12 years old, and notice the one tufted duck among the thousands of locals, even though they have never seen one outside of a book before. Connoisseurship, I think, is a field mark of passion.

Bird Nerds Unite! The Saturday Evening Post

Hop on the bike to join friends for brunch!

Day 1 Friday

Morning: Take a walking tour of the nearest city led by locals who know the best-kept secrets and scandals from a city’s past. Search online for “walking tours of [town].”
Afternoon: Enjoy tea at a specialty tea room or a posh hotel. It’s a surprisingly relaxing ritual, and so out of the ordinary that it’s romantic, too, says Marsh.
Evening: Check your newspaper’s calendar for gallery openings—a fun way to meet new artists and friends, says Marsh.

Day 2 Saturday

Morning: Explore an offbeat library, museum, or monument. Check local travel guides for ideas.
Afternoon: Go creative and try a craft at an arts center, maybe batik or even fused glass jewelry making. Or go shopping for ethnic food and housewares. “Every town has some strong immigrant roots that linger in their deli cases,” says Marsh.
Evening: After all that art, it’s time for fun: dinner and a movie. But not just anywhere. Watch in comfort at one of the new luxe theaters that boast full lounge chairs and wait service. (One option: ipictheaters.com) Alternative: “Brewery tours are always fun and interesting,” adds Assistant Editor Megan Rohrer. “Some cities even have buses that will shuttle you between multiple breweries so you can make an evening of it.”

Day 3 Sunday

Morning: Bicycle with friends to a favorite brunch spot, or put out an Italian-style spread of favorite cheeses and meats. “I like to spend my staycation catching up with friends,” says Post Comptroller Tamatha Crist.
Afternoon: Volunteer to plant trees or spruce up trails at a city or state park.
Evening: Experience a gourmet meal. To make it a fun and surprising choice, download the Urbanspoon app, enter your location, select $$$ or $$$$, and “shake.” Make a reservation at the first restaurant that comes up. Been there before? Spin again. Sure it’s a splurge, but think about all the money you’re saving on hotel and airfare.

Day 4 Monday

Morning: Enjoy a panoramic view. Every big city is proud of its highest building, and spring is 
a great time to take in 
a skyline, says Marsh.
Afternoon: Play classic board games (Farkle, dominoes, and Clue), or newer favorites from local retailers (Things, Ticket 
to Ride, and Ruckus).
Evening: End the day with an in-home couples massage. Ask friends for recommendations or check out spafinder.com.

For more staycation ideas from Betsa Marsh click here.

Your Next Staycation The Saturday Evening Post

Fiji has accommodations for every budget, but, for those with extra to spend, Dolphin Island is the ultimate dream getaway, offering complete privacy and luxury. Photo by Geoff Mason/Huka Retreats.

All I can figure is that Tom Hanks lost his glasses in the plane crash. In the movie Cast Away, he spends years, washed up and alone on a Pacific Island. He gets skinny, grows a beard, nearly goes insane, and ends up spending huge amounts of time talking to a volleyball.

“Oh, yeah, he was on that island right there,” Pilli tells me, indicating a rock tower just around the point. From on top of those rocks, if Hanks had his glasses on, he wouldn’t have had any trouble at all seeing the village where I’m about to sit down to a wonderful meal of fish cooked in coconut. He probably could have even seen the resort one more island over, bures, the traditional Fijian houses, lined up neatly against the shoreline and a bartender who serves the strongest rum punch I’ve ever had.

We’re in the Mamanucas, a chain of islands to the west of Fiji’s main port town of Nadi, on Viti Levu—one of only two of more than 300 islands in the country big enough to show up on most world maps. And it didn’t take getting into a plane crash to get here; actually, the ferry ran right on time and was really comfortable [see "Travel Tips: Fiji," March/April 2013].

The Mamanucas look like Hawaii before it was Hawaii. They look like the background of every painting Gauguin ever did of a tropical paradise: mountains rising out of the sea, no transition between water and flower-stuffed jungle except lines of powdered sugar beaches. Villages are hidden behind lines of sheltering coconut trees, pandanus, and stuff I’ll never learn the name of but has leaves the size of dinner plates.

I catch a boat over to a beach on the far side of the island from where most of the film was set, unload a picnic lunch and string a hammock under a thatched shelter—a good idea to be under cover, since every now and then from the jungle comes the crash of a coconut falling out of a tree, and that just isn’t something you want to be under.

My ride steers his boat away and for the first and so far only time in my entire life I have a beach completely to myself (well, except once in American Samoa, but that beach was haunted, so technically, I was sharing it with the ghosts) with no chance whatsoever of anyone coming by.

The sand stretches as smooth as a pool table, except for my footprints and some tiny, delicate shells, like a kind of cowrie that’s been Dalmatian spotted.

Let’s face it: If the Garden of Eden had resorts, it would have looked like Fiji.

Which is why Tom wasn’t the first Hollywood star to wash up on Fiji’s shores. Cameras and crews have been coming out here since at least 1932, when Edward Sutherland shot Mr. Robinson Crusoe. No, you probably won’t find that one on DVD. Better chance of seeing Burt Lancaster play His Majesty O’Keefe, a 1954 hit where he realizes it’s more fun to be happy than rich as he walks the streets of Suva, Fiji’s capital (on the other side of the same island as Nadi) despite the fact that the weather forecast never says anything but “rain.” Gregory Peck stood in Suva’s rain during the production of 1974’s The Dove.

But here’s where Hollywood got Fiji very, very wrong: What all the films have in common is that you have to work for paradise, getting there can’t ever come too easy. A little suffering to purify you for the experience, like stripping off the skin from a sunburn.

Tokoriki Island Resort is a secluded, lush getaway in the Mamanuca Islands of Fiji. Photo courtesy 8Hotels Tokoriki Islands and Resorts.

Yet just like getting to the Mamanucas on a nice, shiny ferry, I didn’t work at all to get here. Fiji is just three hours from Australia, or about 10 from Los Angeles. And the islands have resorts so luxe that the staff actually looks offended if you touch your own bag.

And being here is zero effort. Everybody speaks fluent English, even out in the villages, and they might well be the friendliest people on the entire planet. The only voices you’ll ever hear raised are the constant shouts of “Bula!” the all-purpose greeting and expression of joy.

Isn’t pure joy better for your soul than Hollywood trial and tribulation?

And I’m about to get a whole lot of joy, because the sun’s going down and it’s time for kava.

Kava is the glue that holds Fijian society together, and it was the one thing the missionaries weren’t able to change about the islands. Because the truth is, before the arrival of missionaries in the early 1840s, the Fijians were not exactly known as the nicest people around; in fact, most sailors went a very long way out of their way to avoid Fiji. At least one missionary ended up as soup. At the death of a chief, a passel of his wives would be strangled, so he wouldn’t have to die alone. The Fijians maintained a more or less constant state of war, but at the same time, you can see something deeper was going on, because their war clubs—ironically still the most popular souvenir in all the shops—are works of art, like it would be rude to bash someone in the head with a club that wasn’t as beautifully made as possible, intricately carved and decorated.

But the missionaries, with that famed missionary perseverance, eventually stopped turning into soup and changed the entire local approach to life. Like they did across the tropics, the missionaries convinced people who lived in a hot, sweaty climate to wear clothes suitable for a New England winter. They stopped head bashing from being the sport of choice. And they built churches every 20 feet or so in most villages. When I walk through a Fijian village on a Sunday morning, hymns pour out of a half dozen chapels’ open windows.

But the missionaries couldn’t do anything about kava, and maybe one of the reasons why film crews love Fiji so much is that the national pastime is getting blitzed on kava every evening. Kava is made from the root of a kind of pepper plant. Grind the stuff up, mix it with water, and you get … well, a drink that both looks and tastes remarkably like mud. But mud that first makes your mouth go numb, and then, according to people who apparently have a much lower chemical tolerance than I do, instills you with a very relaxed, happy feeling. So relaxed that you might not want to move for several hours. Or, if you drink enough of it, several days.

Fabulous Fiji The Saturday Evening Post

Fiji is easily reached by Air Pacific, airpacific.com, which flies direct to Nadi from Los Angeles. They fly two-story 747s; if the plane isn’t too full, you can buy a full row of seats for yourself in the quiet upstairs for a few hundred extra bucks. Money well spent for the 10-hour flight.

Most resorts on Fiji will arrange your transport out from Nadi to the resort; the local airlines are Sun Air, fiji.to, and Turtle Airways, turtleairways.com. Very efficient ferry service is offered by South Sea Cruises, ssc.com.fj; they work with the resorts and offer Nadi to beach service to most major resort areas; from there, a resort boat will come out to take you the rest of the way if need be.

