New visitor center opens at Yellowstone’s Old Faithful

by Kraig Becker on

On August 24th, the National Park Service opened a new $27 million dollar visitor center near Old Faithful in Yellowstone. The high tech and environmentally friendly building replaces an older visitor center that originally opened in 1972 and struggled to keep up with traffic in recent years, which have seen record numbers of visitors to the park.

Officially dubbed the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center, the new building was built in conjunction with the Yellowstone Park Foundation, a non-profit organization that raised more than $15 million to help fund the project. The OFVEC is expected to host 2.6 million annual visitors, who will be treated to a host of interactive displays including one that demonstrates the hydrothermal process that leads to the eventual eruption of a geyser. That one is particularly helpful while you’re waiting for the real Old Faithful to erupt just a hundred yards away.

The new building follows a number of strict guidelines for sustainability and energy efficiency, including the use of mostly recycled and bio-based materials. Additionally, the visitor center uses approximately 1/3 less energy than other buildings of its size, while sitting on a shallow foundation designed to protect the hydrothermal systems at play underneath. Furthermore, over 99% of the construction waste from the old building was crushed on site and used as backfill, aiding the carbon footprint even further. As a result, the OFVEC has earned a Gold level rating on the LEED scale, the first structure in the park to gain this distinction.

In addition to the interactive displays housed inside the “Young Scientist” exhibit area, the new visitor center also boasts a comfortable theater, a classroom for use by local schools and other organizations, a library, gift shop, and a resource room. The spacious lobby also features an information and orientation desk, and a nearby sign keeps everyone aware of when the next eruption of Old Faithful will occur. They geyser erupts every 90 minutes, give or take a few, and the new visitor center will give you something to do while you wait for that next spectacular display.

I visited the new center a few weeks back, and found it educational and fascinating. The new science displays are aimed at kids, but are also informative and interesting for us big kids too. You’ll definitely want to checkout the artificial geyser that “erupts” every 7 or 8 minutes, showing you how the entire process works both above and below the ground. I also applaud the efforts by the Park Service to take a more environmentally friendly approach, as the building looks spectacular and is good for the planet too.

Photo of the Day (9.12.10)

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Who recognizes the subject of today’s Photo of the Day shot? Any guesses? This wild colored light show is actually the inside of a lighthouse, taken by Flickr user Theodore Scott. This is not your typical lighthouse photo, which is exactly what caught my eye. As you take your own photos, think about how you can get up close, inside or even underneath your photo subjects. You’re likely to capture a one-of-a-kind image that breaks with the usual “travel cliches.”

Have any great travel photos you’d like to share with the world? Why not add them to our Gadling group on Flickr? We might just pick one of yours as our Photo of the Day.

Women adventurers heed the Call of the Wild

by Kraig Becker on

With the adventure travel market continuing to grow at an astonishing rate, women only adventures have become an increasingly popular option as well.These trips generally offer all the same wild and challenging options that any other adventure vacation would, with perhaps a few creature comforts added in for good measure.

One of the top travel companies that specializes in women’s only travel is Call of the Wild, based out of Mountain View, California. The company first began organizing adventure vacations back in 1978 when founder Carole Laitmer was unceremoniously fired from her secretarial job. In order to make ends meet, she soon began organizing guided trips for women into the High Sierra Mountains of California, and the rest is, as they say, history.

Now in its 32nd year of business, Call of the Wild continues to organize some of the best adventurous getaways both domestically and abroad. For instance, some of their upcoming trips include hiking around Lake Tahoe to enjoy the Indian Summer, trekking in the the shadow of Mt. Everest in Nepal, and a weekend of snowshoeing in Sequoia National Park. Other trips will take clients to Peru, New Zealand, Guatemala, and beyond.

