Lady Liberty's Crown to Reopen

Closed since 9/11, the crown again will welcome a limited number of visitors

Especially after the recent ill-conceived recent photo op of a "spare" Air Force One flying low over New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty, it is refreshing that the crown will reopen to visitors on July 4. It has been closed since September 11, 2001. The official reason was given as "fire safety," but most of us believe that it was part of the previous administration's promoting an ongoing climate of fear. The airport threat level, after all, has been "orange" since this silly recorded alert was introduced.

Former Colorado senator and now Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced,“This Statue of Liberty really is about hope and optimism for America, it’s also about jobs that come with tourism all over this country, and it’s about President Obama’s agenda. So today we’re announcing that on the Fourth of July, we will open up the crown of the Statue of Liberty here in New York and New Jersey to the entire people of America in a way that we’ll be able to manage the crowds that come into this place."

Just to cover bases staked out by the paranoid, he said,“We have conducted a very comprehensive life-safety review for the statue itself and for the pedestal and there are improvements that are gonna have to be put in place. We’ll put some of those in place before we open it up on the Fourth of July. We’ll then go through a two-year period where the crown will be opened up, where the public — it will be about 30 people an hour that can come up here, it will be managed. And then following that, we’re going to go through a more major rehabilitation that ultimately will increase the number of people who can come up here to about 200,000.”

Timed passes will be distributed on a lottery-style basis, and access is ranger-guided. Even access to the statue's pedestal has been seriously limited to those who have a applied in advance for free monument pass and pick up the morning of the visit. Call 866-STATUE-4 or 212-269-5755. Oh, how unfortunately different this is from my childhood in Connecticut and young adult years in New York, when access to the pedestal and the statue was limited only by visitors' willingness to stand in line and climb a lot of stairs.

The ferries to Liberty Island board their last passengers well before the park's daily closing. There is no entrance fee to the park, which is open from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Park Service passes are not good for ferry fares. Due to the park's security procedures, visitors are advised to allow ample time for their visits. Ferry ticket prices from Battery Park are adult, $11:50; senior (62 and over), $9:50; child (4-12), $4.50, under 4, free.

Eat, Pray, Love -- and Watch Your Tail

Travel journalist Bruce Northam urges intuition when soloing

Julia Roberts is all over the tube these days promoting the movie, "Eat, Pray, Love," based on Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling bookabout her soul-searching odyssey to mend a broken heart. My travel-writer colleague Bruce Northam (left) wrote "Eat Pray Love, and Be Cautious," as the title implies, a cautionary but not paranoid piece on Huffington Post. He began, "The book Eat Pray Love issued no travel warnings; nor does the movie. However, somebody needs to remind women traveling alone that Halloween-night-style caution is always necessary. I'm the only guy I know who read Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert's wildly successful travelogue-cum-romance novel that's now a movie starring Julia Roberts portraying the lovesick and soul-searching editor who met her second husband in Bali."

I'm not paranoid when it comes to travel, and I don't advocate that travelers always leash themselves to a tour guide either, but caution and precautions make sense -- not just for women traveling solo but sometimes even for men as well. Northam is a believer in following your instincts about what is safe and what is a silly flirtation with trouble.  Read his piece and the practical tips he includes from two well-traveled women writers, Carla King and Lisa Alpine. The more adventurous and out there the traveler, the finer line between reasonable caution and folly. Northam is just sayin'

Two High Points on a Short Road Trip

Very teensy town and very large statue along Interstate 80

This past weekend four of us did a short road trip -- Boulder-Cheyenne-Laramie-Snowy Range-Boulder. Of Interstate 80's 2,909 miles between the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and New York-New Jersey's George Washington Bridge, the 47 modest miles from Cheyenne to Laramie contain two places that are worth stopping at. They are lliteral and figurative high points along a stretch of freeway that passes through a lot of wide-open country.

Buford, Wyoming - Pop. 1

How could we not stop in Buford, Wyoming -- population 1 and its own zip code. It is purportedly the smallest town in America and also the highest town between along I-80's entire route.  Just south of the Exit 335 off the Interstate. road, we found  a gateway to a ranch and Buford-- the signs below, one house, the Buford Trading Post and a bunch of gas pumps.

The sole resident wasn't manning the store, but his photograph graced the counter. Regretfully I neglected to ask his name, but I took a picture of his picture.

Buford was not always so tiny. Its population was purportedly about 2,000 as the transcontinental railroad was being built westward across Wyoming.

Lincoln Monument

The Lincoln Memorial is, of course, in Washington, DC, but the Lincoln Monnument is just of Exit 239. It is visible from the Interstate that closely follows the historic Lincoln Highway (US 30), the first auto road to cross the country.To honor this achievement as well as the president who most fervently believe in a union of all the states, Robert Russin, a University of Wyoming art professor and a Lincoln admirer, sculpted a monumental, 13 1/2-foot Lincoln head resting on a 35-foot stone base.