Fiji has accommodations for every budget, but the higher your budget, the happier you’ll be. A local guesthouse with meals might run $20/day. An ultra swank honeymoon-style spot can easily go $2,000/day. And there are plenty of options in between. The best place to start looking is on Fiji’s official website, fijime.com.

There are no bad islands in Fiji; it’s gorgeous from end to end. Whether you’re looking for a private getaway or a big party resort, you won’t have any trouble finding just what you’re after. The only warning is take it easy on the kava (you will be offered kava) until you know how it’s going to affect you.

Read more in “Paradise Found,” March/April 2013.

Travel Tips: Fiji The Saturday Evening Post

You don’t need to go far to enjoy a fun vacation. Take cue from this 1949 John Falter cover illustration and relax with an evening picnic.

Paris, Kentucky, will never be Paris, France, no matter how great the Kentucky Horse Park and Bluegrass Bourbon may be. But you do score some undeniable bonuses with close-to-home travel: No airports, no TSA, no exchange rate, and no translation.

Part of the joy of blooming where you’re planted is the spontaneity of flipping open an atlas or speed-dialing a GPS and heading off whichever way the wind blows. If something piques your interest, you can go down a country lane or make a fresh turn into an undiscovered part of the city. You’re an explorer in your own land, digging deeper into the history and culture of an area you thought you knew. For starters, here’s a dozen ideas to mix and match after checking local city guides for details. (And remember, you’ll always have Paris—be it Kentucky or France.)

Sunup

1. If you’re a sports fan, grab your favorite treats from the concession stand and root for a minor or major league team at a stadium you’ve never visited before.
2. When flowers are in glorious bloom, stroll through outdoor sculpture parks, gardens, and zoos that are proud of their gardens, too.
3. Pull on a life jacket and hop on board a riverboat or lake cruiser to explore a new body of water. Some cities have amphibious duck rides that plunge you right into the waves.
4. Weather permitting, pack a picnic with foods from a deli or market you’ve not yet tried. Check out city or state parks within an easy drive, and again, try one that’s new to you.
5. Book a matinee at a regional theater, then the evening will be free for a special dinner together.
6. Look into local historical societies, and explore a noteworthy house museum or a quirky local landmark. Some areas were famous for making glass, fine furniture, or farm equipment, and dedicated curators have saved the best for later generations to enjoy.

Sundown

1. Make a reservation to dine by a lake or river. Twilight’s magical on the waves.
2. Be brave and hop into a pub or tavern for karaoke night. Brush up your “Jeopardy!” skills with trivia night at the pub or sports bar.
3. Travel for your stomach. Search for regional favorites wherever you go: Maybe it’s Cincinnati chili, Milwaukee beer and brats, or a Maine lobster bake.
4. Find the oldest tavern in town and taste a bit of history. Order up the signature drink that’s been pleasing locals for generations.
5. Scan university music and theater programs for some of the best productions (and prices!) in town.
6. Break out of your pizza rut and try a new regional style—every town has its favorite twists on the best pie.

Staycations: Less Stress, More Fun! The Saturday Evening Post

The Arizona desert is all sharp edges and oven heat and bad intentions. But a few basic guidelines can make it feel like home. Photo by Rob Zabrowski/Shutterstock.

The Nazis escaped right about where the coyote is watching my dog. My dog, a failure in most basic dog departments, hasn’t noticed the coyote yet, because she’s busy trying to figure out exactly what this rabbit-like smell is. In a minute, the rabbit will break out of the brush, unnoticed, and I’ll offer the dog a drink of water that she won’t take. She’s lived here all her life, but she’s never learned the desert rules.

1. Nothing matters more than water.

I know the rules backwards and forwards, because I grew up in the Arizona desert, this part of the Sonoran that looks like the set of every Western movie you’ve ever seen. Along with all the other kids in my Boy Scout troop, I was strangely smug that I could survive, no matter what. We knew how to dig into the cool sand to rest when the temperature hit 120 degrees. We could build distress signals visible clear to the horizon. We knew what to do about rattlesnake bites (cut parallel, not in an X shape). We knew that cholla spines are barbed, and you can’t pull them out, so you have to push them further in. We figured the stories about the spines working their way to your heart and killing you were probably a lie, but we did know for sure how to get water from barrel cactus pulp, how to build deadfall traps for kangaroo rats and lizards.

Okay, to be honest, we would have died quickly should we ever have needed to actually try these things. My friend Corrine and her Girl Scout troop, no doubt as self-assured as we were, got lost in the desert for three days, with no food but a five-pound bag of watermelon Jolly Rancher candies. “Another day, it would have been Lord of the Flies,” she said, “and a day after that, the desert would have been eating our bones.”

2. Even if you know the rules, the desert is bigger and stronger than you will ever be.

Back then, of course, there was more desert; when I was a kid, friends lived on the edge of town, where their only neighbor was Frank Lloyd Wright, who was already refusing to face the lights of the growing city. Today the town goes on for an hour past where we used to float in the pool and watch the bats, in bunches thick enough to be mistaken for rain clouds, come out at twilight.

Still, even though it’s shrinking fast, every year the desert takes its toll. Helicopters fly in for rescues; hikers dehydrate, fall from ledges, think their cell phones are going to get them out of trouble. It pays to remember …

3. Absolutely everything in the desert would like to kill you.

It’s all sharp edges and oven heat and bad intentions. True story: A guy got drunk and started shooting saguaros. These are the quintessential desert cactus, tall and thin, their arms reaching for the sky like they’re being held up by bandits. Saguaros can grow over 25 feet tall, have roots miles long; and if it has rained recently, their hollow bodies can hold two tons of water.

Guy shoots saguaro. Saguaro falls over and crushes guy. Everybody in the city applauds.

The saguaros here in the park are dying from car exhaust pollution; even so, this is an oasis, several hundred acres of desert in the middle of Phoenix. The zoo and the botanical garden are across the road. People jog here, do orienteering, take nude pictures of each other against the red rocks. Hawks swoop after ground squirrels—one once passed my car, grabbed a squirrel, and headed back into the air ahead of me in less time than it took me to realize I was driving more than 70 miles an hour.

7 Rules of the Arizona Desert The Saturday Evening Post

Around Phoenix

Stay near Camelback Mountain: in Scottsdale, that means the beautifully restored Valley Ho, hotelvalleyho.com, which is sort of like walking into the backdrop of a Frank Sinatra movie.

Right in Old Town Scottsdale is the best place to look for desert art: Navajo rugs and Hopi kachinas (ask before you buy, there are a lot of knockoffs) and turquoise jewelry.

A bit more expensive, but right at the foot of Camelback and one of the oldest hotels in Phoenix, the Royal Palms, royalpalmshotel.com, is pure old-style luxury, with incredible views of the mountain.

Either hotel puts you close to Papago Park, Phoenix’s central oasis. On the west side, it’s just park—wander and see what untouched desert is like. On the east side, it’s the zoo and the Desert Botanical Garden, dbg.org, a great place to see how lush the desert really can be.

If that doesn’t satisfy your interest in plants, head out to the
Boyce Thompson Arboretum, ag.arizona.edu/bta, on the edge of the Superstition Mountains.

And by the time you’ve headed out that far, a stop at Lost Dutchman State Park, azstateparks.com/parks/lodu, is the perfect place for a desert hike in the rugged, cliff-strewn mountains. Or take it easier by driving the Apache Trail, which is an old stagecoach road through the mountains. It’ll take all day to get back to town, but, especially in spring when the flowers are blooming, there’s no prettier drive in the state.

Away from Phoenix

Tucson has the Saguaro National Park, some of the most pristine, beautiful desert anywhere, chock full of its namesake cactus. Tucson is also home to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, desertmuseum.org, which is sort of a zoo, sort of a botanical garden, and a great place to see the best of the desert up close. For lodging, go for old and full of character at the downtown Hotel Congress, hotelcongress.com, a local institution since 1919. Or move upscale
and to the outskirts of town with the Westward Look Wyndham Grand, westwardlook.com, which has been around just as long. And at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains, the swank never gets in the way of the view.

Finally, the most famous patch of desert in Arizona is that big hole in the ground: the Grand Canyon. Not so many cacti—it’s high desert, a completely different kind of ecosystem—but most people are too busy watching the sun light the rim of the canyon like a lava lamp to care about the greenery anyway. Spend the night right at the edge, at the El Tovar, grandcanyonlodges.com/el-tovar-409.html, or head over to Cameron and stay at the Historic Trading Post, camerontradingpost.com. For the record, the much less developed North Rim of the canyon is way prettier than the South, but everybody visits the south side because it’s easier to get to. If you do go to the north side, check the weather: The North Rim closes in winter when there’s too much snow.

High desert or low, the desert rewards the patient: The longer you stay, the more you’ll see, and the richer you’ll find the landscape.

