Alabama

Alabama Live

This is a comprehensive site with an amazing spin on history. We particularly enjoyed the page about Alabama's struggle for civil rights. Not surprisingly, there is a great deal of coverage of stock car racing and football, where people are referred to by first name, since we all know who they are. The site is a promotional site for Alabama, and it may be aimed more at the people who live there than at people who might wish to visit -- most of the coverage seems to be of local interest (the day of our visit, a prominent news story was teachers rallying to protest court- ordered training on how to handle religion in schools -- "It broke my heart to tell my students they couldn't pray in class for a dead classmate.") While there is not a great deal of material here that would help a tourist plan a trip to and in Alabama, you certainly will get an idea of what your visit will be like from the people perspective.

Alaska

The State of Alaska has declared 1996 through 2005 to be the years of centennial celebration of the Klondike Gold Rush, when over 100,000 persons set off into the vast wilderness to seek their fortunes, many finding their deaths on the Golden Stairs of Chilkoot Pass.

Alaska Nature Tours

This site offers summer and winter tours of Alaska. Although the tours may be taken by bus, guided hikes are also available, tailored to suit the guest. Cruise passengers may sign up for shore excursions on board or through the travel agent. Reservations may be made online for hikes, but reservations for cruise excursions must be made through the ship or travel agent. Prices are given where applicable, and so are the telephone number and address if you do not care to reserve your tour online.

Alaska Charters

This is, overall, an attractive site, but the use of MS FrontPage to generate the markup has lead to some interesting layout ("a better understanding of the world we sha</strong>re.&nbsp;," for example). The site is attractive, but all the non- breaking spaces FrontPage puts in makes the appearance a little strange if you do not have your window set to the same dimensions as the author. Each page has navigation links to all other pages, so it was very easy to jump from photos of the vessel to the schedule of cruises and prices, to the page with general information on the company. We could not find a way to make reservations online, seeing only toll- free and local telephone numbers; there is also a mailing address. The site says you get a full information package after you make your reservations, a somewhat unfriendly way for you to find out more about the cruise you have paid a deposit for.

Alaska Yacht Charters

This site offers a motor yacht for your charter to explore the waterways of the Alaskan coast. There are maps, a description of the vessel with layouts, and tons of photographs. The site offers sample menus and itineraries, but we were unable to locate pricing information. In addition to the boating, the site offers day hikes, float plane and helicopter excursions, flyfishing, and more.

The Alaskan Center

This is an attractive site that is an excellent place to begin your safe and comfortable virtual tour of Alaska. There are links to culture, history, a calendar of events, explanations of how to plan a trip to this huge expanse of a state, accommodations -- this site is packed with helpful information.

Alaska Discovery

This is a GORP site for wilderness adventures in Alaska. Several tours are listed with itineraries, prices, brief descriptions, and photographs. The trips appear to be for all ages, so while you must be active, you do not seem to be in trouble if you are not a 20 year old athlete.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory

This site contains links to satellite imagery of volcano eruptions as well as links to "Highlights of eruptions over the last 6 years." But the bulk of the site is devoted to volcanism in Alaska, especially the Aleutian Islands. As you will discover, there has been a lot of activity there in the last one and a half million years.

Alaska Adventure Vacations

This is an excellent jump site for further information from specific outfitters. The home page is brief and well- organized, with a link to further information for each of the businesses. Activities range from backpacking, through fishing, to summer activities and winter activities. Some of the businesses have further links and email, and some give addresses, phones, and fax numbers. You can pick activities ranging from sightseeing bus tours to extreme skiing, and everything in between.

Information About Alaska

An educational page with everything you ever wanted to know about Seward's Folly.

Rudy's Alaska Fishing and Snowmobiling Page

This is a noncommercial page with lots of photos for fishing and snowmobiling in south central Alaska. Some of those fish are huge!

Bell's Alaska Travel Guide

Labelled "A complete guide to The Alaska Highway and byways," and we believe it, with the emphasis on complete. This site is an advertisement for Bell's Alaska Travel Guide, a book of some 432 pages. The Web site contains an extremely detailed description of every sign, marker, intersection, and location along the Alaska Highway, with another listing describing in considerable detail the towns along the road.

Alberta

Discover Alberta

The official site for travel planning. The site has maps, links to transportation (and rentals), weddings, attractions and activities, and accommodations, among a plethora of other information. Selecting a city to visit brings a searchable database for lodging and eating, camping, and more. Unfortunately, the entire site is set up like that: click on a link on the home page, get a searchable database for lots of vendors. We could not find an overview of Alberta, so we advise this site for people who already know why they want to go there.

Alberta.com

This is a portal to all things Alberta, and it is rather scattered and disorganized. Sports, news, services, shopping, cinema show times, and such are spread around upon the page.

Alberta, Canada

Another portal, but somewhat more organized by using a table at the top of the page: General, Agricultural (Alberta Wheat Pool, 20/20 Seed Labs Ltd), Classifieds, Clubs, Education, News & Weather, People, Travel & Tourism, to name a few. The links are to other sites with information on the chosen topics.

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

This is a nice page by the Calgary UNIX Users' Group. The history is well- written and not at all dry; very personable. A list of things to see and do, with links to additional information, and links to additional information round out the page, making it a nice jumping off point for further research on your visit during the stampede.

Alberta Provincial Hotel Directory

This is a large listing of hotel accommodations in Alberta. Pick your town and see what they have available. Thorhild showed one hotel, with street address and telephone number. Most listing are by name, address, and telephone number and nothing else, but some places have a URL with additional information.

Wild Rose Stallion Station

A full service facility in central Alberta, these people can handle your mare onsite or send cooled semen anywhere in Canada and the United States.

Canadian Rockies Net

The opening page takes a long time to download and render (it is a table with images in the cells), and it has a large gap at the bottom where the authors think they have hidden key words which will make the site turn up on your Web search. The site is somewhat puzzling in its apparently random color schemes and layouts, showing little or no thought on consistent user interface, but it is awash in information. Lots of links to companies that will guide you on hikes and tours of the Canadian Rockies, information on child care and family services, accommodations, weddings, and expeditions.

See Alberta

This is a pleasant site on the province of Alberta. There are photographs taken of various places in the province, maps, a calendar of events, and information on golfing, camping, and accommodations. On our visit, the calendar was up- to- date, with events for the year in place, and the directories for the other sections of the site were quick to download and easy to navigate. Curiously, we could find no general information on the province. If you have been to Alberta, this will be a good site to find new places to explore, but if you have not been there, you will be lost at this Web site.

Kootenay National Park

A very nicely organized site with information on the park, its services, sightseeing, camping, current weather, fees, and more. Much of this site is text, but there are maps and photographs where appropriate, making for quick downloads.

Banff Center for the Arts

The Banff Centre for the Arts is in a stunningly beautiful location. The Centre offers writing, publishing, theatre, visual arts, music, and a festival.

Banff National Park (in English)

Banff National Park (en français)

Lovely pictures of Banff, Lake Louise, and a grizzly couple. This park is a wonderful vacation spot, and the page does it justice.

Arizona

Jerome, Arizona

"The mile high town with fifty mile views." Jerome is an interesting town to visit, and we recommend the town. This Web site provides information on the history, current lodging and things to do, and the surrounding area.

Jerome Chamber of Commerce

The official site of the Jerome Chamber of Commerce. On the day of our visit, the calendar of events from July 2002 through January 2003 was completely barren. The site offers a few nice photos, the history of the town, links to food and lodging, and more. The town is a fascinating glimpse into mining life in the 19th Century, and we recommend a visit.

The Ultimate Arizona Vacation Guide

Almost a complete disaster, by the Arizona Tourist Bureau. The opening page is a frame with blinking text on the left and scrolling text on the right, all ads. Car rentals, online hotel reservations, and conventions. We saw a listing for Bullhead City, one of our favorite towns we have never been to, so we followed that link. The resulting page had nothing on it about the city; just links to car rentals, hotel reservations, and so on. We decided to take the photo tour of Arizona. The page says Java is required, then used JavaScript to open a new window with completely backwards navigation:
Next picture || Previous Picture || Close Window
After closing the window looking for the next picture, we got the hang of it and quit. The links for activities are to commercial vendors who will supply you with an activity; fees are given. (The tour of the ASARCO open pit mine looked interesting.) Overall, we found nothing about Arizona on the site.

Titan Missile Museum

A disappointingly sparse page about the museum located south of Tucson. The page gives a brief overview of the tour, days and hours of operations, and directions from Tucson. The site does contain links to other pages, one of which has images of the tour, apparently grabbed from a video tape.

Megaton Fun

This site is poorly marked up, having set a background color, but not text and link colors, so some of the page may seem to be missing. In this page, a visitor to the Titan II museum just outside Tucson tries to come to grips with a nuclear age which has past. Too late, my friend. The page is interesting for the reaction of the author to what was a daily job for thousands of Air Force people for decades, but his "factual" statements are sometimes wrong, and prices for the tour have gone up since this page was written.

The Ultimate Arizona Vacation Guide

Produced by the Arizona Tourist Bureau, the opening page is too busy and too active for comfort, but it contains a ton of links to tons of information on Arizona, including maps, photos, car rentals, lodging, and what seems to be every town in the state. The site provides you with little information on Arizona, but you get a large assortment of links to companies that are anxious to sell you what you want -- tours by jeep, horseback, or raft; lodging, camping, or RV parking; meals; car, RV, or four- wheel- drive rental, and so on. This is not a site to use to determine whether you want to see Arizona. Visit this site if you have already decided to go, and you want to plan all your time with things to do, places to go, and sites to see.

