Starling Travel

Since no one was sending me any postcards, I asked my friends to send me postcards. The first one to send one in was Henry J. Tillman, the joker. He sent me a postcard from Salt Lake City!

Interestingly enough, he chose a postcard that mispelled the word, “Mormon.” The text on the postcard says:

“SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH: With multiple spires soaring heavenward, the Morman Temple is truly a magnificent building. You may admire it only from the outside unless you are an LDS member, then you are permitted in.”

Photo by Blake G. Smith

The postcard is correct. Only LDS members are allowed inside the temple, but tourists are allowed on the grounds and in the auxilliary buildings on the temple grounds. The biggest question most tourists ask is, “What do they do in there?” Sadly, it’s much more boring than you would imagine:

• Pick Me! » Everything I Know About The Mormons I Learned From Wikipedia

Thanks for being the first to send me a postcard, Henry!

Please send me a postcard from your travels or your hometown. If you do and it’s interesting, I will publish your postcard on Starling Travel.

Send your postcards to:

Starling Travel
Attention: Laura Moncur
P.O. Box 522032
Salt Lake City, Utah 84152

It’s like sending a postcard to the whole world when you go on vacation. It’s like bragging about your hometown to the everyone on the planet.

The highlight of our recent trip to Las Vegas was a visit to the Blue Man Group. I had seen their show at the Luxor hotel, but not since they moved to the Venetian. The show was a wonderful surprise!

• The Venetian Las Vegas – Blue Man Group

The Venetian show is different than their “How To Be a Rock Star” tour, of course, but it was also vastly different than the Luxor show. The theater has a smaller and more intimate feel. Part of me desperately wants to be chosen by a Blue Man to be a “victim” in the show. Another part of me just wants to sit back and enjoy things. I somehow think that the “victims” are chosen before the show even starts.

The woman they chose to share their Twinkies with this time around was dressed in traditional Indian garb. With all the problems we’ve had with the Middle East, I felt a certain connectedness with her. Her husband sat near us and laughed lovingly as he watched her discomfort dealing with the three naive mutes at her side.

When they performed “Persistence of Vision,” they said the phrase, “microscopic moments of blindness.” I don’t remember hearing that phrase before when I saw that performance. It was such a beautiful pairing of words that I felt it burn itself into my memory. The dancing sculptures were vibrating before I recovered. I was gorgeous.

When I’ve seen this show before, we had seats in the back, but this time, we were very close to the front. It was a vastly different experience. Not better or worse, just different. When the tubes fell from the ceiling, they surprised me. I thought something was falling on my head. When the paper started coming at us from the back, it looked like a rush of white water heading toward us. When it flowed off the balcony, it looked like whipped cream, alternatively spilling and sticking to the fixtures.

Afterward, they allowed people to have their picture taken with a couple of the Blue Men. I asked for a blue mark on my face and he silently looked at me. He swiped his finger across his own face and then touched my own.

As we waited for the valet to get our car, a stranger looked at me. “I know where you’ve been,” he said knowingly. I smiled happily to myself.

Where:

The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino
3355 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89109

Phone: 702.414.1000 or 877.883.6423

Blue Man Group Performance Schedule:

MON-FRI 7:30pm
SAT 7:30 and 10:30 pm
SUN 7:30pm

Ticket Prices: $71.50 to $121.00 (and totally worth it!)

Next time you’re driving through Oregon, take a detour to visit Half.com, America’s first .com city. It was bought by a company, Half.com, during the first Dot Boom. Years later, how has it fared?

• Design Observer: writings about design & culture – What Ever Happened to Half.com, Oregon? by William Drenttel

William tried contacting the town to see how they fared in this early Dot Boom deal:

Without an operative [town website] in place, I hit the phones, calling local businesses like the Clear Creek Farm Bed & Breakfast, the Birch Leaf Guest House, the Hillside Bed & Breakfast and the Halfway Supper Club: no answer anywhere. I assumed Angela’s Beauty Salon might be open for business on a summer afternoon — yet here, too: no answer. I left a message at Ronda Dillman Insurance Agency. Finally, I tried The Shop (”Need your car checked out? At The Shop, we don’t just work on cars, we fix them.”). A fellow named Gordon R. Kaesemeyer answered. He told me he was busy , but could give me a few minutes.

I asked him about the town’s decision to rename itself Half.com, which, Kaesemeyer told me, turned out to be a rather short-term arrangement. “We just passed a proclamation that lasted for one year.” I asked him whether the town actually got the money and computers promised by Half.com: “Yeah, we got our money and some computers,” he assured me. ” ‘Course that just caused some problems like money always does.” Encouraged by his answers, I thanked him for his time and asked him to put me in touch with Halfway’s mayor.

“That would be me,” he replied.

When you visit Oregon, you can see the sites in Portland and enjoy the skiing near Eugene, but finding a town that survived the Dot Bomb after being bought out by an Internet company is something that’s hard to find. Give Half.com a visit and enjoy the small town charm.

Via: William Drenttel discovers what happened to the small town in Oregon that renamed itself “Half.com” (kottke.org)

While we were in Las Vegas, we stopped at the Vosges Haute Chocolates shop at The Forum Shopes in Caesar’s Palace. Stacey and Dan bought a large box and Mike bought a small box of the expensive treats.

• Vosges Haut-Chocolat – Exotic Chocolate Truffles, Specialty Chocolates & Luxury Chocolates

Sadly they were nothing more enjoyable than the chocolates we can get at home at Xocolate for half the price. Additionally, there are some irritating things about their service that make me want to avoid the store from now on.

