Travel

Valerie Phillips photo
While traveling in South Dakota, Valerie Phillips dined on the Will Bonner Burger at Diamond Lil’s, a bar and grill owned by Kevin Costner in Deadwood. The menu items at the restaurant are named after characters in Costner’s movies; Will Bonner was a character from “Stacy’s Knights,” one of Costner’s first films.

Dig into local flavors when on the road

When you travel, do you eat at places that offer some local flavor? Or do you play it safe and stick to chain restaurants? Those of you who read last week’s column may recall that I recently visited South Dakota. While there, my husband and I tried to find places with some local charm.

CHENEY KWAK/The Washington Post
Diners soak up afternoon sun outside Piccino, one of the first restaurants to open in the Dogpatch area of San Francisco.

Dogpatch mangy no more; area around San Francisco's Pier 70 revitalized

Near Pier 70 on the eastern waterfront of San Francisco, stray dogs used to roam in search of discarded bits from the area’s meatpacking facilities. The canine scavengers were so numerous at the turn of the 20th century that the neighborhood became known as Dogpatch.

But today, the only pooch I see is a perfectly groomed golden Lab panting next to his owner, who’s biting into a beignet at a sidewalk cafe. And the only purveyor of meat around here is Olivier Cordier, a Frenchman whose gourmet butchery has found a cultlike following among foodies and restaurant owners.

ED LOUIS/FANAMBY/Conservation International via Bloomberg
An endangered lemur is shown in Madagascar in this undated photo.

Move it, move it with real lemurs in Madagascar

What’s this lemur doing in my lap?

Well, not exactly in my lap, but close enough for me to wonder about its next move.

ANDREA SACHS/Washington Post
In the late 1980s, after a period of neglect, developers resuscitated the Georgian Terrace Hotel in Atlanta with a 19-story wing and a 20-story glass atrium bridging the old and the new.

Glam quotient high at Atlanta hotel

The star power still twinkles at the Georgian Terrace Hotel, just at a different wattage.

The ginger-haired woman I swapped pleasantries with in the parking garage — she’s working on the sequel to the “Anchorman” movie, which is being filmed in Atlanta. And that man in baggy jeans and a parsley sprig of hair? He’s also with the movie crew. During five floors of elevator conversation, I was tempted to ask if Will Ferrell was staying here, too.

Museums offer free admission to active military

Two thousand museums across the country will offer free admission to active duty military personnel and their families, the National Endowment for the Arts announced last week. The NEA, in cooperation with the Department of Defense and Blue Star Families, a nonprofit for military families, is supporting the annual initiative, which provides free admission to participating museums from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The groups made the announcement in Washington at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Courtesy photo
A FlightCar employee helps a customer pick up a Mazda Miata.

Rental with a twist: Drive someone else’s car

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I rented a car for four days. But not just any car. Somebody else’s car. Somebody who was on a trip like me, except that while I was landing at SFO, this person was taking off — or more likely was already gone. I’d have the car back long before the person needed it, or so went the plan.

FlightCar, the California startup behind all this, aims to be the Airbnb of rental cars. It began when Kevin Petrovic, then 18, had a striking realization when he was returning from a trip: Long-term parking was full of cars sitting idle while their outbound owners traveled, and in the next lot over a fleet of rental cars sat idle waiting for inbound travelers to pick them up.

“We thought, ‘Couldn’t we make those two lots the same thing?’ ” said Petrovic, now 19, one of three teenagers behind FlightCar. He and the other two founders, Rujul Zaparde and Shri Ganeshram, put their college plans (MIT, Harvard and Princeton) on hold once they determined that the answer was yes.

Standard-Examiner file photo

Heavy travel expected on Memorial Day weekend

Indications are that there will be plenty of Utah folks leaving home for the great outdoors or to visit grandma this weekend.

“We’re expecting big crowds this weekend,” said Deena Layola, spokeswoman for Utah State Parks. “People are maybe staying a little bit closer to home, so they are visiting state parks this weekend.”

Layola said Wednesday that of the 32 state parks that offer camping, 29 were already booked.

Hop on the subway to discover L.A. creativity and humanity

This is a story about Underground Los Angeles. Not the underground music scene — the underground art scene. The subway art scene.

Yes, there is a subway in L.A. Even some Angelenos don’t know about it, and most have never used it. But a system of subways and light rail was started in the early 1990s, and it’s steadily expanding.

Depending on where you live, the subway’s an efficient way to get downtown, which has become more of a destination in recent years, what with the Music Center with its plays, concerts, ballets and operas; fine museums; a funky, lively boho arts district; the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Concert Hall; the relatively new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Plus the old attractions: Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Olvera Street’s cheesy but charming Mexican street fair, and such architectural gems as Union Station and the Bradbury Building, featured in “Blade Runner.”

Redesigned trailhead at Bright Angel Trail

GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. — The start of one of the Grand Canyon’s most iconic and popular trails has been redesigned and now includes an etched rock sign marking the Bright Angel trailhead.

The revamped area also includes a new paved parking lot around the Bright Angel cabins, new restrooms, a plaza for hikers to rest and buried electrical and phone lines.