But just because you’re traveling to remote corners of the globe doesn’t mean you can’t pamper yourself at the same time. One of the hallmarks of any Call of the Wild trip is the gourmet cuisine and the company puts a great deal of thought, and effort, into planning a wide variety of healthy and delicious meals on all of their trips. Even their backpacking excursions offer fantastic meals on the trail thanks to fresh ingredients that are dehydrated prior to departure, and combined to make surprisingly tasty backwoods offerings. The ladies on these trips all agree, an amazing meal after a long and challenging day of trekking, can make everything feel better.

Many of Call of the Wild’s clients return for multiple trips, and often report making good, life-long friends on their journeys. These vacations allow them to get closer to nature and escape the daily grind, while putting some much needed adventure into their lives. For a complete list of Call of the Wild adventures and to choose one that best fits your style of travel, click here.

[Photo credit: Call of the Wild]

Mikhail Baryshnikov to headline Sarasota’s Ringling International Arts Festival

by Melanie Nayer on

When Mikhail Baryshnikov graces a stage, the whole world stops to stare. This year, all eyes will be on Sarasota, Florida, when Baryshnikov and others headling the Ringling International Arts Festival.

The five-day showcase of music, theater and dance presents 45 performances of 11 stage productions, which run from October 13-17 at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Fla. In addition to the premieres by Philip Glass and the Forman Brothers, the Festival boasts the debut of Hurricane, a new play written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Nilo Cruz and Solos with Mikhail Baryshnikov & David Neumann featuring a world premiere by choreographer Susan Marshall. Those productions all debut at the Festival’s Night of Premieres on Wednesday, October 13. They then join the roster of seven additional productions of dance, theater, and music all presented in repertoire on three stages through Sunday, October 14.

Art lovers can make a trip out of this, thanks to the InterContinental’s Hotel Indigo, which just launched a package for the festival. The “Sarasota Arts Package” at Hotel Indigo includes:

  • Overnight accommodations
  • Two cocktails at the hotel’s H20 Bistro
  • In-room gift: Sarasota Architecture Book, chronicling the city’s history as Florida’s “Cultural Coast”
  • Two member-for-a-day passes to RIAF, which include access to the award-winning Ringling Art Museum as well as all RIAF 360 events (e.g., jazz sunsets, private gallery tours, Family FunFest, etc.).

Rates start at $153/night. Package valid October 13 – 17, 2010.

National Park Service gets nostalgic with park brochures from yesteryear

by Kraig Becker on

Considering that our national parks are experiencing record numbers of visitors once again this year, it is safe to say that interest in “America’s best idea” is at an all time high. The national parks encompass some of the most spectacular landscapes anywhere on the planet and are home to an equally impressive array of wildlife. Visiting one of the parks can bring back childhood memories of family vacations long past, when we’d all load up the car and hit the road for a good old fashioned cross-country road trip.

The National Park Service is hoping to help inspire an even deeper feeling of nostalgia with the recent addition of historical park brochures to their website. The page links out to literally dozens of images of the covers of the official park brochures beginning with one from Crater Lake National Park that dates back to 1913. Back then, the brochures were simple text affairs, offering helpful, but basic, information to visitors. But by the early 1920’s, the guides began to offer black and white images that gave a little more of a glimpse of what was in store for travelers who made the journey to one of the parks.

The site allows us to browse these historical brochures in two different ways. They can be examined either in chronological order or by specific parks. So, for instance, if you’re a big fan of Glacier National Park, you can check out the various brochures that have been issued there over the years. A good portion of the parks are represented in this way, although which years are available varies widely.

Personally, I found viewing them in chronological order to be far more fascinating however, as it was interesting to watch them evolve and change as the eras passed. In this format, you can begin in the 1910’s and work your way through the 1970’s, when the brochures moved to a “Unigrid” system that was created by a designer named Massimo Vignelli who worked in collaboration with the Harpers Ferry Center’s design staff. Since then, all of the park brochures have followed a similar design.

Scrolling through the images is definitely a walk down memory lane and a real treat for fans of the national parks. You can check them out, and read more about their history by clicking here.

[Photo credit: National Park Service]