Get ready for Geography Awareness Week!

A bunch of great resources for students, teachers and parents of geographers can be found on this website:

http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/gaw.html

This year the theme is "Fresh Water".

We tend to take this natural resource for granted since it is relatively cheap, plentiful and usually quite tasty.

How many people around the world can say that?

BLM free on Veterans Day

We don't know much about Bureau of Land Management properties here on the East Coast, so instead of announcing the free access to NPS lands, I thought I'd plug BLM lands.

I've been to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area west of Las Vegas. It has almost 200,000 acres of beautiful rocks and get this they are red!

check out this video of this BLM site.

Go out and hike this Veterans Day!

Forget Grading Stats Homework, The Tingler is on TCM

My all time favorite Halloween is on in 20 minutes on Turner Classic Movies. Here is the preview:

Directed by William Castle, watch it and be prepared for the color sequence.

There is an early use of LSD in the movie so it would be rated PG I suspect.

Travel to and From stage of Recreation Experience

I like to plan trips. The challenge of trying to find the best deal in time and money is something I like to do.

Now, to get the the island of Martinique for The Changing World of Coastal, Island and Tropical Tourism conference is a bit of a challenge.

Since I prefer to fly out of Hartford (BDL) there are few if any direct flights to the Caribbean or Central America, places I like to winter. But I can get to Miami (MIA) of San Juan (SJU) and from these airports I can get anywhere I want.

Can I use frequent flyer miles? I try to when I can, but sometimes you need to balance the flight time with the cost savings. Last time I looked I could use miles to get to Martinique but since it is high season, the return flight took two days. Spending the night in San Juan is not bad (I've done it before due to mechanical problems) but after the trip, I want to get home to Biscuit.

There are essentially three choices to get to Martinique. 1. Use American Airlines. 2. Use a combo of airlines to get to the islands. 3. Fly from Paris (ORD).

Forget the last choice; the last time their was no fun. For these second, I have found that many foreign based airlines are quite good but in this case the costs are quite high. So it is likely we will fly American, not use miles and relax.

Ah the travel to and from Stage of the Recreation Experience!

Halloween and horror movies

Every fall, I show one of my 16mm prints of a horror or sci fi film for Halloween. This year we are also collecting food for the local food pantry.

This title is a classic one with brain creatures (see the last 10 minutes).

I am sure that your local library or school will be sponsoring some safe Halloween event for young and old alike. Maybe even the Fiend without a Face!

Fright Tourism and Salem Mass

Salem, Massachusetts. Home of the infamous witch trials. Is it something the City wants, or is it something the City Leaders would like to put behind them. In either case, the commercial exploitation of fright tourism, under the umbrella of Dark Tourism seems to be something that will live on (like a zombie eh?).

The Tourism Futures website has posted our Fright Tourism paper for all you Ghouls out there at:

http://www.tourism-futures.org/content/view/1394/273/ or you can find the original at:

http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/newtown_square/publications/technical_reports/pdfs/2005/326papers/bristow326.pdf

enjoy this Halloween Season!

Mama Juana

Now, I believe the recreational use of drink or whatever is fine. But when I first heard about Mama Juana, my ears popped up. I said what?!

Well, it is basically herbs and bark soaked in Rum, so I guess any drink concoction with booze and vegetable matter could be a recreational drink. Does this picture look appealing? I don't know. For all I know they could be soaking poison ivy in the Rum.