California

California TOC:
| San Francisco Bay Area | San Jose/Silicon Valley | Wine Country | Other California Locations |

We have reviews of several guide books for San Francisco that we have found to be very helpful.

San Francisco Bay Area

Real-time traffic congestion

This site provides a map of congested traffic around the San Francisco Bay.

Paul's Bay Area Weather

A site for weather links for the San Francisco Bay Area. This is a very complete compendium of weather information for the area.

an idiosyncratic guide for the goth-geek-freak-hipster-nerd

This is a would-be cynical view of San Francisco which is chock full of useful information for everyone. You may find the assumed world-weary tone a little off-putting, but it works. This is a lengthy list of directions, reviews, and commentary on the City by the Bay, taking into account where to spend the night without a hotel, how to get to Oakland without a car, driving, parking, how to find out what is going on, the neighborhoods, how to get around on public transit, and much, much more. Recommended.

511 TakeTransit

Very helpful site for using public transportation in the Bay Area. It provides schedules, route maps, fares, services for special needs, PDA- accessible information, and you can plan your trip from place to place, including transfers.

Live Flight Track Data

This page has a link to a Java applet showing little green, red, white, and black planes on a map of the Bay Area. It tracks arrivals and departures from SFO, OAK, and SJX, with a delay of ten minutes. Read the explanation of the colors and icons before you click on the radar screen so you know what you are looking at.

San Francisco Music, Dining, Arts, Movies ...

A Web site devoted entirely to things to do (mostly) in San Francisco (it does offer some reviews in other areas of the Bay). Reviews of restaurants, links to shopping guides, current movies, music, arts, local citizens, hotels, transportation, and much more.

San Francisco CyberCafes

Our list of cybercafes in San Francisco.

San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau

This is the official Web site of the city. We found the site to be very helpful, a surprise given our penchant for finding bureaucratic sites to be dry and promoting the interests of the bureaucrats rather than providing helpful information to would- be tourists. There are maps, events, a hotel reservations system, visitors guides by mail, photographs, and other information, including statistics for convention planners and photographs which travel professionals can download and use in print for promoting travel to San Francisco. Several of the pages failed to render correctly on our browser, a problem with our window size and the attempt to put images along side text. There are an index, a site map, and a searchable database available if you do not want just to browse.

The Mexican Bus

The Mexican Bus provides tours of Latin and Caribbean night clubs, murals in the Mission District, and wine tours in Sonoma Valley. The bus is also available for private charter. The site is new, and more is promised.

Green Tortoise

This is a bus company based in San Francisco. How to describe it? The motor coaches convert to sleepers; you chip in for food, and it is cooked by the passengers and driver; "the bunks which hang from the ceiling [of the bus] are always available for a nap"; trips to Burning Man, Alaska, Yosemite National Park, Baja, Costa Rica, and Mardi Gras in New Orleans are among the itineraries.

Laughing Squid

Links to underground culture and art in San Francisco, with a substantial amount of information on performance art, including the Cacaphony Society and the Billboard Liberation Front.

San Francisco

The Civilized Explorer has put together a page of links and excursions for the traveler with a few hours' layover at the airport. We include nice walks and nice restaurants for a break from long hours strapped in your seat.

z San Francisco

Dubbing itself an eclectic guide to an eclectic city, this is a local guide San Francisco with its local finger on the city's pulse, from government to gay, from food to computers, from health to email lists. It's depth of information makes this site a must for your first visit. Recommended.

Live Video and Weather -- San Francisco

Live video feed changes about every minute, with local time and weather conditions; a forecast and radar and satellite images are available.

Shaping San Francisco

This Web site is part of a larger work with includes a CD- ROM and a book. The effort is an interesting attempt to tell the history of a city from the point of view of the ordinary people who lived there while that history was being made. The result is rather more hit- and- miss than a regular text, with volunteers filling in information which is of interest to them. So we have pages about feral parrots in San Francisco, the history of labor unions, beatniks and bohemians, and the like, with no real unifying theme. The site is searchable, so it may not matter that there is no unification of the parts, and the site's lack of linearity works much better in the hypertext world of the Web than one would expect of a book. People leave messages about the stories, adding their own versions of the history of San Francisco, making this site an endless saga.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

This is an attractive site covering the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor, claiming to have an image base of 70,000. The Legion of Honor has been reopened after refurbishment of earthquake damage, and the de Young has external bracing to shore up its walls. This site has a history of the discussion of what to do about the de Young, including a page devoted to letting the viewers demolish the building and rebuild it (Shockwave required). The site does a very good job of promoting the exhibitions; the pages are very attractive and include well- scanned images, often using mini- windows to display them, with the ability to zoom in on details.

Emperor Norton

Emperor Norton was a San Francisco loony from the Nineteenth Century. He decreed himself Emperor of the U.S. on 17 September 1859 and from time to time issued proclamations (which were printed in the local papers) and his own currency (when US specie was in short supply around his household). At his death in 1880, his funeral cortege was reported to be two miles long. This site contains information about the man and the wonderful times in which such a person could not only be tolerated but be venerated. This site is part of the Norton Webring with links to other San Francisco city web sites.

CitySearch San Francisco

An arts and entertainment index to the city of San Francisco, with information about theatre, motion pictures, readings, galleries, night life, dance, music, museums, and much more. This site has excellent content, with well- written reviews and considerable depth. Recommended.

San Francisco International Airport

There is considerable construction going on at the terminals, and this site brings you the master plan, along with maps of the area (with gas stations), local ground transportation, airlines serving SFO, and how to get a job there.

Golden Gate Railroad Museum

This is the virtual space of a real museum in San Francisco dedicated to steam and passenger railroad equipment. Since the real museum is available by appointment only and on weekends only, this Web site may be just the ticket for you. There are lots of photos of the capture and restoration of old locomotives (these behemoths have to be trucked into the museum since they are not in working order when found), lots of links to other sites, photographs of two diesels used in the museum's yard, and more. You can even rent a steam locomotive for only US$300 per hour (diesels are also available, and they are cheaper). Order videos, audio tapes of a ride on steam Engine 2472, hats, whistles, shirts, and even more. This site is not for railroad buffs only, and it is an outstanding example of a saying: The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys. (And hiring a lawyer to make your toys tax exempt.)

Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District

Despite the name, this is actually an interesting site by a government entity. And what other bridge do you know of with a page listing its special events? An interesting FAQ, history, list of links, and pages of photographs round out the site.

San Francisco Chamber of Commerce

This is a helpful site, not only for tourists, but for businesses. There are links to information on doing business in and with the city of San Francisco, a monthly calendar of meetings and events, programs, local ballot issues (this is written as elections approach), business and commercial space in the city, and information on the port and airport for those in the export/ import business. You will also find a list of annual events that you can plan for on your trip to San Francisco. Recommended.

Pier 39

For the residents of America's northeast, picture the Atlantic City boardwalk: high- price T- shirts and sweats, post- cards, greasy fried food, and souvenirs. You will feel right at home on Pier 39. This site has a list of every shop, restaurant, store, street vendor, amusement arcade, and sea lion on, in, under, and around San Francisco's Number One tourist attraction.

Digital Lantern on San Francisco

A restaurant guide to San Francisco, claiming to "locate and review every San Francisco restaurant -- 3274." The site is searchable by quality, name, cuisine, and newness. So we searched for La Liberté by name and turned up -- Nothing! This is not a hole- in- the- wall dive -- it's a nice restaurant. Hmmm... . Digital Lantern describes San Francisco as "most romantic," "culturally unique," "most European," "city with a heart," and then says Digital Lantern has geocoded restaurant data -- Breaks the spell, doesn't it? If one searches by cuisine for an Italian restaurant, one finds 18 different kinds of Italian cooking -- Abundanza! If you want the best, there are listings for best afternoon tea, best dim sum, best for fun, best Korean, best tapas, best Vietnamese, and on and on. The reviews give days and hours, prices, credit cards, average prices, and handicap accessibility is mentioned only if present. The reviews are brief and snappy -- perhaps too brief to give a great deal of help on some restaurants. If you see a long review and actual descriptions of the food, it must have been good.

WebCastro

This site is devoted to the businesses, culture, and people of the Castro district of San Francisco. Castro is sometimes called the "gay mecca of the world." (Well, of San Francisco, anyway.) This site celebrates the community with a rich and diverse history. In addition to local Castro resources, the authors provide links to gay and lesbian web sites world wide, a calendar marking the passing of celebrities who died during the month (Hurry and check the Marilyn Monroe listing; she died on 5 August, and they have a sound bite of her saying, "You can come in now, daddy darling"), and a recollection of living in the Castro during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. This fascinating history should not be missed.

Alcatraz

This site looks boring, but it has lots of information, almost all text. You learn the history of the island, about the prisoners incarcerated there, and about the occupation of the prison by Native Americans. There is also discussion of plant and animal life on the island other than the humans. Useful information is given about reservations, ferries, hours of operation, prices, and so forth.