Where to Stay, What to See in Arizona The Saturday Evening Post

Show Stopper: View from the Kona side of the Big Island. Photo credit Kuma/Shutterstock.

I didn’t want to go to Hawaii the first time; I got coerced. Why go where everybody else goes? Why go to a cliché of ukuleles and leis? And then, of course, I found out the truth, so the 20 or 30 times I’ve returned have been entirely my idea. I start to feel it, a craving, like that hour before Thanksgiving dinner, and know it’s time to buy a plane ticket. Time to smell ti leaves and watch the skies for pueo, the local owl species.

But even after so many visits, what I mostly do is hang out on Oahu—eating kalua pig at the restaurant I love on the North Shore and letting my friends take me to overlooks that most tourists never see, the vast ocean spread out like a jigsaw, the waves the lines between puzzle pieces. Or the Big Island—losing myself in the volcanoes, looking for where the earth bleeds fire between patches of pahoehoe and a’a lava formations.

And so I make a simple resolve: to mix a trip of places I know and love with places I’ve never been. Ten days, four islands.

Which turns out to be like going to four entirely different worlds.

Moving from island to island in Hawaii is both surprisingly easy—inter-island flights leave about every 10 minutes—and a major pain in the butt if you don’t like to fly.

I don’t like to fly.

The original Polynesians moved around by boat, and for reasons of my own, I’ve spent the past five years looking at traditional canoes all around the Pacific. So I want water. The problem is, thanks to local politics and a relatively obscure law known as the Jones Act, Hawaii is without an inter-island ferry system. So that means a very, very small cruise ship run by InnerSea Discoveries: 100 feet, 25 other passengers, somebody else to do the cooking. I’m OK with that. And I’m really OK with an itinerary that puts me back on two islands I know well—the Big Island and Maui—and two I’ve never seen before, Lanai and Molokai.

Berry Best: Kona is renowned for its spectacular coffee.

Traveling to the Big Island is always like going back to an old friend. Or maybe two friends, since the opposite halves of the island are so different: the wet, jungly Hilo side and the dry, almost stark Kona side, where about all that grows is coffee on very tiny plantations (two acres is a pretty big outfit) and flowers roughly the size of serving platters that seem to be there just for the fun of it.

My traveling companion, Daz, sees the convertible at the rental place, and I know we’ll be doing the Big Island topless. I was here last year; she hasn’t been since she was a teenager, but it takes no time at all to agree on what to do: Head south, towards the last thing Captain Cook saw. Stories vary, but we can be sure of this: There was a scuffle, and Cook came out on the wrong side of it. The man who had sailed more of the globe than anyone else had his final view of the world at the Big Island’s Kealakekua Bay. And when we get there, I think that’s not a bad last thing to see: an arc of cliffs protecting the land while spinner dolphins live up to their name, catching sunlight and turning their reflections into corkscrews, wild as Daz’s hair as we drive the highway with the top down.

A Different Hawaii The Saturday Evening Post

As we approach the holiday season, many people will begin planning their end-of-year vacations. Perhaps you’re contemplating a trip to somewhere warm or traveling to see your loved ones. Either way, it’s a good time to start thinking about where you want to go—and how much money you have to spend.

Timing is everything when it comes to travel. Everybody knows that buying airfares in advance will save you big bucks—but how far in advance should you make the bookings? Are there any special days or times you should be hitting the airline websites? There are more myths and rumors surrounding this topic than just about anything else to do with travel, but we’ve done the research. When you’re looking to book, keep these tips in mind.

The 21-day advance
If you have the ability to book your flight more than 21 days before your departure, you have a great chance to scoop the biggest savings. Many airlines use a discount cycle that increases incrementally—the closer to the date, the more you’ll pay.

Can’t make 21 days? Obviously, giving the most notice possible is advised, but many airlines use additional discount tiers with intervals of 14 days, seven days, and three days. Booking on the day of your flight can sometimes result in absolute last-minute bargains, but more often, it will leave you waiting for someone else to cancel.

Tuesday and Wednesday
Traditionally, these are the cheapest days to travel by plane. Vacationers have returned from their weekend destinations, and most people who travel for work have headed off on Monday. By Thursday and Friday, people have started taking their long weekends, and the end of the week is the most convenient for most people to travel, which means it’s also the most expensive.

If you have the flexibility to travel on Tuesday or Wednesday, you can save money on flights, as cheaper rates will often still be available right up until a few days before take-off. An added bonus: Because the plane will be less full, the chances of you having an empty seat next to you is higher, and airline staff are often more attentive, as there are fewer people to check on.

The stroke of midnight
A persistent myth suggests that Wednesday at midnight is the golden time to book your flights. If it’s not Wednesday, it’s midnight Thursday or midnight Friday. There are just as many people who swear by these times as there are those who think it’s ridiculous.

However, some airlines do send out fare updates three times per weekday (and once each on Saturday and Sunday). If you’re a believer that the early bird gets the cheap tickets, head to your airline’s website just after 10 a.m., 12:30 p.m. or 8 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday. On weekends, the data is updated for each airline at 5 p.m. Eastern but not uploaded to the website until midnight the following day.

Friday’s all right
While the Wednesday night argument has been debunked as often as it has been proven, there is another day to keep an eye on. At the end of each week, airlines often experiment with prices. Some may drop their airfares to see if the others follow suit. That doesn’t automatically make Friday the best day, though—other airfares can experiment the other direction by raising ticket prices to see if its competitors will do the same. Even if one airline drops its prices on Friday, rivals may not drop theirs until Monday or Tuesday.

Any day ending in ‘y’
Unfortunately, there are no hard-and-fast rules about when to snag the best airfares. Cheap tickets can be released at almost any time of day, any day of the week.

Rather than playing the calendar game, it’s often a much better idea to subscribe to your preferred airline’s online mailing list. The airlines send out discount deals, bonus offers, and occasionally package holiday information that isn’t offered to non-subscribers. Sign up for a few mailing lists and potentially a few aggregator websites as well, to keep your bases covered. A cheap flight’s a cheap flight, regardless of which carrier it’s with.

There are plenty of people who will sing the praises of last-minute bookings, and indeed, there are some bargains to be had. However, if you want to minimize your stress (and maximize your savings!), it’s often best to plan ahead.

Travel Mysteries: What’s the best time to book an airline ticket? The Saturday Evening Post

[See Irish Folly Photo Gallery on page 3.]

Walls To Nowhere

The Witch’s Hat sits atop Killiney Hill, which commands a view of the Irish Sea. Photo courtesy Sally Shivnan.

Frank and I are staring up at a bunch of immense stone arches stacked artfully together. The same way gymnasts climb onto each other’s shoulders and make a human pyramid of themselves is how these arches are arranged. Out of the top of them rises a single, tall stone spire (like a flagpole the gymnasts might hold up). The arches are a lot bigger than gymnasts unless those gymnasts are giants—together the whole structure is 140 feet high and 100 feet wide. Frank asks me, with absolute puzzlement in his voice, “What is it built for?”

“Nothing,” I reply.

Frank is a trim, middle-aged guy in a nice grey suit, with shiny black shoes. Powder blue shirt and dark blue tie. I’m in pants slopped with stains from two weeks of traveling, and beat-up hiking shoes. Frank and I have only just met, an hour before. “Built for no purpose!” he exclaims. He gets it. I smile at him.

I don’t know much about Frank, except that he is a married father of four, a former investment broker who, since Ireland’s economy tanked, now supports himself driving foreign businessmen to and from the Dublin airport in his small black Mercedes sedan. Traipsing about the countryside in my employ, in search of purposeless buildings, the more purposeless the better for my purposes, is a significant departure from his routine.

I’d already explained about them, when he picked me up at my hotel and asked me what exactly these things were. I gave him a basic definition—odd, sort of pointless structures erected for fun by people who could afford them, often as famine-relief projects to provide work for their tenant farmers. I offered a list—towers, temples, sham castles, obelisks, fake caves; the fake caves were sometimes staffed by fake hermits whose job was to jump out and frighten the party-goers. But a folly in the flesh is worth a thousand words, and standing now before the one called Conolly’s Folly—the massive arrangement of arches and its single, soaring obelisk—Frank is enchanted. He’s hooked.

We are folly hunters. We take off in hot pursuit, Frank refusing to use the SatNav, determined to sniff them out without any help. I explain further, about how they were all the rage in the 18th and 19th centuries among the Irish grand-country-house set, and how I am interested in not just those folks, but in the people who physically built the follies, especially during famine times. I say to Frank, think how they must have felt, building these crazy absurd structures for their uber-wealthy landlords while trying to ignore the hollow gnawing in their stomachs—they would have been grateful for the work, I suppose, but at the same time…

Your ancestors and mine, I want to say to Frank but don’t. Not sure why I don’t—a little self-conscious about playing the Irish heritage card, I suppose. We chat about sports, the economy—Frank resents that he’s lost his business despite never doing anything stupid or irresponsible, unlike the high-rolling greedy people who brought Ireland, and the world, to the state it’s in. He talks about his kids, the eldest just out of college with a degree in marketing, about to emigrate in search of work. These are hungry times again, in their way. We float along in the car, through the green interior of Ireland, past pastures and golf courses, cottages, villages. I notice that the cream-colored leather upholstery of the armrest below my window is scuffed, grubby.