It originally stood at Sherman Summit, at 8,878 feet above sea level and the highest point on old Lincoln Highway, but when when I-80 was opened in 1969, the head was moved about 1 mile to this highpoint on the Interstate. It too is visible from the highway, but its worth a stop.

Pull into the Summit Rest Area and go into the visitor center, not just to use the restroom and have adrink of water, but also to watch a short interpretive film and look into the small museum room with exhibits about Wyoming and its natural and human history.

If you too are road-tripping through Wyoming in I-80, eachof these attractions is worth a stop.

Tattered Cover to Welcome Arthur and Pauline Frommer

Father-daughter team of budget travel authorities launching book tour in the Denver area this week

The first post-World War II generation of young, independent travelers boarded their cheap-o charter flights equipped with the essentials: passport, student ID, Eurailpass and Arthur Frommer's Europe on $5 a Day. That iconic how-to travel book not only inspired young people to travel then, but to keep on traveling as they got older. It also spawned an empire. Arthur Frommer begat books (Frommers Travel Guides and other series), a magazine (Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel), a website, a radio gig (Arthur Frommer's "Travel Minute" on New York's WOR and podcast), a blog and a daughter, Pauline, who has followed in her dad's world-roaming, publishing footsteps.

Father and daughter are launching a book tour for Ask Arthur Frommer -- And Travel Cheaper, Better, Smarter at the Tattered Cover on Colfax on at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 8. They are offering a related mini-seminar, “Making Travel Work in Tough Economic Times.” Admission is free, and all Frommer's Guides will be 20 sold at off during this event -- and you can probably get them to sign the books too. The store is at 2526 East Colfax Avenue (at Elizabeth Street, directly across the street from East High School and the City Park Esplanade), Denver; 303-322-7727.

The following day, May 9, the Frommers will speak at the College Hill branch of the Westminster Public Library from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The library is at 3705 West 112th Street, Westminster. The event is also free, but the library would appreciate a call to register: 303-404-5104. If you want to buy a book there, it's cash or check only. Refreshments for the Westminster event will be provided by Cruise Holidays at the Ranch.

Arthur will continue the book tour at the Book Passage (51 Tamal Vista Boulevard, Corte Madera, near San Francisco) at 1:00 p.m. on Monday, May 11; Distant Lands (56 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena), at 7:30 p.m. on Monday May 13; and at the Borders bookstore in Century City (10250 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles) at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 14.

International Travel Is a Laughing Matter...

...in the eyes of a clever cartoonist

My friend and travel writer colleague Reed Glenn sent me the link to the New York Times' "Abstract City" and Christoph Niemann's "Red Eye," a spot-on pen-and-ink commentary on long-haul flights.I laughed till I cried as I was scrolling through the whole thing, so you might want to grab a tissue before you look at the whole thing. It gets better page by page. I may be walking a copyright tightrope by posting the opening page of his commentary here, but I'm treating it as if it were a short excerpt used as a quote from a longer article.

Aircraft-Bird Encounters Rise

One bird strike made headlines, but many occur -- including Denver

The surprise water landing of a US Airways plane in the Hudson River last January. Investigations revealed that a major bird strike had knocked out at least one engine. All 155 passengers and crew survived, with few injuries, and Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger became an instant hero, making the talk-show circuit and landing a book contract. It turns out that the very aircraft the Sullenberger ditched in the frigid Hudson,

Associated Press reporter Michael J. Sniffen has been looking into bird strikes and has unearthed some amazing figures -- ones we don't generally think about when we fasten our seatbelts low and tight about ourselves and make sure that are seats and tray tables are in their full upright positions. Sniffen reported:

"Airplane collisions with birds or other animals have destroyed 28 aircraft
since 2000, with New York's Kennedy airport and Sacramento International
reporting the most incidents with serious damage, according to Federal Aviation
Administration data posted...The FAA list of wildlife strikes, published on the
Internet, details more than 89,000 incidents since 1990, costing 11 people their
lives. Most incidents were bird strikes, but deer and other animals have been
hit on runways, too.

"The situation seems to be getting worse: Airplane collisions with birds
have more than doubled at 13 major U.S. airports since 2000, including New
Orleans, Houston's Hobby, Kansas City, Orlando and Salt Lake City. Wildlife
experts say increasingly birds, particularly large ones like Canada geese, are
finding food and living near cities and airports year round rather than
migrating.

"The figures are known to be far from complete. Even the FAA estimates its
voluntary reporting system captures only 20 percent of wildlife strikes. The
agency, however, has refused for a decade to adopt a National Transportation
Safety Board recommendation to make the reports mandatory.

"...The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird
strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one
for every 10,000 flights....air traffic control towers routinely
alert pilots if there are birds in the area."

Alysia Patterson filed a Denver-specific AP report, in which she recounted that DIA "led the nation in bird and wildlife strikes last year" -- 318 during the first 11 months of 2008. Of some comfort to passengers, Patterson was told by the FAA's Mike Fergus that DIA has "an aggressive wildlife mitigation program, [and] pilots are more aware of the problem and more apt to report a strike."

