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Impulse Buy

by Brian on May 22, 2012 in Travel

Many a travel blogger have written eulogies for the much maligned travel guide. “The internet is better. It has more stuff. Reviews and details are actually up-to-date on the web. ‘Crowd sourced’ information is far better than anything a lone travel writer can put together. Guidebooks are for dorks.”

It’s all true, too. The internet is wonderful for researching specific things.

But for macro level travel planning, guidebooks are still hard to beat. Twenty minutes spent paging through a copy of DK’s Eyewitness USA guide gives us an amazing overview of the country’s primary and some secondary sights. Assembling the same information on the internet might take several days or more of painful hunting and pecking through narrowly focused travel sites. Who has time?

Guidebooks help us narrow our focus. They show us the main attractions in a region so we can plan a route. From there we use the internet to drill down into specifics.

With that in mind, I stopped by a local bookstore today to see if I could find a regional guide for the western leg of our trip. That’s not exactly what I walked out with.

Instead, I ended up buying a guide to Southeast Asia on impulse. Does this mean we’re heading to Thailand this winter? Not necessarily, but we now have an easy way to start organizing such a trip. That, together with the fantasies such planning usually stimulates, puts Southeast Asia at the top of the list for our next big excursion.

Stay tuned!

A Serendipitous Solar Eclipse

by Brian on May 21, 2012 in Arizona, Travel, United States

We don’t usually plan well enough to arrive in specific locations during special events. We always seem to just miss festivals and cool cultural goings on. So it was a little surprising when we discovered that our travels took us directly in the path of the first solar eclipse to hit North America since 1994.

We decided to stay a couple of extra days in Holbrook, AZ, so we could take in the event at Petrified Forest National Park. We’ll have a ton more to say about this park in future blog posts, but suffice it to say, there is far more here than just a bunch of rocks that used to be trees. It’s a surprisingly awesome national park and a terrific place to have watched this unusual occurrence.

Last night’s show was what is called an annular eclipse, which is a special type of partial eclipse. Unlike a total eclipse where the moon completely blots out the sun, in an annular the moon is far enough away from the earth that it leaves a visible ring of fire (and it burns, burns, burns.) It really does, too, if you stare at it with unprotected eyes.

Don’t Follow the Lights

by Brian on May 18, 2012 in Texas, Travel, United States

Sam: “There are dead things, dead faces in the water.”

Gollum: “All dead. All rotten. Elves and men and orcses. A great battle long ago. The Dead Marshes. Yes, yes that is their name. This way. Don’t follow the lights.”

At first we thought they were car headlamps shining faintly across the vast expanse of the West Texas desert. Slowly they moved to the right, roughly in a row; four in all, until one of the middle lights went dark. The others followed suit, winking out in no particular order. Other lights appeared within the general vicinity, mostly white but also red and blue. Some drifted left. Others moved vertically or bounced around at random.

Reports of Marfa’s softly glowing mystery lights date back as far as the 1800’s, with rumors of even earlier sightings. They’ve been explained as everything from swamp gas, to the reflections of car headlamps, to UFOs. Some still maintain there is no explanation for the nocturnal apparitions.

If you find yourself in Marfa, TX, look to the south for an interesting show. But if you’re tempted to strike out in pursuit of the lights to uncover their mystery, know that miles of dangerous desert have long helped shield their secret. It’s probably best if you enjoy them from a distance and don’t follow the lights.

Travel Reward Card Smackdown

by Brian on May 16, 2012 in How To, Money & Finance, Travel

The best reward card for travel is not what you think

courtesy of Stuart Miles

There is a dirty little secret in the world of Mileage Reward Cards. It’s a secret no one else will tell you. In fact, most mile-hoarding travelers don’t even know.

Those miles you’re accumulating on your reward card. They’re not free!

You’d never know that listening to the countless travelers who brag about the “free” flights they get courtesy of their mileage cards. But it’s true. You pay a large price for using a mileage card. I’m not even talking about the annual fee most travel cards now charge.

This dirty secret holds true even for efficient card users who avoid interest charges and late fees by paying off their balance each month. (Anyone who pays credit card interest should strongly consider cutting up their cards regardless of any reward program, but that is a topic for an entirely different blog post).