The largest folly in Ireland is the Jealous Wall, and the story behind it is as marvelous and creepy as its name. It starts in 1740 with Robert Rochfort building a big house on a lake. He suspects his wife of cheating on him with his brother, so he confines her to his other house where she has no contact with the outside world for 31 years. She has to walk around with a servant ringing a bell when her husband visits so he can avoid running into her. But these visits are rare, as he spends most of his time at his estate on the lake, where another of his brothers—by all accounts an instigator of the adultery rumors and by this time not someone Robert is fond of—starts building an even bigger house of his own just half a mile from Robert’s property line. It’s situated to block Robert’s best view, and, as a final snub, it is turned away from Robert’s house, its rear end, so to speak, in Robert’s face.

So Robert builds a wall. A freestanding, three-story, 180-foot-long pseudo-crumbling Gothic wall-to-nowhere incorporating curves, corners, a half-turret at one end, and numerous arched, rounded, and square window openings and doorways. Now when he looks out from his house, he sees this wall, rather than his brother’s place. It’s a compromise. It has its parallel in the way he imprisons his wife since he cannot go back in time with her to the way things were before.

Whether she had the affair she was accused of has been debated and will never be known. When Robert died, age 66, they came to let her go. The first words of the poor half-mad woman, who at this point couldn’t speak above a shrill whisper, were “Is the tyrant dead?”

The Jealous Wall was not built for famine-relief but for rage relief. Many follies were built during periods of famine, though, including that huge pile of arches, Conolly’s Folly. In some places you can find follies built during the Great Famine of the 1840s standing alongside others built during the less well known but equally devastating famine of the 1740s, which killed nearly 40 percent of the Irish population. At these sites you might find no follies from the intervening hundred years, however, as if the folly-building urge hit only once a century, triggered by tragedy. The whimsical nature of follies, under the circumstances, seems more than a little bizarre, and this incongruity is, I know, a big part of what drives my curiosity.

One such place, with follies separated by the century between the two famines, is Killiney, half an hour south of Dublin. I took the train there, much of the way running right along the strand around Dublin Bay, the fishing boats and pleasure boats like toys bobbing on the glittery blue water. When I stepped from the train and looked up to the hilltop above the village, I saw the funny, pointy cone of the oldest of the Killiney follies—a white-cement dunce-cap sticking out of a blocky little building, crowning the steep, wooded hill. I started walking up, along lanes that snaked between high stone walls concealing the country homes of the new gentry—Irish celebrities of the sort who go by one name, Bono, Enya—and after a half-hour climb I stepped from the shade of oaks and beeches into sunlight and a wide expanse of grass, and I beheld the folly’s weird white cone poking up into a blue-and-cloudy sky. A marble plaque embedded in the wall beneath the cone reads:

LAST year being
hard with the POOR
the Walls about these
HILLS and THIS
erected by
JOHN MAPAS
Esq. June 1742

Mr. Mapas seems not to have known what to call the thing he’d built and the best he could come up with was “THIS.” His THIS commands a view to the east of the Irish Sea, and to the south the picture-postcard sweep of Killiney Bay and beyond it the Wicklow mountains, friendly and pastoral-looking. Other follies share the hilltop: a second, smaller cone-topped structure called the Witch’s Hat, a miniature stepped pyramid about 15 feet tall that kids can clamber up, and a couple of spooky stone-slab structures that look like ancient sarcophagi, these all built a hundred years later, during the next terrible famine. Even though I should have known better, I acted just like Frank when I saw those pseudo-sarcophagi—I couldn’t help myself, I had to ask what they were for. Seriously—a pair of austere, somber, fake stone tombs sitting in the middle of the grass all by themselves? I stopped a guy who looked like he’d know; he was riding around in a golf-cart spearing rubbish on a stick. A cigarette dangled from his lip as he worked, and he looked gruff and Irish.

“They’re follies,” he said.

I knew that. “What were these for?”

“Place to ‘ave their tea on!” he called out, spearing a Fanta bottle. “They’re all follies! Buildings built for no purpose!” And he hopped in his buggy and putt-putted away.

John Mapas’s estate, where he built the cone he called THIS in 1742, belonged to a different owner just thirteen years later, and it changed hands three more times before the Great Famine of the 1840s spurred the second round of folly-building there. Today, the mansion that Mapas built, and which later owners expanded, is a four-star hotel that showed a modest operating profit in 2010 but had a loss of €340,000, mostly in bank loan payments. Its total loss on paper for the year, however, was €8 million, the result of writing down the value of the property by €7.9 million. Irish real estate is not doing well. The word folly has many shades of meaning.

It was typical for these houses to change hands a lot, as the Killiney estate did. And Ireland is littered with the ruins of abandoned grand country homes—roofless shells overrun with ivy, gardens gone to grass and thistle. These greatly outnumber the ones that survived as hotels, golf courses, and public parks. Their owners went bankrupt, or simply fled, many impoverished by famine along with their tenants. Famine meant the collapse of the rural economy, on which the landlords depended; they lost the rents from their tenants, the basis of their wealth. There’s a certain ironic karma in the ruin of these landowners by famine, though, since famine was largely the result of poverty, and poverty was caused by injustice and inequality, and injustice and inequality were the products of the feudal system that put Irish land in the hands of the privileged few. In 1849, during the Great Famine, the Encumbered Estates Court was established to deal with all the bankruptcies, and in the decade that followed, 8000 of these properties changed hands. Other landlords moved on when land reform broke up the large estates around the end of the 19th century, or a few years later during the Irish War of Independence. In some cases, the formerly landless farmers were content to stand back and watch the huge, empty houses rot, while in other cases, they burned the places down.

We think of the conflict as between the Irish Protestant ruling class and the Catholic majority, but this oversimplifies it, because there were “dissenter” Protestants in sects that were discriminated against just as Catholics were, and there were Catholic landowners who acquired Protestant holdings during certain periods, and there were Catholics who had once been Protestants but who changed religious affiliation hundreds of years back. There were, as well, Irish Protestant aristocrats who were as passionate about the cause of Irish independence as any Catholic. The lines get blurred, even if you leave out the occasional, inevitable unsanctioned encounter between wealthy landlord and peasant serving girl. Anywhere you go in the Republic of Ireland you find both Gaelic and Anglo surnames, though all these folks are Irish, and mostly Catholic. Irish people’s ancestry is a complicated mix, as is true for all humans, and the Irish are walking around with the DNA of the colonizers, as well as the colonized, inside them.

Ireland’s Follies The Saturday Evening Post

We flew American Airlines’ business class, and knew in advance that they do not provide vegan meals and neither does the airlines’ Admirals Club Lounge. Fortunately there is a food court near the lounge for the plebeians, and Emily was able to get a rice and tofu dish. There was little for her to eat on the plane, just plain rolls and nuts. We were all comfortable, checked into the Ritz, and arrived in time for breakfast. After discussion with the maître d’, Emily was quite satisfied with their steel cut oatmeal (made with hot water), fresh fruit juices, and baguettes with jams and jellies. We had established that the French baguette, which we all love, is made with flour, water, and yeast.

So far a good start. The Ritz breakfast staff, in its elegant dining room, was quite attentive; and my suspicion was that we were not the first vegans. Also, we were well fixed for lunch. There was a familiar Belgian chain (with outlets in New York) called Le Pain Quotidien quite near the Ritz, 2 rue des Petits Carreaux, in place du Marché Saint Honoré. Their food is good and fresh, and, best of all, vegan dishes are marked with a carrot. Emily had the soup of the day (tofu with seaweed) and different tartines on gluten-free buckwheat crusts: the avocado with chickpeas, cucumber, and spicy tahini and the organic black bean hummus with avocado and spicy tahini. There were many tartines, and even a quiche, that Linda and I found digestible.

Since we were going to be in Paris for four nights, we had to plan accordingly. Emily came prepared with a list, and we had a serious discussion with the Ritz concierge team. It quickly became obvious to us that they were not well-versed in veganism. They recommended a well-known Chinese restaurant called Tong Yen in the 8th Arrondissement near the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Apparently former Presidents Bill Clinton (now almost a vegan) and Nicolas Sarkozy were among the celebrities to frequent this long-established Parisian restaurant. As you know, the Ritz concierges take making reservations very seriously, so they handed us a typewritten confirmation, which we gave to the doorman. “Monsieur,” said the doorman, “our chauffeur is free just now, and will gladly take you to the restaurant. Just give him a small tip.” So the three of us jumped into the back seat of a black Jaguar limo where we met the Ritz’s elegant driver, George.

