“Border Crisis” tour shows realities of life on Arizona-Mexico border

by Melanie Renzulli on


No matter what side of the fence you may be on regarding the U.S. immigration debate, there’s a tour in Arizona that wants to show you what migrant life is like along the U.S.-Mexico border. Gray Line Tours of Arizona now offers the tour Border Crisis: Fact or Fiction, which is designed to give travelers an apolitical look at a very sensitive subject.

Gray Line’s Border Crisis tour will take visitors to see the border fence, a pedestrian bridge connecting the United States and Mexico, and a working ranch that straddles the border. Travelers will get to watch Customs and Border Protection Agents in action and take a walk through the desert where hundreds of migrants try to cross into the U.S. each year. Another stop on the Border Crisis tour introduces travelers to 65-gallon plastic tanks installed by Humane Borders, a humanitarian organization whose “sole mission is to take death out of the immigration equation.” “It’s a hundred-and-something degrees out here. You’re dying of thirst. That’s what this is for, with or without a map, whether you found it on purpose or whether you stumbled across it,” says tour operator Bob Feinman in this CNN article about the tour.

Border Crisis: Fact or Fiction begins today and operates approximately every two weeks through next spring. The cost is $89 and it includes lunch.

Photo courtesy Gray Line Tours

Smithsonian Archives unveils new website

by Sean McLachlan on


The Smithsonian Institution Archives records the development of America’s greatest museum. With a staggering amount of artifacts, recordings, books, and other records, it now has a new website designed to help people explore this matchless museum from home.

The archives got their first website back in the dial-up days of 1995. This newer website takes readers deeper into the Institution to see thousands of documents and photos, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the Institution at work and researching in the field. The Smithsonian Institution has 19 museums, nine research centers, and a Zoo. The records for all of these are kept at the archives. The site has pages on the history of each museum and research center, a timeline, and even a scan of James Smithson’s will, which left all his fortune to found the Institution.

The site has plenty of what everyone is looking for on the Internet: porn free downloads! You can get photos and documents for noncommercial use, everything from an old postcard showing lions shot on Teddy Roosevelt’s expedition to Africa to a cool photo of Soviet engineers assembling the Soyuz module to the Apollo module at the National Air and Space Museum. Detailed descriptions tell you more about each image or record.

On the forums you can even talk with Smithsonian staff and get tips on how to protect and preserve your family heirlooms. Also be sure to check out their blog, The Bigger Picture, and their amazing flickr photo stream, which.

[Photo courtesy cliff1066 via flickr]

The End of Traveling the American Road

by Paul Brady on


It takes a long time to drive 9698.8 miles, no matter how fast you’re going. This summer, it took me more than 246 hours behind the wheel to log the distance, for a pace of just under 40 miles per hour. At times, I crawled along much more slowly, inching my way through Chicago traffic jams or creeping back to Orlando in stop-and-go bottlenecks after the launch of STS-135. On the empty highways of West Texas, I drove much faster, doing 80 or 85 or 90 and watching for speed traps as if seeing them would absolve my moving violations. Once, I borrowed a car and drove more than 122 miles an hour.

Traveling the American Road – Venice Beach: End of the Road


But by a different measure, my trip across America was gruelingly slow: It took me 10 weeks to touch 30 states, stopping in small towns and big cities and backwaters and enclaves and barrier islands and riverside hamlets. I was moving so slowly I could barely intuit the subtle changes in the barbecue as I inched down the Eastern Seaboard and along the Gulf Coast, only to realize, suddenly, in Abilene, Texas, that I was eating brisket and not pork and my God every one of the pit masters whose handicraft I’ve sampled this summer has done this differently.

It’s often said that driving across America helps you realize we’re really all the same. That Americans share a common vision and a common culture, with regional specialties but an overarching dedication to the same grand ideas. That no matter our conflicts, deep down we all want the same thing and are willing to work toward the goal. That we all like baseball and open spaces and the right to self-determination.

Maybe that’s true, but my trip showed me that we’re all incredibly different. Moving at less than 40 miles per hour, I had the chance to suss out the stories of the dozens of places I spent the night. Not the whole story, of course, but a piece of it. An example: I found Boston in a frenzy for its beloved hockey team, victorious over a team from Vancouver whose fans proved this summer to be more stereotypically Bostonian in their athletic bloodlust than those who celebrated in newly crowned Title Town. The hometown pride would find an analog in Marfa, but from what I saw there, it’s unlikely a shirtless drunken fan would stumble alongside a victory parade if one were ever held in a gentlemanly Texas town of 2,000.

For every town where innovation and entrepreneurship seemed to lead the way forward out of recession, there was another, depressed place that may be broken beyond repair. More likely, the truth is somewhere in between, like it was in Mobile, where a working port, a bustling nightlife scene and huge tourism incomes were tempered by a mayoral press conference I stumbled upon, addressing the scourge of violent crime downtown with small broken windows-inspired fixes whose efficacy is yet to be seen.

