At over a half-million acres, the Great Smoky Mountain National Park offers families a cornucopia of opportunities to explore wilderness unspoiled. One of just 22 sites in the U.S. to have been placed on the distinguished UNESCO World Heritage List, the National Parks Service (NPS) recently spotlighted GSMNP in a their new, online itinerary. Travelers can hike to a secluded waterfall, investigate preserved historical structures, observe thousands of species of wildlife (including the elusive synchronous fireflies each spring), join a {Read More}
Archives for May 2015
An Old-Time Memorial Day in Rhinebeck, New York
May 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I have to admit that I love a parade—the more old-fashioned, the better. Thanks to the foresight of my husband’s grandmother, we are fortunate to have a family house in the beautiful upstate New York village of Rhinebeck, which is home to one of the sweetest Memorial Day parades around. It’s our tradition to watch the parade as it passes by our driveway each year. Our girls scramble for candy tossed out by the Boy Scouts, my mother in law {Read More}
On the Shores of Glimmerglass – Cooperstown’s Otesaga Resort
May 14, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Wherever the eye turned, nothing met it but the mirror-like surface of the lake, the placid view of heaven, and the dense setting of the woods. – From “The Deerslayer” by James Fenimore Cooper As a traveling family, we have had the opportunity to visit many hotels and resorts. Some of these have merely been a place to lay our heads at the end of a day filled with outdoor adventures while others have been destinations in themselves. The Otesaga {Read More}
Baseball and Beyond – A Weekend in Cooperstown, New York
May 13, 2015 by 10 Comments
Along many miles of two-lane roads through north-central New York, abandoned farmhouses languish with broken windows and sagging clapboard siding that has weathered to a deep gray. Each one is its own version of Dorothy Gale’s house after the twister dropped it down on Munchkinland, yet the surrounding rural upstate-New York area has none of Oz’s Technicolor glitz. My girls and I were headed north for a weekend in Cooperstown, and as we traveled through the country beneath an overcast {Read More}