Oakland California's Official City Web Site

Lots of information on the city government: budget, crime watch, city jobs, maps, festivals, and more. There are also links to art, sports, recreation, business, community, and more. The site is surprisingly helpful; the arts page, for example, tells how to get city grants, in addition to promoting existing facilities and programs. The community page offers assistance on city- sponsored programs for home ownership. While not aimed at tourism, this is a very good site to learn about Oakland.

OaklandCA.com

This is the "everything is wonderful in Oakland" Web site. There is information on events, things to do, shopping, music and theatre, night life, and a visitors map. The site is searchable. Unfortunately, links to topics may take you to a page with only names (in red) with addresses and telephone numbers; no links. Other times you get names (in red) with addresses and telephone numbers; and the red names are links. Oh, well.

Oakland Museum of California

This museum is "devoted to the Art, History, and Natural Sciences of California." The site lists permanent and current exhibits, gives directions on how to get there (accessible by public transportation), and has virtual exhibitions geared toward people visiting via the Web.

Oakland Zoo Entrance

All links are live on this site, even the links to the page you are on. The site is extensive, with an alphabetical list if the animals (some pages have video), an overview of the zoo, a list of special events, and special pages for teachers and students. The pages about animals give the order, family, genus, and species for each animal, sometimes with photos, sometimes not, along with information on the animal's habitat, diet, life and social structure, and specifics about the animals held by the zoo. Sometimes the backgrounds of the pages make it difficult to read the text.

Oakland International Airport

Flight schedules, cities served, cargo, ground transportation, airlines, airport concessions, maps of the terminals, and more.

top

Well, it should be called "Oakland Unified School District," but what can one expect from a page generated by FrontPage? At schools nowadays, the "Latest Virus Alert" is for your computer, not your child. The site also provides links to all the schools in the OUSD (lots of good information on each one, by the way), a page for the board to communicate with the residents, wish lists for the teachers, and (on the date of our visit) coverage of the strike.

The Oakland Tribune Default Frameset

We just love these imaginative names for Web sites. This is the online home of the Oakland Tribune, the daily paper for the city.

OaklandNews

News from an alternative newsweekly. Local news, poetry, letters to the editor, and columns.

Oakland Post

The city's independent newspaper focusing on persons of color, young people, and nontraditional life.

Port of Oakland

Everybody has a Web site now. The Port of Oakland promotes itself with lots of statistics (29 deepwater berths, 12 Post-Panamax container cranes, a guide to waterside access at the port, projects, employment, and more!

Welcome to Jack London Square

Dining, lodging, attractions at the portside square named after famed resident, Jack London (with a seriously dumb animated GIF of the writer writing.)

Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative

Everybody has a Web site now. Marijuana is legal in California under limited circumstances, and Oakland residents may obtain information from this site. No mail orders accepted.

BayInsider

A Web site promoting the San Francisco Bay Area, with news, entertainment, sports, and recreation information. Includes local weather reports, chat, Web boards, and columns ("Need a hand with Sex?" on the day of our visit).

The City of Alameda

Includes a Java-based photo tour, demographics (average household income, population, growth -- all the vital information you really need), and several pages devoted to available buildings and lots in the city. Also links to the people in charge of the marina, the chamber of commerce, various business associations -- very helpful.

Mountain Biking in the San Francisco Bay Area

Browse through detailed descriptions of Ross Finlayson's favorite routes in the Bay Area and elsewhere in Northern California. Some links are sill under construction, unfortunately. Ross has also rated each trail on 3 scales: overall enjoyment, technical sill needed, and effort required. Hint: Click to go to Ross's Mountain Biking home page for a great overview of mountain biking resources on the web.

Just Go Bay Area

The site is a helpful compendium of news and reviews, with links to movies, restaurants, and events in the Bay Area. This is a useful site for people who are planning a trip and want things to do at night other than tourist stuff.

San Jose/Silicon Valley

San Mateo Restaurants

Reviews of restaurants in San Mateo, CA, with Google maps showing their location.

Soft Underbelly of San Jose

This site attempts the tone of a hard- boiled detective, and sometimes it succeeds. The author has done some out of the way exploration of San Jose (trying to find the city library seems to be an undertaking), looking at the scrap yard, Quetzalcoatl, and a couple of buildings- soon- to- be- parking lots. The pages are short, with good photographs, but you have to keep moving on to subsequent pages to get the full story. And the "Back" link only takes you back to the previous page; the full navigation menu is at the top of the page, where you cannot see it. This site will not be on a link from the city's Chamber of Commerce or Visitor's Bureau. Take a look for locations you will not find on official Web sites.

Downtown San Jose

Services and businesses are in a searchable database, and there are links to restaurants, museums and galleries, performing arts, sports, nightlife, and shops. There is also a current calendar of events. Sponsored by the San Jose Downtown Association, this site provides helpful information on public transportation and accommodations. There is a significant amount of information here for visitors.

San Jose International Airport

Navigation is a bit frustrating on this site. There seem to be some extra pages that serve no purpose other than to provide a link to another page. There is not much information for travelers readily apparent. But if you want to know the number of runways and the parking fees, this site is for you!

Silicon Valley Web Directory

Very helpful, attractive, and has a ton of links -- Everything from Attractions, to Computer Industry, through History, Parks, Politics, and Recreation, to Who is Who in Silicon Valley. Just ignore the heavy advertising...

Wine Country

SteveO's California Wine Touring Guides

This breezy site has one of the most extensive lists of wineries in California's wine country that we have seen. Some listings are just that -- listings of phone numbers and addresses (which is helpful), and some pages are brief descriptions of the regions.

NapaNet - Napa Valley

This interesting site covers the Napa Valley, an area known for its excellent wines. NapaNet covers more than just the vinyards, however. In addition to the winery coverage, this site provides its readers with information on business and government in the valley, as well as on schools, museums, arts, and music, taxes, religious services, housing, and considerably more. In addition to the regular tourist information, we think this site would be most helpful for people living or contemplating living in Napa Valley.

WineCountryOnline

This page is authored by a married couple. Check with Vino for suggestions and recommendations for a trip to California's Wine Country. Tell him your budget, interests, and dates of travel and you will receive a response via return email. Vino is apparently very busy; he claims it now takes several weeks to respond. General information is also provided.

Napa Valley Virtual Visit

A wealth of information. Check out specific wineries, buy stuff on-line, get directions. A good resource for planning a trip.

We have a review of The Complete Guide Tahoe, a book we have found to be very helpful.

Other California Locations

Eureka Vally Thanksgiving 1999

Eureka Valley Thanksgiving 2004

Photos and descriptions of campiing in Eureka Valley, just north of Death Valley.

Live Shot of Yosemite Valley

A live Webcam updated every three minutes during daylight hours (Pacific Time), this page shows a live image of Halfdome and a static photograph of Tuolomne Meadows taken in June 2000. Follow the links on this page to explore all of this fascinating National Park.

Terra Cotta Inn

The Terra Cotta Inn is a luxury clothing optional resort in Palm Springs. Their Web site provides a great deal of information about the resort, with photographs of the rooms, pool, and other areas. Rates are given, and reservations may be made by phone, fax, or email.

Carson City

The opening page is a useless splash page saying welcome, enter here. Skip it and go here instead. This site is really about the city. It has the local budget, Y2K Compliance issues, bids for city contracts, and the like. But it also has links to more tourism- oriented features such as the Goodyear Blimp, shopping, parks, events, dining, and other things to do. Unfortunately, someone went wild with fonts, and the site suffers from the "ransom note" syndrome, looking like it was pasted together from different newspapers and magazines. We missed the page with statistics like size of population, but the dining page mentions the Ikea restaurant, Dennys, and IHOP, among others. On the day of our visit, Special Events included Second Chance Week in the Community Center Parking Lot -- donate your reusable items with proceeds going to the sheriff's Family Assistance Program. The date was October 7, but no year is given on this event or any other listed. With our visit to the site being in June, we do not know if we are planning ahead or we missed it. It is a homey site for what appears to be a homey place to live or visit.

Mercey Hot Springs

Located about a hundred miles south of San Jose, Mercey Hot Springs offers soothing soaks in hot mineral water at reasonable rates. The site is under construction -- no, not the Web site, the resort site -- so rates are reasonable.

Daytripping - An Ongoing Budget Travelogue

An ongoing budget travelogue. The author goes on trips and then writes about them. Links include maps of the area and books about it. A really useful page contains a link to get travel reports on most of the major roads in California.

Guide 105

This is a commercial site, and it has a very extensive listing of places in California. The descriptions are brief enough to be useless, but if a city is listed, there will be links to hotels, motels, restaurants, museums, radio and television stations, local Internet guides, entertainment, and whatever else there is to do. The site is useful for the extent of its listings.

Elk

Elk? "It still is Greenwood, you know. Only our Post Office had its name changed to 'Elk.'" A little town on the northern coast of California claiming a population of 250, but only 93 can be accounted for. Be sure you follow the links to the Bed and Breakfast establishments -- they look good. An interesting page about a small town on the coast.

Hollywood on Location

This is a searchable database of movies filmed on location somewhere in California. You can search by region, actor, movie, or keyword and find out that Errol Flynn's version of Robin Hood was filmed in the Shasta region of northern California. You can get an 8.5 x 11 inch map of the region where the film was made, including highways, towns, rivers, and other points of interest. The information on the Web site is not all that interesting, but if you have an all- time favorite movie and you are going to be in the area where it was filmed, you may find this Web site helpful.

