Underwater Concert A Summertime Favorite

by Chris Owen on

This time of year, festivals and events scattered around the United States are often the highlight of summer, drawing visitors from near and far. As part of a road trip, a weekend outing or just a break from summer monotony, outdoor summer concerts take advantage of the nice weather, bringing our favorite artists or bands to enjoy. Those sincere in their desire to escape the heat go to Big Pine Keys in Florida where their version is held underwater.

The Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival in Big Pine Keys, Florida, is in its 29th year, inviting water-lovers for an underwater concert. This year the theme is a Salute to the Rolling Stone Crabs.Held at Looe Key Reef, an area of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and produced by Florida Keys radio station WWUS 104.1 FM, the Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival draws hundreds of divers and snorkelers each year. To enjoy the sound of music in the ocean, music is broadcast through Lubell Laboratory speakers suspended beneath boats.

How Do Dogs Find Explosives At Airports?

by Libby Zay on

Behind every bomb-sniffing dog at the airport is hours and hours of repetition and reward. For many, their training starts with a canine kindergarten and continues until they graduate from an elite academy run by MSA Security. Around 160 teams work with these dogs, usually in tandem with the same handler for eight or nine years, until the dog is retired. Smithsonian magazine looks into what goes into training these dogs and how, exactly, dogs detect bombs. Here’s an excerpt:

Merry and Zane Roberts, MSA’s lead canine trainer, work their way along the line of luggage pieces, checking for the chemical vapors-or “volatiles”-that come off their undersides and metal frames. Strictly speaking, the dog doesn’t smell the bomb. It deconstructs an odor into its components, picking out just the culprit chemicals it has been trained to detect. Roberts likes to use the spaghetti sauce analogy. “When you walk into a kitchen where someone is cooking spaghetti sauce, your nose says aha, spaghetti sauce. A dog’s nose doesn’t say that. Instinctively, it says tomatoes, garlic, rosemary, onion, oregano.” It’s the handler who says tomato sauce, or, as it happens, bomb.

Thanks, Smithsonian magazine. I will never smell spaghetti sauce the same way again.

[via Gizmodo]

Will Instagram’s New Embed Function Change Travel Blogging?

by Libby Zay on


Instagram just announced users now have the ability to embed photos and videos, a move that has the potential to change the face of travel blogging. Now, even novices will be able to bypass fancy editing software and the hassle of YouTube or Vimeo uploads. Short clips can be composed, edited, uploaded and pasted to websites in a matter of minutes — while simultaneously being shared across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Seriously, it’s a shameless self-promoting traveler blogger’s dream come true.

Watch what a potential Instagram travel vlog (that’s a video blog, in case you didn’t know) could look like above, where McLean Robbins shows off a ghost town in Jerome, Arizona.

Of course, the downside is it’s highly likely there will be a lot more “cheating” by posting filtered photos online. And there will probably be more cliché photos — toes in a sandy beach, latte art, etc. — popping up on blogs. You win some, you lose some.

And by the way, follow us on Instagram for a constant feed of travel inspiration (how’s that for a shameless plug?).

Tourists Line Up To Sniff Stinky Plant In Belgium

by Libby Zay on

Looks can be deceiving: it may be beautiful, but this giant flower smells like rotting meat. The corpse flower (or amorphophallus titanum, if you want to get scientific) is the largest and smelliest in all of earthly flowerdom. Native to the Sumatran rainforest, many botanic gardens and private collectors cultivate the plant. However, it blooms infrequently, so getting a chance to take a whiff is rare. Which is why tourists in are lining up to see it during the three days it’s blooming at the National Botanic Garden of Belgium. The museum is even staying open late so more people can take in its fleshy aroma.

In case the picture doesn’t portray the plants awesomeness, here are some facts about this amazing flower:

  • It has been known to reach up to 10 feet in height.
  • Its meat-like smell’s function is to attract the carrion-eating beetles and flesh flies that pollinate it.
  • Its leaf structure can reach up to 20 feet tall and 16 feet across.
  • Its corm, or underground storage stem, typically weights around 110 pounds.
  • It only flowers for a short period of time, usually three days.
  • Its more popular name, titan arum, was invented by a BBC broadcaster who thought saying amorphophallus titanum (translation: giant misshapen phallus) would be inappropriate.

Tourists In Safari Car Get Unexpected Passenger (VIDEO)

by Libby Zay on
A terrified impala being pursued by two cheetahs in Kruger National Park made a last ditch move into the window of a nearby safari car (no, it was not a Chevy Impala). Amazingly, college student Samantha Pittendrigh, 20, caught the entire chase on camera. Here’s what she told the Daily Mail:
My family are so jealous. In all the years my parents have been going to Kruger Park they have never seen anything like it and we do go regularly.

It really is a once-in-a-lifetime thing and we managed to be in the right place at the right time.

I was very happy to witness something like that but I felt a sorry for the cheetah.

There are so many impala, it is not like they will miss one of them.

Although Pittendrigh is lucky to have safely witnessed the ordeal, this is far from the first close encounter tourists have had in the park. Last week, a video surfaced of an elephant shattering a car window, and last month a car was totaled by an agitated elephant. To our knowledge, no tourists (or impalas) have been hurt.