He approved of our reservation, again informing us of all the celebrities who go there. It was a short ride to the Tong Yen, which reminded me of any upscale Chinese restaurant in hundreds of malls throughout the U.S. The staff treated us very nicely and escorted us to a comfortable table on the second floor. Emily was nervous with the menu since nothing was not clearly listed as vegan. She settled for a made-up dish of tofu, baby corn, mushrooms, and bok choy on a bed of rice, Linda chose the Filet de turbot à la vapeur, and I had shrimp and peas on fried rice. All the dishes were very good, on par with similar fare in the U.S.

The next evening, we jumped into the backseat of our usual Jaguar limo and handed our typewritten reservation on Ritz stationary to George the chauffeur:

Loving Hut 92 bd, Beaumarchais.

Interestingly George, who was used to driving royalty to restaurants like Le Grand Véfour and La Tour d’Argent, seemed a little curious that we’d chosen a rapidly growing chain. There are over 200 Loving Huts throughout the world. However, this particular Loving Hut was smallish, in a remote neighborhood, and had bare-bones decor.

Emily loved the Loving Hut, and I admit we were not unhappy. We were treated very nicely, and I am sure the typewritten reservation from the Ritz was their first. The dishes (mostly vegan and clearly marked) included “large salad with vegan cheese”; “vegan pizza with salad”; and “veggie cheese crepe”—which was delicious. The drink menu contained “fresh-pressed vitality organic juice” and “elixir of youth cocktail.” Next to our table, there was a small birthday party for a woman. I was informed that she, a lifelong vegan, was 63 years old, but she looked 83.

The next evening we were back in the Jaguar with George, who was not surprised by our reservation for Le Grenier de Notre Dame, 18 rue de la Bucherie. This place was Parisian-established vegetarian, and some vegan, since 1978. Again a somewhat bland decor, side-street entrance, and the ingredients in the dishes were the usual bulgur wheat, tofu, vegetables, etc. The desserts, a pear crumble and soy ice cream, were good.

Our last meal in Paris was at Saveurs Végét’Halles, 41 rue des Bourbonnais. Unfortunately George was busy, so we hailed a taxi, which took us to Avenue du Bourbonnais (a €10 mistake). This was a similar establishment to the previous two restaurants, serving grains, soups, vegetables, tofu crumbles, and juices. Emily enjoyed it all, but we were getting weary. I must say every time we returned to the Ritz, the concierge seemed quite interested in the restaurants, and what we ate. This is typical French. They take food seriously.

Linda and I noticed a few things about vegan eating. First of all, our stomachs felt great and our digestive systems worked better than ever. Also, the cost per meal for all three of us averaged $85 per night. And most amazingly, we both lost about three pounds!

After arriving in New York, the next night we each ate two large sirloin steaks.

Letter from Paris: Touring the City of Light…with a Vegan The Saturday Evening Post

San Juan Capistrano Mission. Photo by Thomas Barrat.

San Juan Capistrano, founded more than 200 years ago, is one of the most visited missions on the El Camino Real. The original church is now mostly ruins.

If I’d had my own car, I don’t think I ever would have received the lesson. But my car was a couple thousand miles away, the rental people had upgraded me to an SUV, and now I was about to pay for lack of fuel economy by running out of gas in the middle of nowhere in a state I didn’t even know had a middle of nowhere.

Which was not exactly the day I’d had in mind.

I’d come to California a few days earlier to follow El Camino Real, the Royal Road, which links together a chain of 21 missions spread from San Diego to north of San Francisco. Built from the mid 1700s into the early 1800s, the missions were not just churches. They were ranches, military outposts, trading posts, schools, houses, dorms, entire towns: self-contained worlds all of their own, converting the Natives with one hand on the Bible and one hand on the gun.

And they were built to be roughly a day’s travel apart by horse and foot. By car, I’d figured, planning the trip at home, I could do the whole thing in five easy days.

Except now I’m about to run out of gas and get eaten by vultures near the end of day three. I’d left the last mission, San Miguel, more than 40 miles back. The nearest gas pump is maybe 30 miles ahead, and the low-fuel warning bell is bonging with increasing frequency. Oh, and dark is coming down fast.

I should have stayed in the quiet chapel of San Miguel and prayed a while longer.

San Miguel Arcángel. Photo by Anton Foltin.

The standard mission chapel is quite simple in its construction: a long, fairly low building, wide enough for two rows of pews and a center aisle. Most are dark inside, since adobe walls made the placement of windows somewhat tricky, and most are plain. This is a bit of a surprise, since before these California missions were going up, architects throughout Mexico and Spain were going wild with the churrigueresque style in which every square inch of every available surface is decorated with cherubs, angels, and whatever else the artisans felt like carving that day.

But apparently, that’s not what California needed. A few of the missions get a bit ornate—Dolores in San Francisco is elaborate enough to make your eyes hurt—but for the most part, these are the churches of people who work hard, people who don’t need the idea of God to overwhelm them in endless scrollwork and bleeding saints.

And a lot of work it was. California State Parks has taken over La Purísima Concepción, near Lompoc, and they’ve tried hard to show what the compounds were like in their prime, when populations were in the thousands and herds of cows and flocks of sheep ran over ranches that stretched past the curve of the earth. Among the restored outbuildings are a blacksmith shop, a kitchen, the priest’s quarters, the soldiers’ quarters (rather less luxurious than where the priests lived), and more. Everything needed to bring the local Chumash under the sway of the King of Spain.

The motivating force behind the California mission trail was Father Junípero Serra, a Franciscan monk, who came to the New World from Spain in 1749. Serra was one of those great men who don’t seem to exist anymore: Whether you needed a roof fixed or were in the mood to argue the finer points of St. Aquinas’ Summa, Serra was your guy. Unless of course you wanted to have any fun, because he was pretty much dead set against that. Biographers of Father Serra write that he believed “laughter was inconsistent with the terrible responsibilities of his probationary existence.” In other words, life is a dress rehearsal for the afterlife, so take it seriously. “Not a joke or a jovial action is recorded of him.” And just in case he was having too much fun having no fun, “he considered it his duty to inflict upon himself bitter pain. He often lashed himself with ropes, sometimes of wire.”

San Francisco de Asís, also known as Mission Dolores, is the oldest surviving structure in San Francisco.
Photo by Steve Heap.

But the man got stuff done. He founded the first nine missions on El Camino Real, from San Diego de Alcalá in 1769, to as far north as San Francisco de Asís, just a bit west of the Bay, in 1776. Before he died in 1784, he had run a total of 15 more, some on the trail, some not, as far south as Baja. Even today, the Museum of the City of San Francisco says his missions “were the first settlements of civilized man in California.” Which opens up certain problems of interpretation, Native history vs. European history, etc., but that’s not the point of this article.

At the mission in Carmel, which Serra had founded in 1771, there is a glass case near the altar. Inside the glass case lie some very old pieces of wood, the remains of Father Serra’s coffin. Sooner or later, the man is going to be made a saint—he was beatified in 1988—and when he is, this tiny, very beautiful mission by the sea is going to be even more a site of pilgrimage than it is now. “We get about 300,000 people a year,” I’m told, as I buy my ticket. Make him a saint, and I figure that number will double.

But it’s quiet right now. I stop in the courtyard, try to imagine the place as it was when an outpost on the edge of the world. Can’t do it; I’m too aware of the very expensive suburb that now surrounds the mission, the distant sound of traffic. Call it a failure of either faith or imagination. I’m not sure which.

A sign by the doorway of the chapel points out that San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo, the mission’s full name, is in an earthquake zone, and adobe doesn’t always hold up so well in earthquakes, especially not 300-year-old adobe. I watch a couple people read the sign, peek in, then walk around to the small graveyard at the side of the church, where the graves are outlined in abalone shells the size of dinner plates, their nacreous colors catching the afternoon light and throwing it back at the church like incense.

Inside, the pew creaks, just a little, when I sit down. And that’s about the only sound I hear until I stand up again, an hour or so later, hesitant to get back in the car and back on the road. But I have more missions to see.

In all, El Camino Real stretches about 600 miles. As a practical matter, for the modern pilgrim, this means a whole lot of driving along Highway 101. By the end of the second day, I’d developed a routine. Leave one mission, set the GPS for next, never forgetting a quick prayer to Saint Christopher, because if the GPS fails, I’m going to need all the saintly intervention I can get. Drive through traffic. Repeat. But then, somewhere north of Santa Bárbara, I leave what I think of as California­—a very long line of cars surrounded by pink roofs—and enter something entirely different. An emptier world, one moving at a slower pace. One where the missions still fit.

