Category Archives: tourism

Amish Country, Pennsylvania

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We are winding up our trip to Pennsyvania and the New Jersey Shore here in Lancaster, the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Sunday is kind of a “slow” day here because the tourism is very much geared to Amish themes and real Amish folks go to church and take a day of rest, doing only essential chores on Sunday. We did pass a lot of buggies today on their way to and from Churches in the area.

Tomorrow we’ll drive to Intercourse and Paradise and there will be folks tilling their fields with horse drawn plows, vegetable stands tended by kids in bonnets and hats, and hopefully some time to chat with folks for whom time has largely stood still, in a technological sense, for over a century.

[where: lancaster, PA]

Gettysburg, PA Dobbin House

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Dobbin House

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.
Gettysburg PA.

Now this town really knows how to do tourism. Sure there are a lot of silly tours and silly shops (Battleground Fries?) but the town is clean, pretty, historically fascinating.

We had a great lunch at Dobbin House Tavern. Built in 1776. Underground Railroad slave hideaway in 1800’s. Candlelit tavern feel with waiters in period dress. Good Sandwiches and a great little history primer menu – I love those! Prices about the same as Dennys.

Our spotless $49 per night (coupon book rate) Days Inn with hot waffles for breakfast remains a trip highlight. One more night in New Jersey and I think the kids would have run away for good.

The National Historic Park has an excellent self guided auto tour (free) and had a superb introduction to the battleground and strategies of the 3 day Battle of Gettysburg on a very large map with little lights that you sit around in a small square amphitheatre. Well worth the $4 and one of the few things I remember from my last trip here about 32 years ago. They are getting rid of it to install new media and touchscreens in a fancy new visitor center next year. I almost felt guilty being a touchscreen guy because this was cheap, effective, educational, great technology.

[where: 17325]

Travel Tip: Roomsaver Travel Coupons Rock

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Here we are in Gettysburg, PA.    The Days Inn here in Gettysburg is simply excellent with well appointed, extremely clean rooms and comfort.   Grounds are spotless and pretty.  The pool is large, warm, clean.  Desk staff has been *outstanding* and professional.   Rack rate at the Days Inn website was $141 but the Roomsaver Coupon made the rate $49.00.

Roomsaver and other major discount coupon havepage after page of advertising and a few bad maps.   But don’t underestimate these coupons.  The books generally require that this “walk in, only when rooms are available” rate be the lowest the property offers to the public, and in my experience this has been the case.   More importantly the availability of these is very good on most days.    Even in tourism hot spots like here in Gettysburg hotels generally have vacancies Sunday-Thursday nights.    Do NOT expect to use the coupons on Friday or Saturday nights or during special events or high crowd times, but always ask about availability of discounts and always keep coupon books in your car.  You’ll find them at many McDonalds and gas stations, especially those along the interstates.

Summary:

For mid-week travel try coupon book rates which are often 60% or more off the regular rates.

Atlantic City

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OK, here we are in one of America’s top travel destinations – Atlantic City New Jersey – but I’m having some trouble figuring out exactly what we should do tomorrow.   The New Jersey State Tourism website leaves a lot to be desired as it seems to want to lump all of Jersey together in the same format which makes Atlantic City and Camden of comparable tourism worth.    Bureaucratically and politically correct but near worthless when you are planning travel.    Of course an advantage here is that you are not pestered with advertising and pitches while you try to pick through the bland “politically correct” descriptions to decide what’s the “best stuff” here in New Jersey. New Jersey Tourism official site.

After some surfing the gameplan will be generally to head into Atlantic City and walk around on the boardwalk looking for neat shops and restaurants and swim a bit on the beach, which is miles long and hopefully home to some good sized waves and mild water.  The next day we’ll head out to Cape May, the point of land at the south of the Jersey Shore where you can take the Cape May Ferry to Delaware.

Atlantic City’s site is more informative, though I was hoping for more specific info about family related activities.     We are staying in Absecon about 5 miles from the Boardwalk and the big Casinos which now seem to dominate the Atlantic City scene.    I think I was here about 35 years ago on a family trip but certainly don’t remember much.

Atlantic City Tourism official site

New Jersey Tourism official site

Online Highways – New Jersey 

Betsy Ross House Performance, Philadelphia

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Betsy Ross House Performance

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.

Here in Philadelphia’s historic district many of the buildings offer historical tours and insights.   Here at Betsy Ross’s actors from “Once Upon a Nation” talk about women and the Revolution.     I’ve really been impressed with the quality of some of the interpreters here who make you feel like you really are stepping back in time.

I’m glad to see this approach is becoming a popular way to teach people history. National Park Service ranger guides are usually professional but lack the clothing and often that spark of historical enthusiasm that makes the enactment interpretations so effective.

Blogging Philadelphia ?

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Wow, I’m here in Philadelphia enjoying the Hilton Hospitality with good free WIFI, but didn’t realize until tonight that the Blog Philadelphia UNconference is going on today and tomorrow.   Looks like a great and sold out event, and it’s great to see blogging conferences sprouting up outside of Silicon Valley.  I’ll miss meeting other bloggers which would have been fun, but I will plan to enjoy history and cheessteaks with the family as we explore this spectacularly historical American Masterpiece – Philly!