San Diego International Airport

Also known as Lindbergh Field, the Web site is a tasteful purple with heavy use of tables with borders. The site provides information on airlines serving Lindbergh Field, ground transportation and parking, and such helpful tips as get there two hours early, get your ticket somewhere else, and please be patient. The "Other Links" table has the text inexplicably changed in midword to the same color as the background, rendering it invisible. This gives the other links a sporting chance to avoid being clicked on. On some pages, the text is black and the links are blue. On other pages, the text is blue and the links are purple. On one page, some text is purple, some text is black, and there are no links. The site claims to have been done by a department of the Port of San Diego; we believe it.

The San Diego Trolley (Unofficial)

This site contains considerable helpful information on the San Diego trolley, including schedules, intersystem transfers, telephone numbers, and system maps. Very helpful for planning your use of public transportation while in the city.

McClellan Palomar Airport (Unofficial)

Tons of information for the business traveller at this northern San Diego County airport, including schedules, links to public transportation, and service by the major common carriers. Local attractions are listed as well, for those US$100 hamburger flights -- San Diego is a very nice destination.

@LA

(AKA at LA) This site covers Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. It is relentlessly LA -- it offers tons of links to tons of topics, it is searchable, and it has relentlessly flashing ads, including one offering you ad- space for "<$10/month." The site has a map of itself, and it is searchable by keyword in addition to drilling down by clicking on links. We did find, however, that some of the links were "coming soon." Links are to Web pages off-site. We found no original content on this site; however, for those planning a trip to LA, this is an excellent site to locate whatever interests visitors may have.

CoolSpots

The opening page is more reminiscent of some group shot of flying saucers over the coast in the early morning than anything about California, but the site has some interesting information about California. The site covers the usual tourist spots, but its real use is the "funky" spots with photographs by volunteer contributors. You can virtually visit Lito's Hubcap Ranch (designated, by the way, by the state of California as "one of California's exceptional Twentieth Century folk art environments" -- where else but California?), along with the more mundane state parks, monuments, and city sights. For a taste of the more bizarre California, recommended.

Hearst Monument Foundation

Well, they have trademarked Hearst Castle^TM, along with a couple of other phrases one would have thought generic. The site shows flags from Germany, Japan, and Mexico, but they are not links, and we could find no pages in those languages. The actual castle is a remarkable monument to a remarkable man profiled as Citizen Kane, and the Web site is remarkably poor. Information is always at least two levels away from the home page and usually of no interest. The history of WRH is labelled a biographical abstract, and it is about as dry as the name indicates. Stunningly boring site.

Tahoe Country Home Page

A comprehensive guide to businesses, activities, hotels, weather - most anything you'd like to know before visiting. This is a commercial site that produces it's own descriptions rather than providing links to other sites. Be sure to read the description of fly fishing in Pyramid Lake if you've ever wondered how to use a step ladder to catch trout!

Redwood Exposure

An interesting combination of vacations -- If your travel companion and you can't agree on where to go, check this out. Located in northern California, Redwood Exposure provides tours of old-growth redwood forests. If you wish, take a tour of the forest conducted by "university- degreed" natural scientists; or they'll take you around the tide pools, national parks, or bird sanctuaries. On the other hand, arrange tours conducted by "professional Outdoor Photographers." And on the third hand, just hang out at the B&B, wander romantically in the redwood groves or the shore, eat a "gourmet breakfast" and "savor exquisite cuisine" at local restaurants. They have several packages from one day to seven and provide a sample itinerary.

Monterey Peninsula

Weather and guides to cities and events on the Monterey Peninsula, California. Includes Pebble Beach, Carmel-By-The-Sea, Monterey, Big Sur, and others.

Colorado

Crested Butte

This Colorado town has a very nice opening picture and a well- organized page providing information about the town. There are links to shops (definite slant to outdoor gear), dining (with a map of all restaurants in Acrobat format -- very handy), real estate, community calendar, and so forth. Crested Butte comes across as a small town with a lot of marketing savvy.

Delaware

Delaware and Ocean City Maryland Beaches

A fairly complete listing of the towns and beaches in Delaware and the facilities in Ocean City, Maryland, with links to dining, lodging, shopping, the towns, and real estate. The opening page is lengthy but mostly text for a quick download, but there are lots of pictures. There is additional information on beachcombing, birding, hurricanes, storm damage, surfing, sharks, and much more. This site is aimed at tourists and so gives only the best of impressions of each place. You will find tons of information on tourist things to see and do. If you want a vacation on the Delaware shore, this is a great place to start your search for information.

District of Columbia

Washington Post: Destination Scandal!

An interesting site that pulls no punches. This page lists addresses where the District's more notorious goings on went on: Watergate, of course, the Tidal Basin where Wilbur Mills introduced the Argentine Firecracker to society, Chevy Chase elementary school, and more. The addresses are given for your own drive by excursion, and there are links to the Post's articles on the events. Not your regular tour of Washington, DC. Recommended.

Florida

See Florida

This is a mildly irritating site. The opening page is a graphic that is too big, takes to long to download, is animated, and adds nothing that text could not have done quicker. The site is easy to navigate, with multiple methods of choosing where to visit. This site covers the entire state, with accommodations, restaurants, activities, local weather, and transportation. Once we got beyond the slow downloads, we found much of interest.

Pompano Beach Chamber of Commerce

The Chamber of Commerce home page for the City of Pompano Beach, Florida, USA. This site contains a few nice generic sunset photos and lists of names and addresses for hotels, motels, restaurants, and entertainment. The page with the history of the city contains a photo of a lighthouse and three sentences; however, all the city commissioners and city officials got their names listed. There is nothing about the city of Pompano Beach on this site.

The Pennekamp Page

Specific information on Key Largo and the Pennekamp Park, snorkeling, diving, fishing, and other attractions. The Pennekamp Park is an underwater state park adjacent to the Key Largo National Marine Sanctuary. Lots of information on things to do, places to eat, and where to stay. An attractive site with nice photographs.

Virtually South Beach, Miami

South Beach, in Miami, Florida, wants to be your trendy winter vacation spot. Sponsored by the South Beach Marketing Council and the Miami Beach Development Corporation, this site is relentlessly upbeat, relentlessly trendy, and relentlessly pastel art deco. Information on hotels, restaurants, trendy beaches (where models hang out topless, they say), trendy shopping, trendy people. They claim this site "brings you the true essence of South Beach, with cartoons designed specially for the internet ... ." When searching for that true essence in hotels and restaurants, we found "To find an individual business listing, press {Control F}" -- Funny, on our Mac, nothing happened. Guess we just have the false essence. Oh, well.

Florida's Space Coast

You can have it both ways! Home of the Kennedy Space Center and calling the area the Space Coast, this site wants you to know that it "offers much more." In addition to links to Space Age Attractions, Getting to the Florida Space Coast, and Map of Florida's Space Coast, there are also links to such nonspace- related items as sun, sand, water, and shopping. But it seems every page has a space connection built in. The message is don't go just for the launches, but if you do, spend a little more time (and money) while you're there.

Morikami Museum and Japanese Grounds

Morikami Park is in Delray Beach, Florida, USA. It claims to be the only museum in the USA dedicated exclusively to the living culture of Japan. The page has a lovely vanity plate and a map of the floorplan of the galleries, and a map of Delray so you won't get lost, and a very nice closing graphic at the bottom of the page. They have two links which show something about the museum: 2 photos of the front and back of the building (quite lovely) that are on one page of over 200k and photos of folk art exhibits on one page of over 360k. I started out thinking that it's a shame the page is virtually all text and no photos of the gardens, but then I ended up wishing their photos were smaller and more manageable. I'm sure it's a lovely place to visit; their page doesn't do it justice.

Discover: The Keys

This Web site promotes tourism in the Florida Keys. The site is well- organized and attractive. It provides a wealth of information while remaining easy to navigate through many pages. It appears to cover all the keys, not just the ones that get all the press. Nice photos, nice graphics, and quick. Each key has links for events, accommodations, activities, and attractions, plus more.

Key West Paradise

Another paean to Key West with tons of links and a great sense of humor -- visit the Chapel By The Sea for your wedding, then stroll over to the Key West Cemetery (the inscriptions are must read items), shop, find accommodations, bars and restaurants, theatres, events and festivals, and the obligatory link for Parrot Heads (you know who you are). The site is lots of fun.

Georgia

Atlanta Garden Connection

The introductory page is lengthy text with an image as its link to Features and Articles; the image appeared to us as a text separator, so we spent a minute trying to figure out how to get to the meat of this site. There is a nice bouquet of information on the Atlanta Botanical Garden, birding, articles on gardening, book reviews, current events of 15 gardening organizations, and more. If you are going to Atlanta, drop by this page to find a cooling garden to visit while you are there.

Hawaii

Akiko's Buddhist Bed & Breakfast

This B&B is located on the Big Island and offers simple sleeping quarters and opportunities for quiet pleasures. For those who wish, programs are available for group and individual retreats that can include gardening, maintenance work, and community service (in a village of 12). Prices are quoted per day, per week, and per month.

Mauna Kea Summit Adventures

Surprising and attractive opening page -- When the author says "summit" -- well, it is a picture of Hawaii most tourists never see. Don't be one of those who miss this tour. The guide offers a trip to the top of what may be the world's best view of the heavens. You are driven up in the evening before the sun sets, and you stay until after dark. Bring your camera, your tripod, and lots of film (be sure to look at the photo album). You can make your reservation online.