Santa Bárbara, or Queen of the Missions, was completely rebuilt after an earthquake destroyed it in 1925. Photo by Linda Armstrong.

I get to three or four missions a day; each has its own unique moment of beauty. The gigantic tree in the courtyard of the mission at Santa Barbara. The smell of incense at San Buenaventura, when I walked into the chapel right after a funeral. It was the only time I went into a mission while it was being used, and for just a moment, it was as if the missions were still holding their communities together.

Over the centuries, some of the missions have become the center of towns. San Luis Obispo is huge, and, unlike the usual long, low building, is airy and L-shaped. Others, like Santa Inés, are so far off the beaten track that if the mission trail did not create a track of its own, they would have slipped completely from history. And still others, like Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, are threatening to return to the elements: The old adobe walls have melted from two centuries of rain, surviving only as stubs, like broken teeth.

I don’t see any swallows flying around San Juan Capistrano, which, of all the missions, is the one that’s most figured out how to make tourism work for it. The highest admission price, the biggest gift shop, and signs that point out the best place to watch swallows—when there are swallows to watch. And that’s the only reason most people come here, or have even heard of the place, swallows flapping back on the same day each year.

With the actual old church at Capistrano nothing but a ruin, the mission has consecrated a small chapel for prayers: And here, it’s the usual long, low box of a room, two cramped aisles of pews. But there’s also the most elaborate altar of any of the missions, and the racks of burning candles make the gold reredos glisten as if wet with new rain.

It is after visiting San Miguel Arcángel—founded in 1797 and now the most complete original chapel—that I find myself in trouble. The chapel is so beautiful, so peaceful, not another person inside, that I linger maybe a bit too long. And when I finally leave, I discover that my plan—buy gas near here before going on to San Antonio—was a bad one. No gas stations. Okay, fine. Map shows a town down the road, they’ll have gas.

Except they don’t. “We like it that way,” says the man in the lone business in the town of … well, I can’t exactly tell where I am, because what I thought was a town on the map was really just a crossroads, and the GPS kind of gave up in disgust a half hour ago. “But the military base might sell you a few gallons.”

The air outside smells like onions, like farms. Back when the missions were first built, all of California was this empty.

What we forget, rolling along so easily in our cars—what I’m about to remember as my car sucks the last fumes out of the gas tank before the military base really does take pity on me and sells me enough fuel to get to the next mission and the next town—is that it wasn’t long ago, not long at all, when the world was a much bigger place, a place where you needed to know there was something familiar at the end of the day. A star to point yourself toward.

Father Serra saw all this space as a clean slate—never mind the people already living there—and thought, yes, I can do something with that. I can do something that lasts, that matters. I can make something beautiful.

And so he started building missions. A place to rest from work. A chance to touch something bigger than even the vast emptiness of the landscape.

I light a candle of thanks in San Antonio, throw a little extra light on the world, climb in the car to the sound of screeching chickens. The mission waits for its next visitor.

The Mission Trail The Saturday Evening Post

It’s hard to express what this feeling is, a feeling of pampering and privilege, perhaps. A feeling of having arrived. Even in the land of equality, these are feelings everyone should get a taste of from time to time, but we usually don’t in the hustle-bustle of modern life.

From California to New York, Michigan to Florida, America’s grand hotels are distinctive in their architecture, histories, and traditions. They were created as retreats for Americans made newly prosperous in the Industrial Age. These were newly minted gentility, folks with money to carve out leisure time and lake steamers and railroads to whisk them away.

Today what all the grand hotels share is a sense of occasion. You don’t just pull up to the hotel parking lot expecting a convenient stopover on a long, arduous journey to somewhere else. Here, the hotel is the journey’s end. You book ahead and anticipate walking through those majestic doors to be spoiled by a level of service that’s rare unto extinction anywhere else in American life.

And then there’s just the simple grandness of the history. Each time I go, I wonder: How many people before me have stared up 100 feet to the top of West Baden Springs’ massive rotunda in the Hoosier heartland? How many visitors have marveled at the Moorish exuberance of tile and tapestry at Casa Monica in old St. Augustine? How many travelers have clipped-clopped up to the flag-festooned entrance of Michigan’s Grand Hotel aboard the hotel’s horse-drawn carriage, liveried in burgundy and silver?

The Greenbrier in West Virginia is the oldest of these venerable hotels with a tradition dating to 1778. Back then visitors would brave rutted roads to soak in the sulfur springs that bubbled up in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains.

The Greenbrier is perhaps more like an English country house hotel than any property on American soil. Pillars and ceiling soar, sheltering American and English antiques, glorious mantles rescued from European wrecking balls, and 19th-century oil portraits capturing the flower of English and Southern gentility. That spirit is preserved today in the famous afternoon tea in the lobby at linen-topped tables while a pianist plays soft melodies in the background.

Part of the fun of exploring heritage hotels is taking time to slow down and step back into the traditions of travelers past. You can’t leave the Grand Hotel atop its Mackinac Island bluff without whacking a few croquet balls, rocking on the world’s longest front porch, and parading past a gauntlet of white-jacketed waiters into the vast dining room.

The Grand Hotel commands this jot of limestone, the linchpin between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas and the Great Lakes of Huron and Michigan. It’s the place to slip back a century or more to an authentic horse-based society. However high summer’s temperatures spike, Mackinac always sounds like Christmas Eve with the clatter of horses’ hooves and the heel chains on their hitches jangling like jingle bells.

Celebrating 125 years, the white pine Grand Hotel floats somewhere in time, still hallmarked by friendly Midwestern service. There’s a genteel pace at this National Historic Landmark that’s otherworldly.

On this car-free island, the Grand Hotel welcomes its guests to the stables to meet the giant Percherons and hackney horses that pull its distinctive burgundy vehicles. I love to whisper to these leviathans in their stalls and admire the turn-of-the-century sleighs, cutters, and carriages in the Grand’s collection.

While Mackinac Island turned its back on America’s motoring progress, the Indiana hamlet of French Lick couldn’t get enough of flashy cars, shiny locomotives, and private planes all belching fumes into the country air. For 30 rollicking years that peaked in the Roaring ’20s, each arrival meant more high rollers in its dueling illegal casinos of French Lick and West Baden Springs.

While French Lick Resort barred its threshold to the likes of Al Capone, its rival casino just a mile down this Southern Indiana valley, West Baden, was wide open to the King of Crime and his courtiers. Legend has it that you could spot Capone checking in then buying a Chicago paper to see what kind of trouble he’d left behind back home.

Capone cavorted under West Baden’s soaring dome, which hotelier Lee Sinclair crowed was “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” It was the largest free-standing dome in the world when it was unveiled in 1902, a record that stood until the Astrodome in 1965.

Bitter rivals for so long, these two behemoths in the Hoosier countryside now thrive as sister resorts, yoked together in a mammoth historic preservation project. It took $500 million to restore French Lick to grandeur and bring West Baden back from ruin.

Today it’s as easy as hopping on a resort shuttle to zoom between the two, trying out each one’s pools, spas, shops, restaurants, and golf courses.

French Lick now has 23½-karat gold plaster rosettes and brackets in its lobby, recreated from a historic photo. Gold leaf glitters once again on the pavilion roof. The casino is back—and these days it’s even legal.

West Baden has its Pompeian Court back in the vast atrium with Muses and Greek gods looking down. This is my favorite spot for afternoon tea or drinks at the bar, dwarfed by the masters of Olympus and the dome crown that glitters and seems to change color all night long.

Across the country from Indiana, the marbling and gilt are anything but faux at the US Grant Hotel in San Diego—just rediscovered after years in disguise.

When the Sycuan tribe of the Kumeyaay Indians bought the Grant in 2003, they discovered the original white Italian marble of the Grand Staircase lurking beneath the carpet. The staircase posts and balustrades, thought to be wood, were really carved alabaster. The new owners reopened the original carriage entrance and crowned it with a 1930s crystal chandelier.

The hotel seems to have come full circle, glittering again on Kumeyaay ancestral land in San Diego’s historic Gaslamp Quarter.

The Grant is an urban grande dame hotel, an elegant base for shopping at Westfield Horton Plaza and enjoying performances at the Civic Auditorium, Balboa Theatre, and Symphony Hall.

After seeing a show there’s no better place for a nightcap—maybe a signature Ulysses Vodkatini—than the GG Lounge. Relax and let your mind drift back 80 years or so to when one of the Grant’s owners foresaw prohibition on the horizon. He converted the Bivouac Grill into a not-so-secret speakeasy called the Plata Real Nightclub. Bartenders moved the booze through holding pipes meant for steam and salt water from the bay.

The Grant became one of San Diego’s most prosperous hotels during the era of bootleg gin; now, eight decades later, it’s come full circle to thrive as a legitimate grand hotel.

