The Pinatubo Treatment

by Erik Olsen on

How very nice of the folks over at sister site Luxist
to think of us. Even though matters of disposable income prevent us from indulging in many off the luxurious items they
often blog about, we still sneak over to their site every so often to catch a glimpse of what might be possible should
Bill Gates be your daddy.

To wit: should you be adventurous, butt also a bit of a glutton for luxury, you might find
this post on a Mt. Pinatubo spa of some appeal.  The
spa sits beneath the volcano’s peak, so you can bask in its geothermal radiance while satisfying your sybaritic whims.
The folks at the spa, not surprisingly, offer treatments using the mountain’s volcanic materials, and treatments
include a sulfur hot bath, volcanic ash shower, and Chinese massage. Of course, if you want to hoof it up the volcano
itself, they can help you with that, too.

American Sahara

by Erik Olsen on

Lawrence of Arabia fans might think you have to travel around the world to find vast, sprawling dunes as far as the
eye can see. Wrong. Little known to most people the Great Sand Dunes National
Park in Colorado is a place where you can satisfy your bedouin fantasies without leaving the country.  The
Chicago
Tribune has an article on the GSD National Park that provides the gritty low-down on how to get there and what
you’ll find (um, sand….lots of sand). The tallest dunes here rise over 750 feet high and the park covers over 30 square
miles of massive dunes. There’s great hiking, camping and some climbing too. Photographers, too, should take notice
because the GSDNP is a shutterbug’s paradise. If you catch the dunes at the “golden hour” you might find you’ve taken
shots worth of a National Geographic cover spread.

Photo of the Day: (6/22/05)

by Erik Olsen on

Our POTD comes from the One World
Expedition site that we blogged about earlier. The photo is entitled A Twilight Jaunt, and shows the two intrepid
adventurers crossing Arctic ice during a glorious sunset. See more photos from the expedition
here.

The One World Expedition

by Erik Olsen on

A ways back we covered the One World Expedition, a pretty ambitious
effort to make the first crossing of the Arctic Sea, via the North Pole, in summer. The expedition is the brain child
of hard-core kayakers/explorers Lonnie Dupree and Eric Larsen. The idea was to bring attention to global warming, which
in an odd kind of way, maybe they did. They set of last May, and due to unusual ice conditions, (due to global
warming?), they aborted their attempt. The two are preparing now for another attempt in 2006. You can read about them
at their One World Site.

But if you’re interested in learning more about what they are up to, you can go back and read the
Mother Jones interview with them,
one of the better interviews out there.  Also,
Lonnie has his own site where you can callow his
projects and future efforts.

“Greatest Good’ Documentary

by Erik Olsen on

First a question: under what cabinet division is the US Forest Service. If you
answered Interior (which has the National Park System, the US Geological Survey and
the Fish and Wildlife Service…well, you’re wrong). It’s Agriculture. And the DOA is an agency who’s purview is largely
an economic one, which means that when it comes to the Forest Service, the issues that the agency most often wrestles
with are ones of money, not conservation (and trust me, I worked at Interior for a few years).

But forest management issues are very complex, and over the years the agency has done a so-so job of protecting our
national forests. Some years are better than others. They themselves even refer to some periods as a shift to “the dark
side”.

If this is of interest, you might be happy to note that the agency has produced a documentary called
The Greater Good to commemorate it’s 100 years as steward of public
forest lands. You can catch a brief (very brief) glimpse of the film
here, and it will be showing at Forest Service events arond the
country. You can check out a schedule here as well.