River Estate Guest House

Absolutely gorgeous page. Great opening photos of the islands and links to photos of the estate, its rooms, and environs. Described as a hidden hideaway, the River Estate Guest House offers bed and breakfast and vacation rental type lodging in the lush tropical landscape of Kauai. In addition to booking information and rates, this page includes links to boat and helicopter tours of the island, golfing, and other related links.

Destination Resorts - Hawaii

Listing of 245 luxury vacation villas in Wailea and Makena resort communities on Maui. Daily maid service, concierge, golf, tennis, and beaches. Lots of pictures showing amenities and rooms to help you choose among the six different villages.

Maui

Commercial presentation by Maui Net & very well done. Extensive access to everything to do there -- Buying a home, doing business, sailing, shopping, and touring. A special guide for sannyasin and a link to Maui Net users' pages (which use tags unique to Netscape 1.1).

Rafting in Hawaii

Explore, snorkel, and see the beautiful Kona coast. Half-day tours in small groups provide an intimate personal experience of sea caves and lava tubes. Reservations may be made online.

Eco-Diving in Hawaii

Night charters, daily dive trips, and SCUBA lessons, including 12 specialties (night diving, deep diving, videography, photography, blue water, underwater naturalist, instructor, among others). Reservations may be made online.

Illinois

Chicago's home page

Lists of museums, galleries, restaurants, hotels, and entertainment in the Windy City.

Kansas

Blue Skyways of Kansas

This site is by the Kansas State Library, and it is full of helpful materials on Kansas, including the little town with the biggest ball of twine in the world, plus communities, government, poems of Kansas, the state history, and much, much more. Explore the communities -- the pages are well- done and tell volumes about America's heartland. We do not get to read much about small- town America in the newspapers.

Louisiana

New Orleans Convention & Visitor's Bureau

This page finally opens after a couple of redirections. We like the URL, which is how locals pronounce the name of their town. The site is easy to navigate and offers discount coupons for your actual visit. There is a link for travel professionals to help them guide customers to New Orleans, a visitor's guide for restaurants, shopping, tours, and culture. Unfortunately, the site did not work properly for all links, taking us to blank pages on occasion. Even so, the site is packed with information.

About Mardi Gras Madness

Although it calls itself the "Official Site of Mardi Gras 1997," this site is about the celebration only in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is well set up for navigation and has a plethora of tips, links, and information. The survival tips seep particularly helpful, the recipes flavorful, and the lingo perhaps not so wonderful without a pronunciation guide. If you are going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, this site is a recommended visit.

The Mardis Gras

The official New Orleans Mardi Gras home page. It has a parade guide listing what parades will be held, where, and when. There are also a clickable city map, food guide, weather reports, and photographs and sound files.

World Beat Rough Guide - New Orleans

A short, actually helpful introduction to Mardi Gras, with references to minorities -- something lacking in other Web sites.

Maryland

Baltimore, Maryland

An incredible amount of information about Baltimore -- including where to find electrolysis for men and women! History, businesses, arts and entertainment, maps, photos, job guides, and more.

Massachusetts

Massachusetts TOC:
| Boston | Other Massachusetts Areas |

Boston

Yahoo! Regional:Boston:Travel

Yahoo! has a page with several links to Boston information.

Boston Insider

There is a great deal of information on this site; unfortunately, it is entirely commercial -- You select a link for "Top Things to do In Boston," for example, and instead of getting the things, you get a page with ads and three links to other pages, which contain links to the things to do along with more ads. In spite of our aggravation, we find the breadth of information quite enough to bring us back for more. Strangers to the area will wish for more informative links than "Essex," or "Plimoth," when one does not know that Essex is a town 30 miles outside of Boston, not a Boston neighborhood. Each page is well done and has all sorts of navigation help on it. This site qualifies for a recommendation based on its breadth and depth of content, but the ads and lack helpful link information stays our hand from typing the word.

[Boston] Museum of Fine Arts

The opening page is, uh, red. Once we got beyond that page, we enjoyed this Web site tremendously. There are problems showing fine artwork on computer monitors. The Museum of Fine Arts has finessed this issue quite nicely; on our visit the Museum was promoting its Picasso exhibit and showed thumbnails of his work (linked to larger images), but presented more reading material than artwork, showing the paintings, and putting them into the context of Picasso's life. The discussion of the paintings in context makes them much more interesting and invites the viewer to visit the Museum for better views of the art. And having read this material, the viewer will likely gain more from the visit. This is an excellent use of the Web in conjunction with the Museum. Recommended.

Open World City Guides - Boston

This is a British Web site with a view of Boston from a foreign perspective. There is such helpful information as climate, currency, electricity, visas, and so on. The history of Boston runs from 1,000 BCE, when Norse mariners are credited with exploring the coast to 1897 when the local subway opened. There is very little about the city. There is a great deal of information on hotels, restaurants, museums, and attractions, and there are maps of Boston's center. We would expect this site to be most useful for persons who know they are going there and not for people who want to find out if they would care to visit.

Arts & Entertainment

The Boston Phoenix is a weekly paper claiming to publish "the most comprehensive arts- &- entertainment listings of any paper in New England." The page linked to here is the jumping off point for movies, performance, books, museums and galleries, editors' picks, and more, but the site as a whole is considerably more extensive. Because of the depth of the site, navigation by link can be slow, as each page has an image map, but the site is searchable as well. Browsing movies by link gives an image map with links by movie, starting time and neighborhood, by theatre, and by special showings, as well as reviews and listings.

Virtually Boston!

Very visual as well as virtual. This is an extremely attractive site with excellent graphics and many photographs, history, general information on Beantown, and links to other Boston- related sites. A separate area is provided for debate and discussion about Boston, its schools, history, politics, and much more.

Art & Cultural Events List

Boston-area only -- List of exhibits in local galleries.

Back to Massachusetts TOC

Other Massachusetts Areas

The Berkshires

This site is run by a print magazine called SEE The Berkshires. While the Berkshire Mountains extend throughout New England, this site spends most of its time in Massachusetts. It is navigable by links, and it has menus for referring to its feature stories and some of the towns of interest. Stockbridge is well known for two local personages: Norman Rockwell, perhaps America's most famous illustrator, and Alice, of Alice's Restaurant fame from a 70s song of that name by Arlo Guthry. (The last we heard, her restaurant was closed.) The site gives a great deal of information on where to eat, where to stay, and where to shop. If you are going to the Berkshires, this site should be on your list of Web sites to visit before you go.

Mississippi

Welcome to the Mississippi Gulf Coast

The opening page is framed and takes forever to render, mostly because of the self- congratulatory images of site awards, so skip that opening frame as soon as the index frame displays. The site is very busy with lots of animation, background colors, images, but the information is there for it to be worthwhile -- links to hotel reservations, restaurants, alternatives to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, fishing in the Gulf, hunting, and public transportation.

Missouri

Lake of the Ozarks Recreation & Resource Locator

Lake of the Ozarks is located in central Missouri. This site provides lists of B&Bs, camp sites, hotels, houseboats for accommodations, but you are given only phone numbers and no other information, a clickable map of the lake with town names to locate restaurants, but you are given only restaurant names and phone numbers with no other information, phone numbers of caves with no other information -- well, you get the picture.

Missouri Botanical Garden

A wonderful introduction to these gardens of azaleas, the Swift Family Garden, and the Climatron® (inspired by Buckminster Fuller's designs).

The Interactive Katy Trail.

This attractive site is a labor of love for its author -- a virtual exploration of the trail created on an abandoned right of way formerly used by the Missouri- Kansas- Texas Railroad (called the Katy). Two hundred miles of abandoned right of way pass through the Missouri River valley's scenic lands and towns. You can explore this site by following links or by clicking on an image map of a map of the trail and towns. There are great photos, but download times suffer. The pages are very well organized with your next stop at the top of each page and other links at the bottom.

Nevada

Nevada TOC:
| Gerlach/Empire | Reno/Tahoe/Sparks | Las Vegas | Elsewhere in Nevada |

We have a review of Burning Man, a book published by HardWired, with over a hundred pages of photographs of the event, taken over several years.

Gerlach/Empire

The Burning Man Project

The Burning Man Festival is well beyond the scope of this brief review. The festival takes place north of Gerlach and Empire, somewhere in Nevada. Visit this site to find out why 10,000 people trek to the desert every Labor Day weekend and burn a man in effigy. The site is attractive and makes good use of graphical images.

The Civilized Explorer Burning Man Pages

Our Web pages on Burning Man are updated annually, with photographs from 1996, 1997, and 1998, along with articles about survival in the chaos that is Burning Man. Some of the photographs show unconventionally dressed (and undressed) people, but we have tried to be accurate in our table of contents, so you should be able to choose what you see.

Soldier Meadows Ranch

This is a working ranch about 60 miles north of Gerlach. With about 14,000 acres, you can lose yourself in the high desert of Nevada. You have access to the lodge, remote camping, hot springs, and no telephones. Hunt bird or deer, or go on the spring cattle drive to the mountains. Rates are given, and you can pay with plastic.

Back to Nevada TOC

We have a review of The Complete Guide Tahoe, a book we have found helpful.

Reno/Tahoe/Sparks

The Civilized Explorer Reno Page

Although this page is geared toward those persons passing through Reno on their way to Burning Man, we think many others will find helpful information here -- car rentals, RV rentals and RV parks, inexpensive motels, restaurants, clothing consignment shops, shopping malls, and ice.