U-S History is one of our Online Highways websites with great history info.

Pennsylvania Travel at Online Highways

Gophila.com is a great information resource but has some serious navigation challenges.  For example the drop down menus are annoying and complex, and most crazy is the flash photo montage at the index page which almost immediately wipes out the intro screen that has the navigation a user needs.   The pix are OK, but don’t do the history justice.   I think local folks don’t realize that people don’t come to Philadelphia to see a pretty garden or Christmas light display.     They come here to see Independence Hall, Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin’s house, and the cradle of American Liberty.     I guess those things just aren’t stylish enough for the Philly web design crowd?   Sillies!

Uzbekistan Travel and the Province of Djizak

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Update – both this page and our Uzbekistan Travel “Province of Djizak” page are now ranked very high for “Province of Djizak” searches.    Thank you Google for ranking us properly.     Also note that my old experiments on this term were messed up by blog changes, so I think the great page I created was left hanging, and it’s to Google’s credit they wound up ranking the OHWY page (correctly) as fairly authoritative.      Fairly clear to me now that our  earlier troubles were a from a site-wide Google downrank penalty.

The old story:

Normally I would not be writing so much about Uzbekistan Travel.    We already have a great guide to Uzbekistan over at Online Highways’ Uzbekistan Travel section that was put together for us by Marat, a magazine publisher over in Tashkent, Uzbekistan who visited Online Highways in Oregon a few years ago.

However, writing about the Province of Djizak has been an excellent way to get some information about why Google has been punishing OHWY.com for the past few years.  I’ve created the world’s best Province of Djizak page at the OHWY blog and linked it up.  Due to spelling irregularities for Province of Djizak clearly the new blog page is *a great page* that most users would probably want if they were searching for Province of Djizak.

However, it’s the blog posts here that seem to “stick” as the number one page for that term, with the better page going from rank of about 200 to rank of 3 to rank of about 200 again.

The conclusion?   A sitewide penalty by Google that downranks even great, user friendly, advertising free, must see pages about Province of Djizak.

Hey Google, that’s arguably not a good approach if the goal is to give users the best information, especially when there is still no Google mechanism to tell a legitimate site why the Algorithm thinks that portions of the site suck so much that the computer is punishing the whole site.

Oregon Travel: Weekend Getaways I

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My pal asked for some weekend getaway advice for Southern Oregon.
He had a tall order:

Old, quaint hotel or a cabin
Not too expensive
In or near a town with at least one or two decent restaurants, maybe a coffee house.
Hiking and swimming near
Town Festival a bonus
Not too far from free WiFi

You can’t find all that anywhere I know, but here are some possible nice family spots:

Odell Lake Lodge, No. Klamath. About 3 hours from here this is my families favorite “local” overnight though we usually go in winter. Boating and (cold) swimming in Lake, really nice, small cozy lodge, hiking all around, very good food at the restaurant lodge. I think no internet. Kind of secluded in the woods. No WIFI at our last stay – March of 06.
http://www.odelllakeresort.com

Prospect Inn up 62 on way to Crater Lake, which itself has some new cabins I think, though they probably won’t be cheap. Crater Lake Lodge is expensive and probably full but it’s worth a stay sometime. Prob no WIFI

Oregon Caves Lodge – rooms are pretty rustic but this is really a *cool* lodge in my opinion and your son will love the cave tour. Lots of great hiking nearby and good food at the lodge though I’m not sure if they have all 3 meals there. OregonCaves.com (one of my sites!). No WIFI

Coast: I’m not up on many of the lodges over there. Best Western on the beach in Brookings is nice.. (there is also one on 101 that is nice but not on water), Windermere in Bandon, Inn at Face Rock. For coast consider a house rental. Search “Oregon Coast home rentals” to bring up a bunch.

SunRiver – fancy lodge and nice houses, can be expensive depending on time of year and availability. Great hiking very near. Bend is 15 miles away and it’s a beautiful small city.

I’ve left out some of the best places to stay if you are coming to the Rogue Valley because I live here and don’t stay overnight in Jacksonville, Medford, Ashland, Grants Pass. Weasku Inn, for example, is one of the nicest lodges in the West and a former haunt of Clark Gable.

Here is more Oregon Travel detail at Online Highways

Mission San Luis Rey, California

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Mission San Luis Rey, California

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.
I really enjoyed our visit to the San Diego area. The Mission San Luis Rey was beautiful and historically very interesting.

From their information panels with minor editing by me:

San Luis Rey was the 18th in the line old California Missions. Founded by Father Lasuen in 1798, San Luis Rey soon became the largest of all the California Missions. Father Peyri, builder of San Luis Rey, remained at the Mission for 34 years and saw it prosper. Afer the mission was taken from the Padres it became a ruin. Restoration has taken place in recent times and continues today. Much of the former Glory of San Luis Rey as “King of the Missions” can still be seen today.

… and so it can! This is only about 10 minutes off Highway 101 at Newport Beach, CA. Drop by In and Out Burger for a great lunch on the way back on to California Highway 101.

Kit Carson, famous pioneer scout, led Gen. Kearny’s “dragoons” and camped at San Luis Rey in December of 1846.