Ten weeks is a long time to be away from home. As I moved across the map, I was moving through my own clock but also the nation’s. The baseball season was underway, providing a cultural touchstone no matter where I found myself. The Space Shuttle era came to an end. I left home on Memorial Day; by the time I returned, it was almost Labor Day. My summer was both interminable and ephemeral, a dream trip I began to forget as soon as I spent the first night back in my own bed.

It was a lost summer and a wonderful one.

Tomorrow is Passport Day in the USA

by Kraig Becker on

Tomorrow the U.S. Department of State will hold its third annual Passport Day, giving Americans an opportunity to apply for their first passport, or renew their current one. To commemorate the event, all regional passport agencies, along with most application acceptance facilities, including post offices, will be open and no appointments will be necessary.

These agencies are rarely open on a Saturday, which makes this a perfect time to apply for that passport you’ve been meaning to get or renew your old one, particularly if you have an international trip on the horizon. Remember, it takes approximately 4-6 weeks to process a passport application, although for an extra $60 you can expedite the process, getting your documents in about half the time.

If you are planning on participating in Passport Day, you may want to get to your facility early. Due to the fact that many travelers often can’t visit their nearest facility during regular hours, and since no appointment is needed, there is the possibility of long lines. Before you go, you’ll also want to make sure you have all the necessary forms, and a proper photo, with you as well. First time applicants will find everything they need by clicking here and information on renewals can be found here.

The number of Americans who hold a passport has increased steadily over the past few years, but if you still haven’t gotten around to getting yours yet, now is the time. Haven’t you always wanted to visit Paris or Rome or some other wonderful destination? The first step in making that trip a reality is getting your passport.

For more information on Passport Day in the USA and to find the nearest passport agency to you, click here.

Tasty trail food and thoughts on trail food

by Elizabeth Seward on


Enertia Trail Foods isn’t like most things that come out of my hometown. Not a lot of things come from where I come from. Marietta, Ohio is a town tucked away alongside the border of West Virginia. Downtown is centered around a convergence of the Ohio River and Muskingum River. Because of this, Marietta is a bona fide river town. Boats meander casually up and down the waters on weekends and the Ohio River Sternwheel Festival draws in thousands of visitors each year. And that makes a big economical and cultural impact on a small town like Marietta. According to the 2010 census, 14,085 people call Marietta home. I still do. But for all of the reasons I look fondly upon my hometown, booming, promising business isn’t usually at the top of the list. There are businesses in Marietta–there are some great ones. But not many. So when an old high school friend and fellow vagrant let me know that he is now working for a trail foods company based out of Marietta, he immediately had me interested.Familiar with my roughing-it-much-of-the-time travel style, he asked if I wanted to try the stuff. And of course I did want to try it. But I was, admittedly, half expecting plastic baggies filled with nuts and dried fruit, sealed shut with a bread tie. I would have loved that too, but what showed up at my front door was definitely trail food; not trail mix.

He sent me:

  • New River Granola with Milk
  • Veggie Pizza Pasta
  • Pinnacle Pasta
  • El Captain 3 Bean Chili
  • Chocolate Peanut Butter Pudding
  • Grand Canyon Cheesecake

“… and I was all like, whaaaaaa? I can take this kind of stuff into the woods with me? On the road with me? How come I didn’t know about this stuff back when I was spending the night in Wal-Mart parking lots and graciously accepting free hot water from gas stations for my OATMEAL PACKETS???…”

The answer is, it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t have afforded it back then anyway. Not that it is exorbitantly expensive (most of them cost $4-$5), but I couldn’t have afforded it back then. But these days? I’d be hard-pressed to not splurge for the sake of having something other than peanut butter and bread while out in the wilderness. And by splurge, I mean, at least have some of this stuff packed away for the extra tough days. I’ve done just fine on peanut butter for a few days at a time, mind you, but after a few days, I find that I lose focus and start dreaming about things like… macaroni and cheese.

As it turns out, Enertia Trail Foods has now teamed up with Coleman and their packets of food are becoming increasingly popular and therefore available. And I know why: they’re actually really good. I’m not just getting behind them because they’re based in my hometown. I know about them because they’re based in my hometown. But, with that said, if you visited my hometown, you’d be impressed that a company with products this tasty is coming out of a town so small. It just doesn’t usually work that way. But it’s so very nice when it does.

In addition to Enertia’s curious home base, Enertia has a another attention-grabbing quality: ingredients. Whole wheat couscous, whole wheat bulgur, organic maple granules, sunflower seeds, organic rolled oats, organic pumpkin seeds, West Virginia honey, toasted almonds, organic peanut butter, ginger, fresh ground basil leaves… there’s some good stuff in these packets.

But here are some questions I leave you with:

How much does trail food like this actually enhance the overall experience? Do you find that varying your food like this provides more mental clarity, better morale, stronger determination, or an increase in satisfaction throughout and after the trip regarding the adventure? Since trail food isn’t usually cheap, at least not compared to it’s trail-friendly competitors (peanut butter, bread, cheese, nuts, dried fruit, etc.), how worth it is trail food like this for you? Are you getting more bang for your buck? Alternatively, do you find that you focus and perform better without the distraction of varying food options?