A dedication is planned for Saturday, May 18.

ROBIN SOSLOW/Special to The Washington Post
The Las Cruces Farmers and Crafts Market in New Mexico is a good place to find chili pepper-related foods and decor, such as these ristra wreaths.

Hot, Hot, Hot! From activities to cuisine, Las Cruces welcomes

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Green chili strips, chili soup, chili lasagna, chili margaritas and chili-tinis pepper the menus. Chili ristras, chili wreaths, chili earrings, chili trail mix, chili brittle and chili chocolate spice up the markets. There’s even the Chile Pepper Institute, where I learn which pepper recently snatched the “world’s hottest” title from the 1,001,304 SHU (Scoville heat unit) Bhut Jolokia.

Cravings for something spicy are amply satisfied in Las Cruces.

Chili peppers, the fruits of plants from the genus Capsicum, were brought to this part of southern New Mexico in the late 1500s by Spanish colonial expeditions. In Spain, chilies had become a culinary hit after explorers carried them back from the Caribbean. It’s understandable, given their addictive qualities.

Interpretive center a salute to American Indians

ELKO, Nev. — The California Trail Interpretive Center in Elko is unveiling a series of large, colorful murals dedicated to the American Indians of the Great Basin.

The $60,000 exhibit, funded by the federal government, covers all 1,000 square feet of wall space inside the Great Basin Room at the visitor’s center along Interstate 80 in northeast Nevada.

“It’s quite an experience to come in,” said Gary Koy, manager of the trail center. “You’re totally surrounded by the murals.”

MARY ANN ANDERSON/The Washington Post
Okefenokee Swamp’s most famous inhabitant silently waits. Once an endangered species in the area, the alligator has made a comeback, now numbering about 20,000 to 22,000.

All atremble with wonder in the Okefenokee Swamp

It’s a chilly spring day, with lots of wind, so I was pretty startled when Okefenokee Adventures guide Joey Griffin commanded me to take off my shoes and climb out of his pontoon boat.

But you just don’t say no to a big, burly swamper. So here I am, standing on a soggy, boggy mound of peat rising out of the black water all around us.

“Now bounce up and down,” Griffin orders.

“Are you serious?” I ask.

“Jump!” he instructs, hiding a bemused smile.

Feeling a bit of trepidation, I start jumping straight up and down, like a Masai warrior. Then something weirdly wonderful happens: The ground quivers, jellylike, beneath my freezing bare feet.

“Whoa!” I laugh. “This is fun!”

“There you have it.” Griffin nods knowingly. “The trembling earth.”

KATE SIBER/The Washington Post
An ancestral Puebloan pictograph adorns a sandstone cliff in Slickhorn Canyon in southeastern Utah’s Cedar Mesa.

The secrets of southeastern Utah's Cedar Mesa

Well after nightfall on a recent Friday, I steered my sedan through a barren patch of desert in southeastern Utah. Outside the windows, juniper, pinon and sage jerked in the wind. No headlights lit the road except for my tenuous beams, a feeble match for the sea of darkness.

I’d just inched up a mess of nerve-fraying switchbacks on Highway 261, where I’d peered past an unguarded edge into a vertiginous gulf of night below. Now the frozen mud ruts of a county road scraped the bottom of my car, and quite honestly, I didn’t know precisely where I was. At that moment, I questioned the wisdom of my weekend mission: camping and finding ruins on Utah’s Cedar Mesa. It was 11 p.m., about 20 degrees and very windy — hardly ideal weather for camping.

Photo courtesy Embassy Suites
The suite living rooms at Embassy Suites are great for parents who cherish having a separate space away from their children.

Discover the sweetness of a true hotel suite

For the first decade and a half of my professional life, staying in an Embassy Suites meant nothing more than dreary travel for work: bland hotels scattered across cities that began to blend together, every cookie-cutter suite identical to the last, all racking up hotel points I hoped never to redeem.

Then I had a baby.

Suddenly, all my previous notions about staying in a hotel were upended. Gone was my passion for a plush Four Seasons room, no matter how small — as long as it had a deep tub and that decadent perfumed smell. Now I cared not about the ambience in the lobby bar. Nor the Yelp ratings of the spa. Nor the thread count of the sheets.

I sought just one thing: a suite. A real one. With a door that shut.

ANDREA SACHS/The Washington Post
The 16-mile touring road in Vicksburg National Military Park ribbons through Confederate and Union battle sites.

The South rises again

Which of the following destinations does not belong on AAA Southern Traveler magazine’s list of the top 13 travel spots for 2013: Christchurch, New Zealand; the Dominican Republic; Ireland; Mexico; Madagascar; Orlando; Panama; San Francisco; South Korea; Spain; Sri Lanka; Turkey; Vicksburg, Miss.; or Las Vegas?

You choose Vicksburg? You sure? Really sure? Because, well, you’re wrong.

Vicksburg is a full-fledged member of this class; Madagascar is not. The designation, though, was a surprise, even to some residents of the warm and welcoming Southern town about 45 miles west of Jackson.

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