City of Reno

The official Web site of the City of Reno. Lots of boards and commissions, neighborhood advisory boards, interactive maps, and special events.

City of Sparks

The official Web site of the City of Sparks. Agendas and calendars of meetings of the various commissions and councils, what's going on, where to stay, what to see.

Reno Spaghetti Bowl

The official Web site of the traffic mess being made out of I-80 and US 395. The site includes traffic and project information, suggested detours, and lots of photos of rebar and sound walls.

Nevada Department of Transportation

The official Web site of, uh, the Nevada Department of Transportation. In addition to the usual bureaucratic stuff, there are links for truckers and for travelers (which includes construction projects and delays, maps, road conditions, weather, and the Freeway Service Patrol). They also include airport information.

Reno/Tahoe International Airport

This site provides a groundplan of the airport so you can find your gate, a list of airlines serving the airport, with their toll- free reservation numbers, where to park (and how much), where to rent a car, and where to get your private plane serviced if you fly in yourself.

Tahoe Country Home Page

A comprehensive guide to businesses, activities, hotels, weather - most anything you'd like to know before visiting. This is a commercial site that produces it's own descriptions rather than providing links to other sites. Be sure to read the description of fly fishing in Pyramid Lake if you've ever wondered how to use a step ladder to catch trout!

Back to Nevada TOC

Las Vegas

Las Vegas Nevada's premiere Web site

This searchable site also has navigation by topics: Hot stuff, visiting, and living in and moving to Las Vegas. The sections are very thorough, with tons of information. Not all the links are the same color, however, which can cause some confusion and missed opportunities. If you are a first- time visitor, this site will get you started on what is going on and what to do in Las Vegas.

A Las Vegas Leisure Travel Visitors Guide

The site claims to have information in Spanish, German, French, and Italian, as well as in English. The site has a wealth of information on entertainment (with access to online ticketing agencies), hotels, nightlife, maps, recreation, shopping, sightseeing, and marriages.

Las Vegas SUN

This is a Las Vegas newspaper with information on imploded buildings, boxing matches, showbiz, resorts, community, and more. The site also provides digital video of happenings, such as a time lapse video of the erection of Paris, local jet crashes, and building demolition. Not your usual tourist stuff.

Las Vegas Information

This site claims to provide "all there is to know about Las Vegas ... ." There is helpful information on the climate, the history of the city and its location, establishing residency, housing, cost of living, and much more. If you are considering a move to Las Vegas, this is a very helpful site.

Las Vegas Travel

This site provides reservation services for visitors to the city. They have a lengthy list of hotels, with discounts for conventioneers on special trips. On the day of our visit, COMDEX was still listed, along with Winston Cup, as having special offerings.

Las Vegas Central

This site provides free listings for businesses in Las Vegas, and the pages are hosted here for you to browse. If you need apparel, car repairs, a computer, loans, or lawyers, this site provides your online entree to small business in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas Showbiz

This site is sponsored by the Luxor Hotel and Casino. The site, however, lists shows, headliners, and other entertainment at other venues, and it is searchable by category and date. In addition to shows, there are pages on dining, attractions, gambling, and hotels. Since the site promotes Las Vegas, all the shows, all the attractions, and every thing else is wonderfully interesting.

HotelGuide Las Vegas

Available in English and Spanish. The site is searchable by hotel name or by location. In addition, the site offers guides for shopping, dining, night life, and more.

Back to Nevada TOC

Elsewhere in Nevada

Yucca Mountain Project

This page downloads a useless Java "enhancement" that scrolls a table of contents for you; this page lets you look at the table of contents without the relentless scroll. Yucca Mountain is the location about a hundred miles from Las Vegas where some people want to store radioactive nuclear waste. Drop by and take a tour. This Web site gives their budget, tells who is paying for the project, and gives you the time line for the research to determine if Yucca Mountain is feasible as the repository of the United States's spent nuclear fuel.

Nevada Historical Marker Index

Select a Nevada county by name or by clicking on the map of the State, and get a listing of Nevada's historical markers within that county. For example, Pershing County is home to Nevada Historical Marker 17, marking a key point in the Humboldt Trail, the last stop for travelers before crossing the 40- Mile Desert. The site was fairly slow at the time of our visit, and we gave up on a couple of links before getting responses. Nevada has a wealth of history, some of it as a natural barrier to America's westward expansion. This site gives short shrift to the human and animal suffering encountered on Nevada's trails:

The emigrants suffered great hardships; many lives and livestock were lost. It became known as the "Death Route."

New Jersey

Florham Park Dog Parade

The New Jersey Borough of Florham Park had their second annual dog parade on 23 September 2000, and it made the local news.

Florham Park Community Information Home Page

This page is by Digital- Neighbors, and it provides information on shopping, gives you the names of nearby cities which you may have heard of, local sports, news, and weather, along with real estate and classified ads. This is a helpful site, although rather inclined to statistics.

Beachcomber City Guide to Florham Park

Search for businesses in Florham Park, make reservations online for local hotels, and check the local weather.

Real Estate Online

This agency covers Florham Park, Madison, and Chatham, New Jersey. The site has searchable listings and links to additional information on the three towns. The site provides a mortgage calculator and relocation help.

The Florham Park Eagle

Photographs of local politicians kissing babies, volunteers for local charities, and students walking to raise funds for a new library.

The Daily Record

The Daily Record pops up an annoying extra window inviting you to do something -- we dismissed it before it fully explained its reason for being. In addition to local news and sports, local classifieds and weather, the Daily Record provides national news and "Things to do."

Florham Park Borough

Florham Park's "official" Web site contains directions on how to get there, the official meeting schedule, instructions on how to get a pet license, lists of local charitable groups and clubs, hours for the municipal pool, a calendar of events, and links to county and state information of importance to the community.

Florham Park Public Library

The library provides public internet access as well as access to the library collections of Morris County. The library's collection is searchable by newspaper and magazine article, along with the usual book catalogue.

Star-Ledger News

The Star-Ledger claims to be the newspaper for New Jersey, with state- oriented news, sports, business, entertainment, and living sections on the Web site.

New Mexico

Aventura Artistica

This company offers tours of New Mexico's art sites -- museums, private homes, and aboriginal art in the wild. The site and each page are well laid out, making navigation easy. If museums seem stuffy to you, the guide offers white water rafting and restaurant tours, with descriptions that made our mouths water. Each tour gives dates and rates, but the dates did not include a year, and we presume some of them have already happened but were not removed from the site.

New York

The Chrysler Building Unofficial Web Site

The site claims that the Chrysler Building is the most beautiful building in New York City, and I agree. The author is a big fan, and his love of the Chrysler Building is written all over this site. Sadly, many of the photographs are not well scanned and do not show the beauty claimed in the glowing descriptions. The site is well worth visiting for the photographs and the history.

Historic Hudson Valley

This site is chock full of information, and some pages take awhile do download. We got repeated JavaScript errors, apparently from an animation at the top of each page. The site has a calendar of events, listings for tours, and a great deal more. If you are considering or planning a trip to New York's Hudson Valley, this is an excellent resource.

Yahoo - New York

Yahoo's page localized for New York City has links to business, community, education, employment, entertainment, the arts, Manhattan life, transportation, travel, and more. As with the regular Yahoo page, the links are to more specific links to more specific information, none of which originates with Yahoo.

Camden, New York

Beautiful Camden, NY, (not to be confused with Camden, NJ). Each page of this site appears to be sponsored by a local business. We are sure this is a quaint New York village, but something is troublesome when the opening page of the site gives its location as only a half hour from a casino, and the Tourist Information page has "Links to other great attractions within an hours drive from Camden" and not much else. Many of the photographs were taken in the dead of winter, with bare trees and lots of snow on the ground, and they do not do justice to the village and its Victorian homes. The Community Attractions page works well, though. This is a site which shows how subtle the differences are between really selling an attraction and not quite making it.

The Bronx Tourism Council

A Web guide to The Bronx, a borough of the City of New York. Among other pleasures, this site offers a video voyage of The Bronx lead by Regis Philbin. The Bronx Tourism Council has done a remarkable job of selling The Bronx as a tour destination.

Long Island Bus Service

The Long Island bus schedule -- If you are visiting Long Island and want to take the bus, check this before you go.

Welcome to Total New York

This is a site with an attitude! It is about life in New York City. Lots of "in" references, so it helps to know New York (or to think you do) to get all the jokes and insults. There are a calendar and links to Web Events and chats, gossip, and photographs. Totally trendy and fun, but read this site -- It has things to say, and it says them well. Recommended.

North Carolina

The Virtual North Carolina Project

This is a low key page from the University of North Carolina. There is information on Orange County, the part of the Appalachian Trail that is in North Carolina, stories and photos about local towns, and other material. The site will be of interest to those who prefer small town America with real people.

North Carolina Natural

This is a very uneven site. We first were impressed by the number of links offered, but then we tried a few. Generally, we were taken to an index listing, sometimes an empty index listing, sometimes showing on .html file. When there is something to see, it is interesting, attractively done, and well- written. The site is supposed to be about natural living in North Carolina, with information on culture as well as the outdoors. The information that is there makes the site worthwhile, but we recommend patience as you go through directories and broken links to get something from the site.