IF YOU GO

Casa Monica

Casa Monica in St. Augustine, Florida

Casa Monica
Where: St. Augustine, Florida
A bit of history: The town of St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565 and remained under Spanish control for more than two centuries.
Fun fact: The hotel is named for St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, the city’s namesake.
The tab: Room rates in low season (January and June-November) range from $159 to $259. High season rates (February-May nd December) range from $179-$399.
Contact: 888-213-8903; www.casamonica.com.

The Grand Hotel

The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan.

The Grand Hotel
Where: Mackinac Island, Michigan
A bit of history: Five presidents have visited the Grand Hotel— Truman, Kennedy, Ford, Bush, and Clinton.
Fun fact: The Grand was the location for the 1979 movie Somewhere in Time starring the late Christopher Reeve, Christopher Plummer, and Jane Seymour.
The tab: The resort is open May 4-Oct. 28. The weekday price ranges from $254 per person per night to $374 per person per night. On the weekends prices range from $274 per person per night to $399 per person per night in a Named Room. The fees include the Full American Plan (three meals included).
Contact: 800-334-7263; www.grandhotel.com.

West Baden Springs

West Baden Springs in French Lick, Indiana.

West Baden Springs
Where: French Lick, Indiana
A bit of history: Hotelier Lee Sinclair hired 500 men to work 10-hour shifts six days a week to build the domed building that every architect said couldn’t be built.
Fun fact: The last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series was 1908—the last year they trained at West Baden Springs. In 2011, to break the century-plus drought, the Cubs requested West Baden’s famous Sprudel spring water shipped to spring training where it was sprinkled on the training field and on Wrigley Field in Chicago—to no avail.
The tab: In off-season (January-April and November-December) a French Lick room for two starts at $189 and a West Baden room for two at $299. In peak season (May-October) a French Lick room for two starts at $189 and a West Baden room for two at $299.
Contact: 888-936-9360; http://frenchlick.com.

US Grant

The US Grant in San Diego, California

US Grant
Where: San Diego, California
A bit of history: In 1939 Grant’s owners installed the West Coast’s largest radio towers on the roof. KFVW radio soon moved into the space, and the hotel scored a coup when President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered one of his first radio addresses to the nation from the Grant.
Fun fact: For the 2006 grand re-opening owners of the US Grant commissioned a $250,000 hand-milled carpet from Thailand and had it delivered by ship. You can admire the rug’s lustrous blues and golds in the lobby.
The tab: Room rates in the low season of December are $189-$309; the rest of the year, $289-$589.
Contact: 888-625-5144; www.usgrant.net.

The Greenbrier

The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

The Greenbrier
Where: White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
A bit of history: Because of the Greenbrier’s proximity to Washington, D.C., the government built a secret fallout shelter there in 1962. The shelter was big enough to protect each and every member of the U.S. Congress plus the executive and judicial branches of the government in the event of nuclear war. A secret for 30 years, the bunker is now open for tours.
Fun fact: The healing—and odiferous—sulfur waters that first drew people here in 1778 still bubble out of the spring under the green-domed Springhouse.
The tab: Off-season (January-April, November-December) room rate for double is $245 midweek, $570 weekend. In peak season (May-October) rates are $379 to $770.
Contact: 800-453-4858; www.greenbrier.com

Mohonk Mountain House

Mohonk Mountain House was built in 1869 by two brothers on 2,200 lush acres surrounding Lake Mohonk in the Shawangunk Ridge in New Paltz, New York.

Mohonk Mountain House
Where: New Paltz, New York
A bit of history: This National Historic Landmark was built in 1869 by two brothers on 2,200 lush acres surrounding Lake Mohonk in the Shawangunk Ridge. The hotel has stayed in the same family to this day.
Fun Fact: This picturesque resort is the subject of a Currier & Ives print. It was also featured in the Stephen King novel The Regulators.
The tab: Room rates for two adults are $560-$990 per night, including three meals, afternoon tea and cookies, plus activities such as yoga and use of the indoor pool and fitness center. In low season (January-March) a Midweek Winter Getaway is $170 per person per night based on double occupancy.
Contact: 800-772-6646; www.mohonk.com.

America’s Grand Hotels The Saturday Evening Post

By now, you’ve probably realized that there are a lot of online options for buying plane tickets, booking hotel rooms, and finding your way around a new city. But what about figuring out exactly what to do while you’re there? In ages past, travelers would go to a local bookstore to pick up a paperback destination guidebook. You’d spend some time dog-earing pages and circling interesting items, and then hope that the information wasn’t outdated by the time you actually arrived.

Now, the internet provides a plethora of travel information to help you not only find the best deals but also discover the amazing details that can really make your travel experience one to remember. These seven websites can help you find the best places to shop, the most interesting enclaves off the beaten path, or the most unusual activities once you’ve arrived at your destination.

1. Frommer’s

Frommer’s has been one of the most popular travel guides since the 1950s, when the company released the classic Europe on $5 a Day. Now in addition to its print guidebooks, Frommer’s has an extensive website offering all sorts of tips and ideas for traveling around the world.

If you already know where you want to go, start with the Destinations tab, where you’ll find an impressive amount of details about a wide range of locations. Each destination entry essentially has an entire guidebook’s worth of information at your fingertips. Not sure where you’d like to go for your next vacation? Try the Dream Trip Recommender, an interactive page where you can select options and choose how important various aspects like luxury, culture, food and drink, and nightlife are to your choice. The website will then suggest options that might fit your requirements. The Trip Ideas and 100 Family Trips tabs also offer suggestions for places to go and things to do with your next chunk of free time.

2. Fodor’s

Fodor’s is the world’s largest publisher of English-language travel and tourism information. With hundreds of guide pages highlighting top destinations around the world, each location entry features an overview of sights, restaurants, hotels, entertainment, shopping, activities, and travel tips. A section called Fodor’s Choice highlights some of the most interesting options and a brief primer on the language spoken in that location. Fodor’s also includes extensive information about hotels, restaurants, and cruises around the world, and for the somewhat more budget-conscious, the Deals section lists some of the more affordable options.

3. Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet is the largest travel guidebook and media publisher in the world. Aimed at backpackers and other budget travelers, it offers both standard tourist information and a hefty offering of destinations and options off the beaten path, letting travelers explore the real countryside outside the typical souvenir shops and well-worn photo ops.

Lonely Planet offers hundreds of articles about everything from Europe’s hidden gems to a guide on packing light. If you want a more personal web experience, the Thorn Tree Travel Forum is touted as the oldest travel community on the web. There, you can chat with other travelers to get advice and ideas about everything from getting a good latte in Lesotho to traveling through Tibet.

4. Rough Guides

Like Lonely Planet, the Rough Guides guidebooks were originally marketed to low-budget backpackers, though Rough Guides has now expanded to include travelers on all budgets. Containing information for hundreds of destinations, Rough Guides helps you plan your trip with tips about accommodations, restaurants, sights not to be missed, and tips on when to travel.

An ever-expanding library of articles about everything from local festivals to trips for first-time travelers will help whet your appetite for adventure, and a photo gallery features gorgeous images from around the world. You can also purchase hard copies of specific guidebooks, phrase books, pocket guides, and maps.

5. Rick Steves

Travel aficionados and lovers of public television are probably already aware of Rick Steves, the eternally cheerful travel writer, host, and tour guide whose Europe Through the Back Door series is incredibly popular. As the title implies, the books and website focuses on travel in Europe, including destinations from Scandinavia to Turkey.

A large library of travel tips and articles helps even the most nervous traveler feel confident traveling alone or with a group, and the website’s Graffiti Wall is a huge online community of travelers eager to share their experiences and advice. Articles about individual cities, regions, and entire countries can be found in the Plan Your Trip section, offering invaluable advice and suggestions.

6. Let’s Go

The Let’s Go series is unique in that it is entirely researched, written, edited, and run by students and was the first of the budget and backpacker travel guides. In addition to the usual information about tourist sites, accommodations, and restaurants, you can also find details about hostels, travel deals, and “beyond tourism” options such as volunteer or temporary work opportunities.

Personal stories from travelers young and old can be found under the Stories tab, offering tantalizing glimpses into some of the most unique destinations on the planet. Recent posts include “24 Hours in Norway” and “Desert Wanderings of a Solo Female Nomad” — sure to get your travel itch going.

7. WikiTravel

Following the model of Wikipedia, WikiTravel aims to create “a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide.” With almost 26,000 destinations currently in its database, it’s certainly well on its way. Most entries start with a section of general information and include details like getting to and around the destination, languages and currency, tourist destinations, food and drink, and culture.

