Hiker falls to her death in Yosemite National Park

by Kraig Becker on

Over this past weekend, a hiker in Yosemite National Park fell to her death while descending from Half Dome, one of the park’s more iconic landmarks. This latest fatality is the 14th this year in Yosemite, a park that is amongst the most popular in the entire U.S. system.

According to this report from the Associated Press, early in the day Sunday, 26-year old Haley LaFlamme and three of her companions set out to hike the Half Dome trail, one of the best known treks in the entire park. As the morning progressed, a surprise thunderstorm moved into the area, bringing steady rains and dangerous lightning along with it. That treacherous combination of weather caused the group to turn back, and as they were making their way down the slick granite face of Half Dome, Haley slipped, falling 600 feet to her death on the rocks below. A 911 call was immediately placed to the ranger station, but by the time they reached the site of the accident it was too late.

When she fell, LaFlamme was negotiating the Half Dome cables, which are put in place each year to aid climbers with the steeper sections of the hike. That area of the trail can be challenging on a typical day, but when the rock becomes wet, it can be especially treacherous. Another hiker fell to his death on the same section back in 2009.

The high number of deaths in the park this year are due in no small part because of heavy snows that fell across the western United States this past winter. The region saw some of the highest accumulations of snow ever, and the powder stayed on the ground well into the spring. When it finally did begin to melt off, it caused Yosemite’s rivers and streams to rise dramatically, catching some visitors by surprise. Two weeks ago, three people were swept to their deaths over Vernal Falls, when they misjudged the depth and strength of the water there.

It is sometimes easy to forget just how dangerous the outdoors can be, especially when you’re in a national park that has so many great resources right at your fingertips. Stories like this one are a sobering reminder for us to be cautious and aware when we’re in these beautiful wilderness settings.

Awesome Michigan lip dubs: Four reasons to visit the ‘Great Lakes State’

by Annemarie Dooling on

Sure, we’ve been occasionally lured-in to visit a new destination due to a cheeky tourism campaign, or two — guilty as charged. There’s nothing as reassuring, though, as seeing the citizens of a city band together to proclaim to the world, ‘hey world, my city is great!’ And we can’t help but notice the chutzpah overflowing in the state of Michigan.

Over the last year Michigan‘s citizens, students and seniors have pulled out their video cameras and uploaded tourism video after tourism video to YouTube in an effort to show their pride. There are four in total so far, Grand Rapids, Traverse City, Grand Valley State University and the Clark Retirement Community, and it doesn’t exactly matter whether the videos follow the antics of a classroom full of a students, a building full of the witty elderly or an entire city, they all bring a special brand of magic you can only find in the hearts of people that truly love the place where they live and love to dance about it.

Call us gullible, but we’ve added a tour of Michigan to the bucket list, if not only to share a beer with the enthusiastic townsfolk that fill that state with so much love.

The residents of the Clark Retirement Community in Grand Rapids teamed-up with students at GVSU to create the world’s first-ever all-senior lip dub.


Over in Traverse City, townsfolk rocked out to Paul Simon’s “You can Call Me Al” and Van Halen’s “Jump.”

GVSU might have created the original Michigan lip dub last October, which a student quickly submitted to Reddit.


Grand Rapids is currently Michigan’s king of lip dubs, holding the world record of 5,000 participants in one video, parading through the closed-off streets of the Downtown area.

Glamping 101: What is “glamorous camping,” exactly?

by McLean Robbins on



For some, travel is about the adventure – the thrill of seeing new places, the draw of different foods, cultures and activities. Accommodations are simply a place to sleep – budgets are best spent on experiences. I am not one of those travelers.

While all travel experiences have a purpose – business, pleasure, relaxation, a show or specific attraction – all travel, at least for this writer, has the draw of a new home away from home.

Not every hotel or lodging experience can be, or should be expected to be, five-star. But if you’re going to get this writer out into the wilderness, there had better at least be hot water and a functional bathroom.

This explains how I first heard about the term “glamping,” or “glamorous camping.” It turns out, there was such a thing, and it didn’t involve an RV or high heels, Paris Hilton in The Simple Life-style.

Simply put, glamping is a term coined that encompasses outdoor wilderness experiences that are somewhere between a hotel and a traditional campsite. Sure, you’ll sleep in tents, tipis or yurts, but they often have real beds with plush mattresses and en-suite running water.

Although glamping has been derided by hardcore campers and snubbed by some luxury travelers who say they’d “never camp,” the idea has been embraced by many who see the eco-friendly benefits of camping and the budgetary advantages to mixing a traditionally free activity with a more luxe vacation.

Glamping can take place anywhere in the world – usually the more picturesque, the better. Campsites and lodges have opened around the world, usually in locations that have natural attractions to recommend them, including Africa, Australia, and my own recent experience, on the edge of Montana’s Blackfoot River in the newly-opened Pinnacle Camp at Paws Up Resort (shown above).
%Gallery-129797%Here, tents came complete with heated slate floors, towel and sheet warmers, Wi-Fi and a camping butler who served dishes like seared sirloin in Romanesco sauce and huckleberry French Toast. The only cooking I was doing involved roasting some s’mores over a fire (built by our handy butler) … but getting closer to the wilds of nature might not have been possible.

Just feet outside the tent, birds chattered, gophers and marmots frolicked, and fawns sprang around the pasture like overeager rabbits. An eagle soared overhead, trout jumped in the river below, and the air took on a crisp, still quality sweetened with meadow grasses and the fresh, clean smell of unpolluted air.

It may be luxe but it was still nature in its purest, finest form, respected by guests who spent evenings bonding around a campfire, swapping stories while their children ran and played below.

