The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island

1 September 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, House of the Month, Hotels Reading Time:  12 minutes

© flickr.com - Eli Duke/cc-by-sa-2.0

© flickr.com – Eli Duke/cc-by-sa-2.0

The Grand Hotel is a historic hotel and coastal resort on Mackinac Island in Michigan, a small island located at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac within Lake Huron between the state’s Upper and Lower peninsulas. Constructed in the late 19th century, the facility advertises itself as having the world’s largest veranda. The Grand Hotel is well known for a number of notable visitors, including five U.S. presidents Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, inventor Thomas Edison, and author Mark Twain. Grand Hotel is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In 1957, the Grand Hotel was designated a State Historic Building. In 1972, the hotel was named to the National Register of Historic Places, and on June 29, 1989, the hotel was made a National Historic Landmark.   read more…

Capitola in California

31 August 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, San Francisco Bay Area Reading Time:  2 minutes

Capitola Hotel © Ashokmehta72/cc-by-sa-4.0

Capitola Hotel © Ashokmehta72/cc-by-sa-4.0

Capitola is a city in Santa Cruz County, California, United States, on the coast of Monterey Bay. The population is at 10,000. The original settlement now known as Capitola grew out of what was then called Soquel Landing. Soquel Landing got its name from a wharf located at the mouth of Soquel Creek. This wharf, which dates back to the 1850s, served as an outlet for the produce and lumber grown in the interior. In 1865, Captain John Pope Davenport, a whaleman at Monterey, moved his operations to be near the wharf. Unable to capture any whales, he moved his operations the following year to Point Año Nuevo.   read more…

Seligman in Arizona

24 August 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

Welcome sign © Vidor

Welcome sign © Vidor

Seligman is a census-designated place (CDP) on the northern border of Yavapai County, in northwestern Arizona. Seligman is located at 5,240 feet (1,600 m) in elevation, alongside the Big Chino Wash, in a northern section of Chino Valley. The wash is a major tributary of the Verde River. Seligman is a popular stopping point along Historic U.S. Route 66.   read more…

Portrait: Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States of America

22 August 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Portrait Reading Time:  16 minutes

US President Barack Obama taking his Oath of Office © defenseimagery.mil - Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo

US President Barack Obama taking his Oath of Office © defenseimagery.mil – Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo

Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017. The first African American to assume the presidency, he was previously the junior United States Senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008. Before that, he served in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 until 2004. For the moment, he is the last US president who is obliged to the values of the West: democracy, freedom, respect for the right and dignity of man, irrespective of origin, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation or political attitude, and in compliance with national and international law.   read more…

California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco

17 August 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, San Francisco Bay Area Reading Time:  13 minutes

© Leonard G.

© Leonard G.

The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 26 million specimens. The Academy began in 1853 as a learned society and still carries out a large amount of original research, with exhibits and education becoming significant endeavors of the museum during the 20th century. It is California’s oldest museum. Completely rebuilt in 2008, the building covers 400,000 square feet (37,000 square metres) and is among the newest natural history museums in the United States. The primary building in Golden Gate Park reopened on September 27, 2008.   read more…

Acadia National Park in New England

13 August 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks, Environment Reading Time:  13 minutes

© Someone35/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Someone35/cc-by-sa-3.0

Acadia National Park is a United States national park located in the state of Maine in New England, southwest of Bar Harbor. The park reserves much of Mount Desert Island and associated smaller islands along the Atlantic coast. Initially created as the Sieur de Monts National Monument in 1916, the park was renamed and re-designated Lafayette National Park in 1919, and then renamed once more as Acadia National Park in 1929. Over three million people visited the park in 2016. Acadia is the oldest designated national park in the United States east of the Mississippi River, although two eastern national parks in Ontario are older: Thousand Islands (1904) and Point Pelee (1918). Today, with nearly 2.5 million visitors every year, the park is one of the ten most visited national parks in the United States due to its proximity to the metropolises of the East Coast.   read more…

Grant Park in Chicago

27 July 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  6 minutes

Spirit of Music Garden © Alanscottwalker/cc-by-sa-3.0

Spirit of Music Garden © Alanscottwalker/cc-by-sa-3.0

Grant Park is a large urban park (319 acres or 1.29 km²) in the Loop community area of Chicago. Located in Chicago’s central business district, the park’s most notable features are Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum Campus. Originally known as Lake Park, and dating from the city’s founding, it was renamed in 1901 to honor Ulysses S. Grant.   read more…

Savannah in Georgia

20 July 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  11 minutes

© flickr.com - Adam Jones/cc-by-sa-2.0

© flickr.com – Adam Jones/cc-by-sa-2.0

Savannah is the oldest city in Georgia and is the county seat of Chatham County. Established in 1733 on the Savannah River, the city of Savannah became the British colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. A strategic port city in the American Revolution and during the American Civil War, Savannah is today an industrial center and an important Atlantic seaport. It is Georgia’s fifth-largest city and third-largest metropolitan area.   read more…

Bethlehem in Pennsylvania

16 July 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  10 minutes

Main Street © Tim Kiser/cc-by-sa-2.5

Main Street © Tim Kiser/cc-by-sa-2.5

Bethlehem is a city in Lehigh and Northampton counties in the Lehigh Valley region of the eastern portion of Pennsylvania. The city had a total population of 75,000, making it the seventh largest city in Pennsylvania. Of this, 55,639 were in Northampton County, and 19,343 were in Lehigh County. Bethlehem lies in the center of the Lehigh Valley, a region of 731 square miles (1,893 km²) that is home to more than 800,000 people. Together with Allentown and Easton, the Valley embraces the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ metropolitan area, including Lehigh, Northampton, and Carbon counties within Pennsylvania, and Warren County in the adjacent state of New Jersey. Smaller than Allentown but larger than Easton, Bethlehem is the Lehigh Valley’s second most populous city. In turn, this metropolitan area comprises Pennsylvania’s third-largest metropolitan area and the state’s largest and most populous contribution to the greater New York City metropolitan area.   read more…

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