North Carolina Vacations

This site is an index to pages on several towns n the North Carolina coast. There are links to golf, fishing, and "Senior Citizens Vacation Hot Spots." The pages for the towns have snapshots of varying quality, and descriptions of the town which might be 100 words or might be several hundred. The quality of each page ranges from okay to down from there.

North Dakota

A Down to Earth Guide to North Dakota

This Web site explodes the myth about North Dakota's existence. North Dakota is a hoax perpetrated upon the American public by the military- industrial complex. The FAQ list for this site begins with the question, "Huh?" and goes from there. Lots of pictures of bales of hay and sunflowers purportedly taken in North Dakota, but who can tell? Although the author of the site avers that the state tree is the elm and the state bird is the Western Meadowlark, actual government records show that the state tree is the fence post and the state bird is the mosquito. Be sure to take the quiz.

Lileks: Fargo

A very romantic view of Fargo, North Dakota. The site is very well done, the writing is excellent, and the "then and now" photographs show a town changed in 50 years, but still with the flavor of the 1940s. Be sure to see the picture postcards of Broadway from the beginning of this century to 1999.

Oklahoma

The Oklahoma Image Map

Virtually everything you want to know about the Sooner State. Unfortunately, visited links do not change color, so keep track of where you have been. Links are provided to information on business, cities, educational institutions, events and festivals, maps, Native America, recreation and travel, and more. Each link takes you to a page which contains many more links or much more information. This is a very deep site.

Ontario

Niagara FallsCam

The video gives you the time of day of capture, and it is acquired from the roof camera of a local hotel. Pick the time of day so you don't get the sun's glare instead of the falls. The page is a quick download, and the image can be quite attractive, depending on time of day. (Late evening seems to be best.)

Oregon

Cape Blanco

Cape Blanco is a state park with rich resources for the traveler. The site promises great views, hiking, camping, horseback riding, and whales. There is also this curious statement:

Cape Blanco has a long history of great quakes and tsunamis.

Just another attraction, we presume.

Official Oregon Tourism Web Site

The site uses frames; unfortunately, the index on the bottom does not scroll. We hope you know the magic size to set your window for. The right most frame is the container for information, and it is formatted with a table which prevents the information from begin visible without scrolling to the right (again, unless you know the magic size and have the right monitor). The text we could see seemed to be standard travel brochure "everything is wonderful" hype, but we admit that we were aggravated by the lousy layout of the site and that may have affected our opinion.

Pennsylvania

Fall in PA

Although we are given pause by the claim "100? Pure" (pure what?), this is a site claiming to be about fall foliage in the Keystone State. Lots of live Webcam shots all over Pennsylvania, downloadable images for wallpaper (on your computer [if it is for your desktop, why is it wallpaper?]), and routes to follow for the trek during the autumn. But the site gives itself too short a shrift, in our humble opinion, but limiting its claims to fall foliage. The site offers driving tours of the state stretching well beyond such usual tourist destinations as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and the like. We recommend this site for hikers and bikers, birders, and people who like driving tours during the spring and summer, when the Pennsylvania woodlands are lush and green.

The Pennsylvania Dutch Country Information Center

An oxymoron if ever there was one -- a web page for the Amish, complete with photographs of members of a religious order believing that photography is a violation of the Second Commandment. Put up by the Visitors Bureau and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, this site is to encourage you to visit. In addition to "General Information," you are given links to attractions, accommodations, restaurants, shopping, and so on. This information is given in very complete text listings. But the General Information is the more interesting browsing. You will find a great deal of fascinating information (along with more pictures) about a people who live in the 19th Century.

Prince Edward Island

Visitors' Guide to Prince Edward Island, Canada

Browse through descriptions of cycling, hiking, birdwatching, seal watching, clam digging, and skiing on Prince Edward Island. A great page with lots of helpful information!

Quebec

Welcome to CityVU, Montreal - Bienvenue

In English; en français. Claiming to be the first truly virtual city on the Internet, Montreal has put up a puzzling Web site. There is a clickable map, an alphabetical listing, and a searchable database -- of streets. Selecting one brings you to a page with a short paragraph on the history of the street's name. Unless the street selected brings you to an "under construction" page with even less.

Tennessee

Lakeside Resort -- Watts Bar Lake

This is a homey looking lodge with cottages, aimed at the outdoor family. Lots of nice pictures, links to guides for hunting and fishing, sight seeing (Dollywood is close by), and prices for your stay. Bring your own boat and rent a slip or just ramp in every day for free. Beach for the kids, kitchen in some of the units for the wife.

Texas

Corpus Christi

This is the Official Corpus Christi Convention & Visitors Bureau Web site for Corpus Christi, Texas's best know Gulf coast town. The site provides information for tourists, meeting planners, and travel professionals. For tourists, the site provides an overview of the area, links to accommodations, area national and state parks, restaurants, shopping, and nightlife. The site is searchable, and you may make reservations online. Meeting planners find links to convention centers, accommodations, FAM tours, and the convention calendar.

Padre Island

This site opens an annoying popup window with the hours and price of admission. And you thought Padre Island was, well, an island, not a money- making attraction. The site is remarkable for its blandness. Photographs of kids in swimsuits on the beach, shiny happy families on the beach, kids on the beach, a young couple on horses riding on the beach, kids on the beach, a couple dancing on the beach, kids on the beach -- you get the picture. Then lists of attractions with sentence fragments as descriptions: "Has popular Padre Island beaches." "A favorite area for national and local windsurfing competitions." "Numerous migrating birds." Links to fishing, dining, accommodations all take you to a page with names, addresses, and phone numbers; not even sentence fragments of descriptions.

Utah

Red Rock Reflections of Southern Utah

Absolutely stunning photographs! Some may be familiar with the names of Monument Valley, Arches National Park, and Cathedral Valley, all a part of Red Rock country. This site provides photographs, essays, and descriptions of hikes in the Moab area.

Utah Travel and Adventure Online

This is an attractive site from The Utah Travel Council. It promotes the state in the usual glowing terms, with a disclaimer that some of the activities may lead to injury, and the state, the council, the site authors, and basically everyone else accepts no responsibility for any injuries suffered as a result of anything. The site is a little too promotional for our tastes, but it is easy to navigate and pleasantly attractive.

Vermont

VermontGuides

The is the Web version of print magazines promoting Vermont for tourism and for business. The local news is truly local -- the town of Milton voting a local injection molding company a fixed tax rate, for example. There are pages on doing business in Vermont, places to eat, where to go, where to stay, how to get around. Overall, the site is a rather dry recitation of places with little color; we have traveled in Vermont on several occasions and find that this site does not do the state justice.

Washington

Buoy 10

Named after the Number 10 buoy marking the beginning of the shipping channel at the mouth of the Columbia River, the site is somewhat difficult to navigate. We have the impression that you have to have been to the area to understand what the site is about. Links to "Long Beach" and "Astoria" are not meaningful to those outside the Columbia River area and are confusing to those from the East Coast of the US. The site uses frames without borders, thus the Page Up and Page Down keys to fail to function unless one clicks in a frame, and there are no other hints of the use of frames. The list of "Things to Do" in Long Beach is brief: ride a horse on the beach, hike out to a lighthouse, and fish. We looked at the map, but it failed to locate Long Beach, though we did find Astoria (but not all of Astoria's links).

Olympic Peninsula

Link and text colors are the same, making navigation somewhat more confusing than necessary, and visited links do not change color. The site provides a great deal of helpful information concerning ferry schedules and fares, parks, businesses, recreation, restaurants, maps, weather, museums, a calendar of events, and more. The information is rather dryly presented, and there are few photographs.

Washington State Tourism Home Page

This is a nice, low impact site. The site is searchable by image map, keyword, or city, and the links to larger pages give the file size, a very nice touch. We did not find any pictures on the site, and we found it helpful to plan a trip, with lots of pages with things listed to see and do. We missed getting to see any pictures of the areas, however; the eternal trade- off of bandwidth vs. content.

West Virginia

Charleston, W.Va.

No, Charleston is not the capital of South Carolina, and Wheeling is not the capital of West Virginia. Charleston, W.Va., is a fine old town with a rich history and lots of pleasant surprises. This page gives you a great deal of information about the area and a nice list of annual events. There's even a street map so you can find the places you want to visit.

Wyoming

Yellowstone Journal Online

This is an online version of a print periodical, hoping to entice you to subscribe. Articles include discussions on the health of the bison, the re- introduction of wolves, the grizzly bear count, but there are also articles oriented to the visitor, such as hiking trails, the recovery of the park after the 1988 fire, birding, and a history of the park. There are attractive photos, but download times are quick; the articles are earnestly written by people who clearly care deeply about the park.

Cody, Wyoming

This page is maintained by a University of Wyoming undergraduate and has nice photographs and lots of links to further information on the rodeo, Yellowstone National Park, dude ranches (Oops! they're called "guest ranches," now), fishing, and much more. Well worth a visit if you are going to Cody or its vicinity.

Yukon

Tour Yukon

This site popped up an obnoxious mini- window asking us to Register Now! while it loaded the main page in the regular window behind it. We declined. At the bottom of the page we learned that we would need special software to take full advantage of the site and that we could go to a separate page to learn how the site works. We declined. We explored on our own and found a page inviting us to pre- register for an invitation to its launch, a page with links to both "Pre-trip Info" and "Trip Information," and the same pages from apparently unrelated links. Maybe we should have read the instruction. The sad thing is, this site has a ton of information on companies doing business in the Yukon. These companies offer winter and summer expeditions by canoe, float plane, dog sled, hiking, and more. If the links on the main page were better organized and led us to where they said, this would be an excellent site.

