Tag Archives: travel

Sunday afternoon at the Luntic Asylum

By Emily | Published: August 27, 2009
West Virginia's Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is the second largest hand-cut stone building in the world -- second only to the Kremlin. Built between 1858 and 1881, the now-crumbling estate housed civil war soldiers, TB patients, the criminally insane and thousands of others. The place is crumbling, creepy and provides a disturbing looking into the history of mental illness.
Posted in West Virginia | Also tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gravity Hill – Caught on video

By Emily | Published: June 3, 2009
A few weeks ago for our post on gravity hills (stretches of land that appear to lead uphill, when they actually on a decline), I couldn’t find a decent YouTube video to illustrate the phenomenon. So over Memorial Day weekend, I filmed one myself in Bedford County, Pa. Here’s the very short video:
Posted in Pennsylvania | Also tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wet and (not so) wild in PA’s Ohiopyle

By Emily | Published: June 1, 2009
Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, has a lot of water. It’s most famous attractions are Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, a weekend get-away/mansion perched on top of a creek, and the rapids of the Youghiogheny (pronounced – “yock-i-gay-nee”) River (below). We skipped the rapids. The class V whitewater rafting trip that our friends signed up for cost $140 each, [...]
Posted in Pennsylvania | Also tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Camping’s biggest challenge — packing

By Emily | Published: June 1, 2009
We are headed to Assateague Island National Seashore for a weekend of camping with the horses. I’m so excited; I made these reservations back in January. However, I am a bit nervous. I’ve been warned that there’s no supermarket on the island. And I have a tendency to be a forgetful packer. The roughest part about [...]
Posted in Etc., Maryland | Also tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Frustrated with PA’s baffling beer laws

By Emily | Published: May 30, 2009
I just returned from a weekend in Pennsylvania. More memorable than the rolling mountains, green forests or gushing rivers were the state’s convoluted liquor laws. Before this trip, I assumed that a state famous for its craft brew (home to both the Troegs and Victory breweries) would have a plentiful selection of beer — and [...]
Posted in Pennsylvania | Also tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Travel links round-up

By Emily | Published: May 12, 2009
I’ve been accumulating links for the past two weeks. Here’s a round-up from the DC media of interesting — and easy on the wallet– things to do this summer. Washington Post: Weekend trip to Lynchburg. The Post profiles this quirky Virginia town as a “perfect place to while away a long weekend.” There’s even [...]
Posted in Etc. | Also tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Baltimore’s wacky sculpture race

By Emily | Published: May 7, 2009
I was overwhelmed by the oddness of Baltimore’s Kinetic Sculpture race: A bicycle-powered pineapple racing through the mud. Middle-aged men and women lounging in the grass in Star Trek uniforms. Teenagers in trash bag tutus shouting at the crowd. You don’t find this in DC. Each spring, Baltimore hosts the East Coast Championship Kinetic Sculpture Race, [...]
Posted in Maryland | Also tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A Swiss village in the West Virginia mountains

By Emily | Published: May 4, 2009
Spring is ramp festival time in West Virginia. The locals celebrate the arrival of warmer weather by eating the season’s first vegetable, a wild leek called a ramp. One of the state’s most famous ramp festivals is in central West Virginian in Helvetia, a town of about 30 settled by Swiss immigrants in [...]
Posted in West Virginia | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Our top five summer destinations

By Emily | Published: April 23, 2009
Summer is coming up, so I’ve been figuring out my plans for this travel season. Here is the list I created: Summer 2009’s Top Five Must -Visit Destinations. View Summer ‘09 Destinations in a larger map 1. Assateague Island: We attempted to camp at this National Seashore in Maryland last year. However, the place was booked up [...]
Posted in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Rainy days in Asheville, NC

By Emily | Published: April 17, 2009
We spent three days in Asheville last week, and it poured for two of them. Because of the bad weather, we ended up scrapping our original plans for the trip. There was no hiking, no camping and no cooking out over an open fire. Here’s what we did instead: We forwent the tour of the [...]
Posted in North Carolina | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment