Category: Nature
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McIlhenny Co.’s Tabasco® Factory
Iberia Parish, Louisiana, USA (March 2007) Tabasco peppers grow commercially in several places including Louisiana, Central America and South America, but the bottling of the famous Tabasco® Sauce traces to only one location: Avery Island, deep in the heart of Louisiana’s Cajun country (map) Making the Sauce This sign welcomes visitors to the McIlhenny Company’s…
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The Jungle Gardens of Avery Island
Iberia Parish, Louisiana, USA (March 2007) The Jungle Gardens cover more than 250 lushly landscaped acres on Louisiana’s Avery Island (map). It is part of the McIlhenny property where the world-famous Tabasco® Sauce originates, and is open to the public for a modest fee. The gardens arose from the visionary efforts of Edward Avery McIlhenny…
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Global Wildlife Center
West of Folsom, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana (April 2010) We’re always looking for fun things to do while visiting family in the New Orleans area. They’d been talking about how wonderful the Global Wildlife Center was, and how much fun the kids had on their visits there (map). We hadn’t visited it before so we stuffed…
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Effigy Mounds National Monument
Harpers Ferry, Iowa (June 2009) Few people seem to know much about Effigy Mounds National Monument except for those who happen to live along these magnificent stretches of the Upper Mississippi River (map). It is practically unrivaled for its amazing combination of natural beauty and historical importance, with its scenic vistas above the river and…
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Minnetonka Cave
Caribou-Targhee National Forest , Bear Lake, Idaho, USA (July 2011) We’d heard about Minnetonka Cave while we were visiting Bear Lake and decided to check it out. It’s set high within the Bear Lake Range in Cache National Forest (administered by the Montpelier Ranger District of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest) at an altitude of 7,700…
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Bird House Flight Cage
Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Washington, DC (2007) The Smithsonian’s National Zoo Bird House (map) hosts many avian species, either within the building, the large flight cage or in the attached outdoor exhibits. This is one of the quietest parts of the zoo, a bit off the beaten track, and visitors have to really make a…
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Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial
Washington, DC (2007 & 2009) Few things are nicer than a walk on Theodore Roosevelt island on a beautiful day. The Setting We visited Theodore Roosevelt Island, often referred to by its shorter name “Roosevelt Island” an 88 acre nature preserve set amid the Potomac River and the surrounding urban landscape (map). The National Park…
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San Diego Zoo and Safari Park
San Diego, California (2005) If you’ve been reading these travel pages you know our little guy loves animals. Naturally in San Diego we had to go to the famous San Diego Zoo and its affiliated Safari Park. The zoo was great (map), but the Safari Park had smaller crowds and more open space so that…
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La Jolla Coast
San Diego County, California (2005) Next we went to La Jolla with some of our family who live in the area that were kind enough to act as tour guides. We wandered down to the Ellen Browning Scripps Park along the Pacific shoreline (map). The southwestern corner led to the crescent shaped Children’s Pool, also…
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Kenai Fjords National Park
Near Seward, Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, USA (July 2010) We continued on our exploration of the Kenai Peninsula, leaving our base in Cooper Landing heading towards Seward (map). Here we’d booked a day-long sea excursion through one of several companies that operate moderately-sized boats that cruise through Resurrection Bay and Aialik Bay, two of the…