Other resources for North America

Other Resources TOC | Regional Guides | Outdoors | Lodging | Special Interest/Resources |

Regional Guides

Travels in the American Southwest

The Civilized Explorer team toured the American Southwest in the summer of 2002, and we did a Web page to prove it. Snapshots of Arizona, New Mexico, the Grand Canyon, and more!

Nude Beaches of the Northeast

This site offers a guide to beaches in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Vermont where one can sunbathe in the nude. There are also guides to etiquette, laws, and events, along with a bulletin board to post messages.

New England What Where When

This is an attractive site for happenings in New England. There is a calendar, links by state (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, by the way), and links arranged by activity: walking tours, driving tours, golf, motorcycling, and shopping, among others. This is a tourist site, so you get a happy, sunny view of all those fun down East activities, but it is worth the visit for the wealth of information on things that are going on, as well as things to do if you are visiting.

The Houston Chronicle's Route 66 Virtual Voyage

Two reporters for the Houston Chronicle got their kicks on Route 66 and then wrote it up. The stories are filed by state, and they (the stories, not the states) vary in usefulness and entertainment value. (Well, okay, the states do, too.) You will not want to use this site as your primary source in planning your own personal trip on Route 66, but it is helpful in spots and gives local color when there is any.

The American Southwest

This guide resides on a server at Bristol University in the UK. The author visited Arizona and Utah, and made a lengthy RV trip across the US from Texas west. He took many photographs. Each page has a nice navigation menu at the top, and there is a description of the area visited, with directions for getting there, fees (if any; a national park, for example), and other information. The photographs are small, load quickly, and are linked to larger files. The pages are rather reportorial, and little of the flavor of the area comes through.

Y'all

If your heart ain't in Dixie...The South with attitude! Find the Southerners' guide to the South and learn where you can get sweet tea and other assorted specialties.

Texas Monthly's Travel Guide.

It's a whole nuther country...

Roadtrip America

A delightful guide to off-the-wall places in the US. Excellent commentary and photos from a couple and their dog who tour the US and Canada in various vehicles (the Phoenix and the Nicovan!).

Welcome to Out West On-Line

This site seems to be authored by a husband and wife team who tour the American West in a motorhome, hitting all the non- tourist sites (even though some would like to be tourist sites). Areas covered include eateries, ghost towns, museums, people, and attractions. There are some glitches in the mark up and some of the links are to ghost anchors, but if you're hankerin' to tour the Wild West by car, set your sights here first, pardner.

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Outdoors

DesertUSA

A great deal of information on deserts in the American West, some of it nearly scholarly, some of it fun. Camping tips, recipes, maps, places to go.

Go West

This site is bi-seasonal, offering Go West Winter and Go West Summer. Skiing, snow boarding, resorts, snow reports, or hiking, biking, rafting, camping in the western United States and Canada. The site is searchable and has pages for "Cheap- N- Deep" for inexpensive winter experiences, chat pages, tips on gear, and profiles of people doing what the site covers. The author also buys freelance articles. It is an attractive site aimed mostly at the college crowd and young working adults, and it seems to hit its target audience dead on.

Canadian Rocky Mountain Resorts

This site showcases lodges in Banff and Yoho National Parks in their elegant splendor. The locations are breathtaking. The detailed information on each resort includes accommodations, activities, facilities (for your meetings, of course), rates, and on line reservations.

National Parks Conservation Association

Claims to be "America's only private nonprofit citizen organization dedicated solely to protecting, preserving, and enhancing the U.S. National Park System." This site has links to Congressional actions, news of national parks, activities, marches, and so on, as well as other Net sites. Excellent jumping off point for getting involved in protecting the National Park System.

Vertebrates & Vascular Plants in National Parks

WAIT! Don't touch that dial! This is an interesting site -- don't let the name turn you off. This is a WAIS- indexed searchable database for the NPFauna and NPFlora databases. You can search by amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, or plants, or by park. There are links to other park pages, environmental protection pages, and satellite weather pictures. Maintained by the Information Center for the Environment at the University of California, Davis, CA, this site contains a wealth of information for people with an interest in more than just camping in a park. Very useful for students, as well, without being a "kid's" site.

National Park Service Home Page

If you need any help, just click on the Ranger. This is a nice site. In addition to a database searchable by name of park, region, state, and theme, there's a Park of the Month for you to visit. This site also has links to NPS policy, planning, and preservation practices and has a very good explanation of the official U.S. policy. It contains links to planning projects on parks which have high traffic and are being destroyed by their popularity.

GORP U.S. National Park List

Extensive (but not all inclusive) listing by state, but searchable as well. Links to activities, attractions, books and maps, gear, clubs, and much more. The information is taken from material supplied by the NPS and personal experience of the GORP staff; much of the writing appears to be by persons who know and care about their subjects. Highly recommended.

John Donohue's National Park Photos

An incredible Web site. There's a clickable image map to get you to thumbnails of photos or alphabetical lists by park or by state. There are additional links to L.L. Bean's Park Search, Volcano World, Gary Lipe's Wildflower Page, and much more. Selecting a park brings you to a page with several "thumbnail" (they're larger than my thumbnail) pictures which are clickable for fuller sized views. Very attractive photos -- truly professional. Haleakula is typical of the beauty. Recommended.

Creekside Fly Fishing Shop

Information on fly fishing in Oregon and Washington, USA. Creekside also has an online catalog and fly fishing packages with free USA shipping on all orders over US$100. Links to guides, fishing holes, and more.

At the Beach

A list of amenities at the beaches in Maryland and Delaware, USA. You can explore the Web site by state or by index of beaches, if you know the name. State beaches are organized by community, activities, parks, lodging, and restaurants, and there are more links for events, specific sports, and more.

Chesapeake Bay Boaters' Resource

This site is stuffed with information on marinas, weather, events, charter services, brokers/dealers, yacht surveyors, clubs, and more. The site is divided geographically into the upper, middle, and lower Chesapeake, with text listings for each grouping of information. We were unable to find information on the bay itself, however. If you already know the Chesapeake, this is a great site for addresses and phone numbers.

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Lodging

Inns & Outs, The Bed & Breakfast Source

This site claims to contain information on 15,000 B&Bs in North America. The database is frames- capable. You can search by property, reservation service, association, and area. The search facility is very good, but the page linking to it does not explain the choices you are given -- Take the time to explore it; your effort will be well repaid.

B&Bs

Interesting and well- organized listing of Bed & Breakfast inns in the United States, with plans for expansion to all of North America and the Caribbean. Photos of locations, rates, reservation numbers, and check- out times.

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Special Interest/Resources

The Circle of Burning Fuel

Incredibly, this site "explores the connection between drag racing and Native American spiritual traditions." If you know about the traditions of aboriginal Americans, the artist makes some sense -- top fuel dragsters emerging from the cloud of smoke pointing in four directions, "Engine Mandalas," and kinetic sculptures.

Menopausal Tours

Although the company intends to offer tours worldwide, its base has been escorted tours in the United States. We will not tell you who the tours are geared for -- you will have to guess. They provide ground transportation, activities, and lodging in a selection of choice destinations ranging from New Orleans to the San Juan Islands. Join a group or get your own group together -- you know who you are.

Pollen & Spore Counts

Isn't the Internet great? Now you can check in on your destination and find out if your allergies will be giving you fits when you arrive.

The American Highway Project

A serious site with a serious effort to photograph the disappearing American road culture. The author takes photographs with a 5x7 view camera when possible, a rollfilm camera when practical. The buildings he photographs are disappearing (sometimes between his visits), so drop by and see what people were doing in the 1950s and earlier.

Road Trip USA

This site is a promotion for a book of the same name; the site's pages are rather to brief in their descriptions of the areas covered by the book, but then we would not buy the book, would we? However, the site is chock full of absolutely essential links for people planning a road trip just about anywhere in the USA.

Roadside America

Roadside attractions from small town America. Readers get to submit photographs of the curious, often bizarre signs used in bygone days to attract your attention on small two- lane roads. Tons of places you have never heard of but may well find to be a must- see stop on your roadtrip across the USA.

Green Tortoise Adventure Travel

We have heard of San Francisco- based Green Tortoise for some time, but our first direct contact with the organization was when the bus pulled into Burning Man in 1996, disgorged several German tourists into one of the world's most bizarre settings, and we offered them wine. The motto is "Affordable adventures with extraordinary people," and we have to agree. The seats convert to beds, and bunks hang from the ceiling of the bus for naps any time of day or night. Take the green bus for a real trip. Be sure to spend some time on this site for a fresh take on alternatives to the usual highway travel.

The Electronic Embassy

Excellent idea. "The Electronic Embassy has been established to link the staffs and resources of the Washington D.C. embassy community to their constituencies in business and industry, education, the press and government." Very attractive site with links to embassy web sites, all of D.C.'s embassies, education, press, travel and tourism, and so on. Unfortunately, it's still early in life for this site, and the information is still forthcoming.

VISA ATM Locator -- U.S.

VISA has a Web site allowing you to locate the three ATM machines nearest your location anywhere in the United States. Now all you need is a Web connection anywhere you are in the United States.