• The store has a pretentious feel. I didn’t really feel “rich” enough to buy the chocolates there, even though I have plenty of money. I don’t need a snooty atmosphere to keep my chocolate fresh.

• The girls behind the counter weighed no more than 110 pounds. I have a hard time believing the clerk when she says she eats the chocolate all the time and she is rail thin. I can’t believe her when she says a particular truffle is good because it looks like she has never eaten chocolate in her life.

• They write up a directory for you so you can tell the different truffles apart. That’s great, but if your chocolates drop off of the back of the car and get all jumbled up, that directory is useless. A pre-printed guide with pictures describing each truffle would be MUCH better.

In the end, I liked the chocolates, but they weren’t better than ones I had eaten at half the price. I detested the snooty atmosphere and I’ll probably never go there again.

Where: Google Map
Vosges Haute Chocolates
Forum Shops at Caesars
3500 Las Vegas Blvd South Suite R04
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Ring: 702.836.9866
Hours: Sun-Thurs. 10-11, Fri-Sat. 10-midnight

Las Vegas has been called the wedding capital of the United States because they had 24 hour state offices open to provide wedding licenses. Now, if you want to get married after midnight, you’ll have to get your license before they close.

• ABC News: Vegas Closing 24-Hour Marriage Office

It seems the people of Las Vegas are torn with the decision.

“All the stars come out at night,” Richards said. “People that are high profile, when they come down to Las Vegas to get married, they don’t want to come in the middle of the day when people are around. They like the privacy.”

County officials, who issued 122,259 licenses last year, said the new schedule won’t prevent holy matrimony after midnight, but will just force a little planning to obtain a license in advance.

This change in hours will save the state $200,000 a year in costs to pay employees to man the offices during the late hours, but only affects 4% of the marriages that happen in Las Vegas.

Will the city stay the marriage capital of the the country? Probably. A couple of unmanned hours at the office isn’t going to affect their numbers all that much and nothing can beat the ease to get a license there.

My sister wanted to go to Las Vegas for her birthday. We are always up for a trip to Vegas, so we readily agreed. It turned out to be a very busy trip, and at one point at The Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace, I realized I was tired. I sat by the fountain and took it all in.

This is what I saw:

Next time your vacation is starting to take over and the activities become more tiring than enjoyable, let yourself just sit. Relax and enjoy the surroundings. You don’t need to be doing something every minute of every vacation. Sometimes the best times are the times when you think you’re doing nothing.

Via: Pick Me! » Zen Moment at Caesar’s Palace

Ash Buckles likes riding his ATV and is always looking for a good trail. He shares a couple with us here:

• Tibble Fork – American Fork Canyon, Utah – Ash Buckles – Blog

• Five Mile Pass – Near Cedar Fort, UT – Ash Buckles – Blog

• ATV Trailhead in Tucker, Utah in Sanpete County – Ash Buckles – Blog

He describes in detail how to get to each trail and even provides pictures of the beauty you will see when you’re there. This is his picture from Five Mile Pass.

If you are looking for someplace to take your ATVs four-wheelin’, then check Ash’s website before you plan. He keeps a running log of his favorite ATV trails here:

• Utah ATV Trails – Ash Buckles – Blog

Los Angeles is a bustling metropolitan area, one of the biggest in North America, yet there are strange, forgotten pockets that have been abandoned. For a different travel experience, that’s free unless you get caught trespassing, try visiting the ruins of southern California.

• Metroblogging Los Angeles: Ruins of Southern California

The one that looks the most interesting to me is the former site of the Los Angeles Zoo. Empty cages and imitation caves. I can’t wait until the next time we go to California to see these unique sites.

“Let’s go to that restaurant with the beer.”

“Which one is that?” It’s not like Salt Lake City has such few restaurants with beer that I could tell which one he meant.

“You know, you asked the guy to pour the beer while you filmed him with your camera…”

“Oh yeah… The Bohemian. Yeah, let’s go there!”

Music Credit: Experimental Royalty Free Music – Laid Back Guitars

It was one of those moments when everything is beautiful. Our waiter had poured one glass of beer and I asked if it was okay if I filmed him while he poured the other. We sat on the shady east side of the restaurant outdoors and enjoyed the mild weather.

The beer? Yeah… it tasted like beer…

All beer tastes like teenaged drunken parties and vomit to me. This beer was no different. It looked so pretty, though. It was a cruel joke, looking like a frothy root beer float. Instead, it tasted like beer you should chew.

It made quite an impression on my friend, though…

Where: The Bohemian Brewery and Grill – 94 E 7200 S (Fort Union Blvd) Salt Lake City, UT 84047 Google Map Phone: 801-566-5474

I wrote an article earlier about Lagoon when I was a child:

• Starling Travel » Reminiscing About Lagoon

It is still around and a favorite summer time activity for the kids in Northern Utah. Local hotels sell “Lagoon Packages” to attract visitors from neighboring states.

This website has a webcam installed where you can see a aerial picture of Lagoon updated every five minutes:

• Lagoon Is Fun

I found Google Maps to be much more appealing, even though the photos are out of date, the color is so beautiful:

Sadly, my two favorite rides, The Terroride and Dracula’s Castle, are just huge boring buildings and an aerial shot of them is strangely disappointing when I think of all the “spine-tingling” fun I’ve had on those rides.

There are many locally owned amusement parks like Lagoon all over the United States. If you are feeling a little bored, plan a trip to one for the weekend. You might be surprised at how fun a trip to a local amusement park can be.