Much like its larger sibling, WikiTravel is an easy website to get lost in. You’ll find yourself clicking link after fascinating link as you explore the world full of options. Since this is such a dynamic, user-created community, you can also be assured that information is probably even more timely and up-to-date than that coming from publishers that have to wait until the next publishing cycle to update their guides.

Know before you go

While there’s something to be said for heading out and going wherever the road takes you, it’s generally a good idea to have some sort of plan in mind before venturing into the great unknown. Whether you’re a backpacker looking for an inexpensive trip to the wilds of South America or a family interested in exploring the arts and culture of Europe, you may never need to purchase another guidebook again if you first spend some time exploring these websites!

7 Online Travel Guides to Help Make the Most of Your Next Trip The Saturday Evening Post

Photo by Dylan Walters.

Ecotourism has become a hot buzzword when it comes to travel. Defined by the International Ecotourism Society as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people,” it’s part of the wave of green initiatives sprouting up all over the world. Ecotourism also tends to focus on getting out of the hotel and into the natural world, away from the beaten path and into areas that sometimes get missed, to learn about native cultures and ecology and help preserve the natural beauty and wonders of the planet.

From exotic, far-flung locales like Belize and Iceland to surprisingly green destinations closer to home, we’ve tracked down 12 of the best green travel spots in the world. Start planning your next trip… or just be an armchair tourist!

Photo by Dennis Redfield.

Located on the northeastern coast of Central America, Belize has become a popular ecotourism destination. With thick forests and a gorgeous tropical coastline, the country packs more than 87 distinct types of ecosystems into less than 9,000 square miles, an area about the size of New Jersey.

Tourism in general and ecotourism specifically are among the most important industries in Belize, and it’s no surprise. With a spectacular barrier reef (and the world-famous Blue Hole), over a thousand cays (islands), abundant wildlife, and excellent waters for fishing, snorkeling, scuba diving, and kayaking, there’s no end to the adventures waiting to be had.

Photo by O Palsson.

On the other side of the spectrum from tropical Belize, Iceland offers a surprising array of ecotourism options. This land of fire and ice is known for its volcanoes, fjords, hot springs, and a nationwide commitment to sustainable and environmentally conscious living. Virtually all of Iceland’s electricity comes from renewable resources, including geothermal, wind, and hydroelectric power, and the Icelandic Tourism Board rewards hostels, hotels, tours, and attractions for green practices.

While you might think of Iceland as a cold and inhospitable environment, quite the opposite is true! The choice is yours, whether you want to spend your vacation relaxing at a geothermal spa, enjoying a whale watching boat tour, or horseback riding in the mountains. You’ll certainly not lack for fun things to do on this northern island. We can’t promise that Eyjafjallajökull won’t spout more travel-disrupting plumes of ash, as it did in 2010, but at least you’d get to witness some striking visuals!

Dry Tortugas

Photo by Hayden.

Located about 70 miles west of Key West, Florida, the Dry Tortugas islands and the waters around them make up Dry Tortugas National Park, a location only accessible by boat or seaplane. You won’t find a single car on any of these islands, and you won’t find any naturally occurring fresh water, either, which is where the islands’ name comes from.

The islands are famous for sea life, coral reefs, shipwrecks, and the unfinished Fort Jefferson, the largest masonry structure in the Western Hemisphere. Popular activities include birdwatching, scuba diving, picnicking, camping, and saltwater fishing. Just don’t forget to bring plenty of water, but you’re on your own if the rum is gone, too.

Burlington, Vermont

Photo by Michael Whitney.

This small New England city, located on the shores of Lake Champlain, is proud of its eco-friendly culture. More than a third of Burlington’s energy comes from renewable resources. Pesticides aren’t allowed on public parks, land, or waterways, and residents have formed an extensive network of citizen-based environmental initiatives. Even the school systems use locally and organically grown food in their cafeterias.

With cold, snowy winters, warm summers, and gorgeous fall foliage, Burlington offers a wide range of activities to suit every interest. Local events include the Festival of Fools (yes, that’s “fools,” not “foods”), the Vermont Brewers Festival, and the Giant Pumpkin Regatta and Festival; Burlington is also home to one of the largest year-round farmers’ markets in the state.

Costa Rica

Photo Courtesy of First Baptist Nashville.

With 20 national parks, it’s not surprising that the Central American nation of Costa Rica has a thriving ecotourism industry. It was also cited by the United Nations Development Programme for attaining high human development and equality as well as environmental sustainability, ranking fifth in the world and first in the Americas in the 2012 Environmental Performance Index.

One of the greenest countries in the world, Costa Rica was a pioneer of ecotourism and offers a huge range of tours, volunteer opportunities, and activities.

San Francisco, California

Photo by Jeff Gunn.

Long a bastion of counterculture icons and progressive thinkers, San Francisco is considered to be the second greenest city in America (after Portland, Oregon). You don’t need a car to get around most parts of the city, with most tourists and residents alike opting to bike, walk, or take public transportation to get where they’re going.

The city also maintains more than 200 parks, from the iconic Golden Gate Park to the Japanese Tea Garden. You’ll find many excellent environmentally-conscious hotels and businesses in the area.

Switzerland

Photo by Francisco Antunes.

Switzerland might be best known for its skiing and alpine views, but this European country is also one of the world’s most environmentally-conscious. Hydroelectric and nuclear power provide most of the country’s electricity, and a far-reaching rail network makes it easy to get around without needing a car.

A little bigger than Maryland, Switzerland is home to biodiversity of both landscapes and climates. From alpine glaciers to lakes, forests, pastures, and the headwaters of several famous rivers that flow across Europe, there’s definitely something for everyone.

Portland, Oregon

Photo by Sam Churchill.

The citizens of Portland like to say that their city, regularly named one of the greenest cities in the world, was green before green was cool. Public transportation, bicycles, and walking are the most popular modes of transportation within the city limits. Green-certified buildings and businesses are on every street corner, and numerous parks dot the landscape.

Forest Park is the largest wilderness park within any city’s limits in the United States; you’ll also find a world-famous zoo, Japanese Garden, and the International Rose Test Garden. With more than 40 breweries calling Portland home, it’s also been named the best city in the United States for happy hour!

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Photo by Larry Johnson.

Jackson Hole is actually the name of a valley near the border of Idaho in the Teton Mountains. The town of Jackson is its only incorporated town, and the valley is a mecca for tourists exploring Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, and the Snow King and Grand Targhee Resort ski areas.

Jackson is alsohome to the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Center for the Arts, as well as a thriving downtown shopping and entertainment district and a wide variety of sporting activities, from dogsledding to parkour. Many local businesses strive to follow eco-friendly guidelines and green practices, since much of the region’s economy is based on preserving its natural beauty.

Alaska

Photo by Alan Vernon.

America’s largest state is an outdoor lover’s paradise. This state of sweeping vistas, vast wilderness, and spectacular scenery is a prime destination for travelers seeking a connection with nature at its wildest.

The Alaska Wilderness Recreation and Tourism Association represents more than 300 nature-based tourism businesses, individuals, and organizations offering natural history tours, rafting, fishing, kayaking, hiking, backpacking, wilderness lodges, hunting, and day ocean cruises and charters trips. The association also advocates for sustainability of the state’s natural and cultural resources.

New Zealand

Photo Courtesy of Trailsource.

New Zealand is located in the Pacific Ocean, across the Tasman Sea from Australia. It’s a remote nation comprised of two large islands and numerous smaller islands, a place of distinctive biodiversity that includes a number of species unique to the island. With a geography ranging from steep, snow-covered mountains to tropical beaches, New Zealand’s range of available activities is incredible. Given the country’s distance from the rest of the world, it’s not surprising that sustainability and eco-friendly practices are widespread. Some 31% of New Zealand’s energy supply comes from renewable sources, primarily hydroelectric and geothermal power.

Ecotourism is a thriving industry in the country, with wildlife tours showcasing everything from whales to parrots and activities from kayaking to mountain biking. Many resorts and tour companies cater to the green traveler, with organic, locally sourced, and environmentally conscious accommodations and activities.

Volunteer vacations

Photo Courtesy of BTCV Photos.

Looking for a truly rewarding travel experience? Try a volunteer vacation. Driven by people’s desire to do something to give back to the world, volunteer tourism has grown significantly in recent years, offering experiences ranging from weekend trail repair trips in National Parks to journeys to assist with environmental research in Kenya.

There are hundreds of service organizations that conduct volunteer vacations; check the company’s background and credentials before signing up. Well-known organizations like the Sierra Club and Habitat for Humanity provide excellent options, though many lesser-known opportunities exist as well.

Volunteer trip accommodations range from well-appointed hotels to tents in the woods, so make sure you know what you’re signing up for. If you’re willing to work up a sweat or spend some time helping deserving organizations, a volunteer vacation could be just what the doctor ordered!

Beautifully Green Travel: 12 Ecotourism Destinations The Saturday Evening Post