Maybe you took advantage of one of the fee-free weekends at a national park this summer? That was for 147 parks. Here’s a free day that’s valid at all 391 national parks.
It’s not just a time to get into a park for free, but it’s a time to participate, if you can. Organizers of the event hope to honor the parks with both celebration and service. Volunteer activities and festivities will be specially tailored for each of the parks.
The reward for your troubles if you volunteer? A sneak preview of Ken Burns’ new documentary “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”
A few of the special events of the day: Minute Man National Historic Park (Massachusetts): Celebrate its 50th anniversary as a national park on the same day. Recently rehabilitated buildings will be open to the public for the first time.
Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado): Build a new connector trail along the Continental Divide between the park and U.S. Forest Service lands. Local musicians will perform music from the Ken Burns’ movie.
Big Earth Productions, responsible for gripping travel documentaries such as Long Way Around and Long Way Down, have just launched a new travel website.
It’s designed to be a one-stop experience for finding information on adventure travel all over the world, providing tips on permits, visas, shipping, and transport. But they’ve gone beyond that to create an online community where people can share advice photos, and video.
BEP has filmed epic journeys starring Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor riding around the world on motorcycles, rickshaws, boats, and everything else imaginable, but especially motorcycles, which are the perfect vehicles for just about any terrain. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of emphasis on motorcycles here, with an entire section dedicated to Two Wheel Adventure, so if you want to do your own international Easy Rider epic, you’ll be set for information. The Cargo section will tell you what permits you need to get your bike to, say, Senegal. They’ll tell you all about pet visas too.
A lot of their pages rely on public participation, so at this early stage some elements are a bit spotty. A video page encourages people to upload shots from their trip and offers advice from documentary filmmakers on how to get the most out of any video camera in adverse conditions. The TV section includes clips from Big Earth Production’s documentaries. My favorite is series of crashes from the Dakar Rally. Did that guy really think he’d save his burning bike by throwing sand on it? Feel free to upload more of those, guys.
One page that holds a lot of promise is a clickable map of the world that aspires to have travel anecdotes and information for every country. Some countries don’t have much yet, but they will fill in with time. Since membership is free, you might want to head on over there and add your own content, but be sure to come right back to Gadling because, in the words of my three-year-old son, “we’re pretty cool.”
The exhibition, called “Captured: The Extraordinary Life of Prisoners of War”, combines pictures, artifacts, and real-life anecdotes to give a glimpse into the experiences of prisoners of war from all armies during the Second World War (1939-45). It also features the only known film of German POWs in Britain.
While the exhibition focuses on the daily endurance test POWs had to live through, it also examines some of the famous escapes from notorious German prisons such as Colditz. This castle near Dresden housed Allied POWs who had tried to escape from other prisons. The Nazis considered it impossible to escape from. Several POWs saw it as a challenge and proved the Nazis wrong.
This museum junkie has been to many of The Imperial War Museum’s special exhibitions and has always been impressed. They’re always easy to follow and full of surprises and leave you knowing a lot more than when you arrived. At the permanent exhibition in the museum’s London branch, there’s a recording of an interview with a British soldier who survived a Japanese POW camp. He got terrible sores on his legs and didn’t have any medicine to treat them. Knowing that tea is a disinfectant, he pressed tea bags against the sores. This bit of trivia saved his legs and probably his life.
This latest exhibition is one of a series of events marking the 70th anniversary of the start of World War Two. A list of upcoming events at the museum’s five branches is online here,
“Captured: The Extraordinary Life of Prisoners of War” runs until January 3rd, 2010.
There’s a line in the “The Hitchhiking Movie” that made me laugh. Ryan Jeanes, one of the two guys who decided one fine day to hitchhike across the U.S. from New York City to Berkeley, California in one week to test out the kindness of strangers says, after one car dropped them off at what looks like the middle of nowhere, “Three miles further and only 3,000 miles to go.”
There are the rides one takes when hitchhiking because at least a short ride means going further in the right direction, and who knows when there will be another chance to sit down again?
It took Ryan and Phillip Hullquist 23 rides to make it across the U.S., although, I don’t know if they made their deadline. If they didn’t make the deadline, they would have missed their flights back to NY. Ryan had purchased the tickets before hand to add some motivation.
After reading the text on the movie’s website and watching the trailer, I became intrigued about the unfolding of the journey. There are the people they talked with about their trip who thought they were nuts, and the stories of the people who gave them rides. All are woven into the narrative while the scenery adds the backdrop and also highlights the diveresity between the coasts.
Whether they made it from New York City to Berkeley, California within their self-imposed time period is almost beside the point. Having a goal did influence the outcome. People altered their own trips to help Ryan and Phillip out. Because these two vowed not to use any of their own money, their success depended upon others’ generosity.
Their success also depended upon their willingness to stick out their thumbs to see what would happen. Sticking out their thumb took effort. According to Ryan, they “piddled around for awhile” in New York before they actually hit the road. Starting seemed to be one of the hardest parts.
Last spring, there was a story about three friends who were driving through 48 states in less than a week. Some states meant a quick trip through one small section, and in one case, in and out on the same road. At Four Corners, they checked off Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, for example. “The Hitchhiking Movie” reminds me a bit of that story, except Ryan’s and Phillip’s success involved others’ efforts. In the case of driving through every state, it’s a matter of getting the geography, gas, and bathroom breaks just right.
The “The Hitchhiking Movie” was released on DVD this week. Watching it seems like it would be a great boost to fuel the traveling spirit. Here’s the trailer to get you in the mood. You can buy the film on the 11 Visions Website or pay to watch it online.
Have you ever experienced a moment while you were traveling where you decided you wanted to stay (permanently)? Maybe it was particularly idyllic day lazing at the beach. A revelatory meal. A vista of a gorgeous sunset or a chance encounter with some friendly locals. No matter how amazing the experience, we all end up coming home eventually. Why is that? Perhaps its because at heart we still find a line between reality and fantasy – a realization that actually living in your dream vacation spot would involve many of the same trivialities and hardships you experience in your life at home.
The traveler featured in the clip above, from a movie called Hippie Masala, faced a similar dilemma. Hippie Masala, a documentary produced in 2007, follows the current lives of several aging hippies who made their way to India in the 60’s and 70’s in search of spiritual fulfillment, the allure of drugs and the chance to live a supposedly “simpler” life. While many members of their generation took similar short trips to the east, the vast majority eventually returned to their Western lives after weeks or months. This was not the case for a determined few, who set about creating a new life for themselves among their adopted culture.
How are we to interpret these stories? It’s easy enough to write off Hippie Masala as a cautionary tale about a bunch of crusty old hippies who tripped and fell on their idealism. But perhaps there’s something larger at work – an impulse to “leave it all behind” that we’ve all considered acting on but never brought to fruition. You can watch the documentary for free, in its entirety on the SnagFilms website and decide for yourself.