Whenever I've felt a jolt when taking off from or approaching DIA, I have assumed that it was turbulence of some sort. Next time, I'll speculate (to myself, not to my seatmate) that it might be due to a bird strike.

Medicine Bow Peak: Strike Three

Weather deterred us once again from climbing iconic mountain in southern Wyoming

Wyoming's highest mountain is 13.804-foot Gannett Peak in the Wind River Range, and the 13,775-foot Grand Teton, the centerpiece of spectacular Grand Teton National Park is runnerup. At 12,013 feet, Medicine Bow Peak is not even in the same elevation league. Still, with a location in the scenic Snowy Range of south-central Wyoming, it has lured my husband, Ral, and me three times in th past few years. The first time, we left Boulder in the pitch-dark, began climbing early from the Lake Marie Trailhead but were only about half-way across the flat broad mountaintop before being spooked by lightning visible in every direction and retreated. The second time, we spent the night in Fort Collins and thought we had a head start, but again, the weather closed in when we were crossing the top, and again we turned around.

This past weekend, accompanied by our Boulder friends Andrea and Dana, we wanted to try for a third time. To be closer to the trailhead, we spent the night at the Old Corral Hotel in Centennial, Our plan was to ascend via the shortest, steepest route from Lewis Lake to reach the highest point -- roughly 1,200 feet of elevation gain in considerably less than 2 miles. Heavy clouds filled the sky, even in the morning, so it wasn't looking good. Our immediate destination was the junction with the trail to the summit -- just in case the clouds lifted and the sun emerged. They didn't.

Lakes Trail from Lewis Lake

From the trailhead at Lewis Lake (below), we passed lakes and tarns, lingering snowfields and spectacular wildflowers that filled meadows and seasonal marshes, poked up through willows and coniferous shrubs, and magically grew on tiny ledges on rock cliffs. I'm afraid my little camera can't do justice to the splendid displays.

The three-from-one conifer below is just a few hundred feet from the Lewis Lake trailhead.

The last of winter's deep snow still lingers on August 1, but its steady melting is what makes the flowers so dazzling.

Below, death camas, which also goes by wand lily and several other names.

Pale yellow Indian paintbrush, aster, elephantilla (that's the stalk) and one of the senisios or some other yellow composite.

Queen's crown is light pink in the Snowy Range but in the Colorado Rockies is usually dark red.

I can't identify the two small flowers below from this photo, and I didn't have my tundra book with me to look them up at the time. Still, I loved seeing the tough, low-growing blue and pink blossoms side by side, literally between a rock and a hard place.

After about 1 1/4 miles, we reached a three-way trail junction and had another decision to make. We had already discarded thoughts of the the steep ascent to the summit. A second option was to continue down to Mirror Lake and return the way we came, but if the skies opened, we'd be miles from the car. The third was to retrace our steps to Lewis Lake and drive to the Mirror Lake Trailhead and start up from there.

As we were discussing these options, up from the Mirror Lake side came a man carrying -- not skis, not a snowboard, but golf clubs. Surely, a mirage. The "mirage," named Ed Woods, travels a huge Rocky Mountain territory for Caterpillar. If you're on Facbook, you might be able to see Ed's golf images by clicking here.

Of course, we started chatting. And after we exchanged the usual pleasantries and questions of fellow hikers, Ed told us about what Caterpillar has been doing. As card-carrying, environ-conscious Boulderites, we were gratified to hear the company's heavy equipment is burning cleaner and more efficiently. While this doesn't make the enormous open-pit mines in Wyoming and elsewhere any easier on the eyes, at least the equipment is less polluting and using less fuel than in the past. Ed, his golf clubs and his companion headed up to the summit, while we turned back and drove around to the Mirror Lake Trailhead to check out the Lakes Trail.

Lakes Trail from Mirror Lake

The trail begins through the trees but soon Lookout Lake comes into view. Set against Medicine Bow Peak's steep eastern and rocky face where snow packed onto gullies even on the first day of August, it is a immensely scenic route.

The flowers were, if anything more abundant than on the first trail, but again, my modest camera in no way captures it. Below, avalanche lilies (aka, glacier lilies). This is a small cluster. We also saw large expanses carpeted in these lovely yellow blooms that come up in the wake of melting snow.

We saw very few blue columbines but many white ones, some with a yellowish cast, others a tad pink.

Parry's primrose, a gorgeous wildflower that loves moist areas, appeared in rivulets from recently melted snow and on moist slopes above the lake.

Across the valley, we saw a single snowboard track down the center of this lingering snowpatch. It's not clear on the image below, but it was visible to the naked eye.

A jumble of enormous quartzite boulders are landmarks along the most dramatic section of the 2.7-mile-long Lakes Trail.

The rugged scenery and the fabulous flowers chased away our initial disappointment. As my husband commented, if we had succeeded in climbing Medicine Bow Peak, we probably would never return and do these lake hikes. Now, maybe, just maybe, we will come back one more time. 

Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, 2468 Jackson Street, Laramie, WY 82070; 307-745-2300.