What does one do while glamping? The same thing they’d do while camping or at summer camp. In Africa, the activity of choice is often a safari, but at Paws Up, guests can choose from activities like cattle drives, clay shooting, nature hikes and fly fishing. The emphasis is on family togetherness (most all activities can be done by children 12 and over, and nearly all guests were families) and on learning experiences that take place in the outdoors. Guides for all activities focused equally on fun and education.

Despite the glamorous title, I still felt like I was camping … albeit a lot more comfortably. There wasn’t anything cheap about it – rates for camps start at $820 per night in peak season at Paws Up – but that rate did include airport transfers and three gourmet, multi-course meals for two adults daily.

Stay tuned … I’ll be bringing dispatches in the coming days about cattle driving, the best places for you to get your “glamp” on and more.

The author’s stay was provided courtesy of Paws Up Resort, but her opinions are solely her own.

Exploring the Double-Edged History of Montgomery, Alabama

by Paul Brady on

In Montgomery, during the Freedom Rides, I heard Martin Luther King say that while Brown v. Board of Education had been the legal turning point in the movement, the Montgomery bus boycott and the sit-ins were the psychological turning point.

So writes Calvin Trillin in a recent New Yorker, reflecting on the civil rights struggle in the deep south, which he covered for Time magazine “from the fall of 1960 to the fall of 1961.” He’s writing, then, on a sort of fiftieth anniversary for the movement, which of course spanned nearly two decades, making any hard and fast anniversary difficult to declare.

Another anniversary looms large in Montgomery this year, that of the outbreak of the Civil War, 150 years ago this past April. The stage was set for a Confederate victory at Fort Sumter, South Carolina when the Montgomery Convention met, in February, in what was the Alabama capitol building’s senate chamber, to organize the new secessionist government.

For both anniversaries, this summer was a fascinating time to drive through Montgomery.

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As Trillin continued in his piece, describing an event commemorating the Freedom Rides held in Jackson, Mississippi this May:

One of [Governor Haley] Barbour’s speeches was at the unveiling of a plaque that marked the old Greyhound station (now restored as an architect’s office) as a stop on what the state is calling the Mississippi Freedom Trail. … Civil-rights-history buffs can soon be guided to, among thirty or so other places, the university where Clyde Kennard applied for admission in the fifties, only to be framed and thrown into jail. They can see where Medgar Evers was shot, in 1963, and where another N.A.A.C.P. leader, Vernon Dahmer, was killed in 1966, when the Klan firebombed his house.

The names Evers and Dahmer are engraved, as are many others, on the Civil Rights Memorial outside the Southern Poverty Law Center in downtown Montgomery. Designed by Maya Lin and inspired by King’s paraphrasing of a biblical passage–“Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream”–it’s a somber fountain in black granite, honoring those murdered in the years following Brown v. Board of Education. A group of school kids walked up at the same time as me, touching the names on the slab, remembering the dead. Inside the center, a melted clock hangs on the wall next to the security checkpoint, explaining the need for a magnetometer and X-ray machine: The clock was damaged in a fire sparked by Klansmen at the SPLC in 1983.

The center is on the same street as the First White House of the Confederacy, the modest but stately mansion of Jefferson Davis, the southern states’ first president. It now sits on Washington Avenue, across from the capitol building, though it was originally located at the intersection of today’s Bibb and Lee streets. Administered by a White House Association, it’s filled with some of the Davis family’s effects, period furniture and supremely knowledgable docents, selected by the Association to educate the public on the republican nature of the C.S.A. and its Civil War-era history.

Less than a mile away, the Rosa Parks Museum memorializes the life and momentous contribution of Montgomery’s most famous seamstress. Owned by Troy University, the building is on the historic site of the Empire Theatre, where Parks refused to give up her seat on December 1, 1955. (The bus on which she made her stand by refusing to stand is now in Dearborn, Michigan.) The Montgomery Bus Boycott began immediately after, with the support of King, who at the time was preaching at a church on Dexter Avenue. Visitors to Montgomery can tour the landmark, now embellished in name as the “King Memorial Baptist Church.” It’s where King, with the help of Parks and many others, planned the bus boycotts that helped secure desegregation of public transportation nationwide.

The city, as Mississippi has done with its Freedom Trail, embraces the Civil Rights struggle as a tourist draw, putting together an easy-to-follow itinerary and audio tour of its most notable historical sites. Montgomery also looks further into the past: Visitors can also follow a Confederate Trail itinerary, complete with a stop at the First White House. Following both routes gives visitors a fascinating double-edged look at the complicated history of Alabama.

Needling replaces planking as the new meme in Seattle

by Melanie Renzulli on

Planking is so early 2011.

At least that’s the case in Seattle where locals and tourists have moved on to “needling,” i.e., posing like the Space Needle. Started about two weeks ago by a few bored PR folks who wanted to “disrupt Seattle’s weather doldrums with a little fun,” the needling meme now has its own Tumblr website Do the Needle, where anyone can submit needling photos. So far, Do the Needle has collected photos of people needling in front of Seattle landmarks, such as the, uh, Space Needle and Pike Place Market, and as far afield as Boston’s Fenway Park.

It’s easy to see how needling could catch some buzz, as it’s far more inventive than planking or the equally silly owling. But I wonder if this show of Seattle pride could lead to modified versions around the world? Maybe by this time next month, we’ll bring you news of people posing like the Burj Khalifa, the CN Tower, or the Washington Monument.

What famous landmark would you like to see turned into a meme? Tell us in the comments below.

[Photo credit: Do the Needle]