Ducking in from the heat in the US Botanic Garden

US Botanic Garden/Kimberly Sullivan

The US Botanic Garden has a long history. It was established by US Congress in 1820 – and had been the dream of America’s first President, George Washington. Washington wished to establish a botanic garden that would serve in an educational function – teaching visitors about plants. The Botanic Garden celebrated its bicentennial during our…

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More Big 10 Football at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

I can’t write about one pillar of Big 10 Football without writing about its rival. Last week I wrote about Columbus, Ohio’s campus of Ohio State University, tremendously famous for its impressive football team. As luck would have it, its biggest sports rival is just a three hour drive due north in Ann Arbor, Michigan.…

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West Virginia’s stunning Cooper’s Rock State Forest

There’s a great expression in Italian: La fame viene mangiando. It literally means Hunger arrives as you’re eating, and it perfectly sums up the attitude of that food-obsessed country. I always thought a similar expression for travel would work well in the same vein: Wanderlust viene viaggiando (Wanderlust arrives as you’re traveling). That certainly sums…

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Early morning jogs in a deserted Washington, D.C.

When I was in Washington, DC this past summer, I would try to beat the summer heat taking an early morning jog. In normal times in DC, I would have been one of many, but in COVID-era DC, it often felt like a ghost town. This wasn’t a quiet suburb or out-of-the-way areas, my daily…

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When the going gets tough … in 2020

This certainly isn’t the year anyone signed up for – certainly not what I was expecting back when I was ringing in the new roaring 20s watching fireworks this past New Year’s Eve. In my last post, I wrote about a midwestern trip I took this summer, and some of the places I saw. You…

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