Intelligent Travel

Utah's Prehistoric Rock Art Threatened

Just a few miles from the town of Price in central Utah lies Nine Mile Canyon, home to the greatest concentration of rock art in the United States, according to the Bureau of Land Management. Though there are few facilities, adventurous visitors can drive the 78-mile Nine Mile Canyon Back Country Byway to see the roughly 10,000 petroglyphs and pictographs carved by the Ute and Fremont Indians.

But the images, created at least one thousand years ago, have been endangered in the last several years by dust kicked up by industrial traffic related to the development of natural gas nearby. Recently, a proposal to add 800 more natural gas wells to the project would increase the traffic fourfold and was met with concern by the National Trust, the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition, and other groups. The area has been nominated for the National Register of Historic Places, and the trust created this YouTube video to spread the word about the rock art's plight:

While pursuing natural gas (the cleanest-burning fossil fuel) is a worthy cause, it shouldn't come at the expense of a priceless collection of rock art. Canyon advocates hope that an alternate route can be agreed upon so that the integrity of this beautiful natural monument will be maintained.

Have you visited Nine Mile Canyon? What do you think?

Down by the River

Contributing Editor Andrew Nelson rounds out his week-long tour of San Antonio's Fiesta with the big shebang: the River Parade.

The ambulance chasers and personal injury lawyers must love the River Walk, San Antonio's spectacularly successful network of leafy, landscaped pathways lacing its river flowing through downtown.

Few barriers, rails or poles separate pedestrians from the river. Any one can fall in. And sometimes, after a few margaritas from the many restaurants clustered along its banks, they do. I've heard they retrieve a mountain of muddy cell phones from the depths each year when they drain and clean it.

It's really unique. My hotel room at the Riverwalk Vista, a 17-room inn housed in a 19th century grocer's building, frames the river with its huge, 8-foot-tall windows. I spent more than a few minutes gazing down below at the meandering crowds and the tourist barges passing by. It's better than movies-on-demand, with nothing added to your bill at checkout.

So I'm a little nervous when my friends and I arrive at a crowded private party to view the floats at the River Parade at San Antonio's Fiesta. We're part of the 250,000-strong crowd hanging off bridges and along the promenades hoping for a glimpse of a Texas Cavalier.

What's a Texas Cavalier?  (find out after the jump...)

Heavy Medal

Contributing Editor Andrew Nelson offers us a metaphor, or perhaps medalphor, for San Antonio's Fiesta...

Wandering San Antonio during Fiesta Week you'll encounter a lot of people whose jackets, baseball caps and sashes are emblazoned with dozens of brightly colored medals making them look like walk-ons from an opera set in a 19th century Spanish military academy.

Medals are to Fiesta what beads are to Mardis Gras - currency, status symbol and collector's items. They are bartered and sold – even auctioned. One on eBay, a 1941 version, is selling for more than $299.
Other people buy them at San Antonio's official Fiesta Store, but I can't seem to figure out where it is.

San Antonian Christa Emrick was doing Fiesta with a good three dozen hanging from her sash.

"Each group will make one," she says pointing to several. "I've got one from a military organization, an AIDS group, and a German group. You can even make your own," she said fingering an elaborate one set with greenish stones. "This is one I did." The San Antonio Express has a great roundup of all the different kinds.

It's one of the niftiest elements of Fiesta in that anyone can make something and join in the fun. Sure, there's a big social scene – I saw one "king" and his "court" of debutantes roll by in a police-escorted motorcade of gas-guzzling Cadillac Escalades. (No one in that kingdom got the memo about going Green, apparently.) Yet the official Fiesta appears much more accessible in its way than, say, the secret krewes of New Orleans with their exclusive balls, open only to a small group of rich families. That may be because San Antonio is optimistic about its future and remains vibrant economically. Dynamic cities tend to steamroll hidebound customs - but something changing as fast as San Antonio has a real need to keep traditions if only as an anchor in times of great change. So when they pin a medal on you at Fiesta, they're actually helping to pin down the past, securing it in a city that is speeding headlong into to the future.

For more information about Fiesta visit www.fiesta-sa.org. For visiting San Antonio head to www.visitsanantonio.com.

Photo: Andrew Nelson

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Highbrows and Humidity

The cloistered campus of the Southwest School of Art & Craft in downtown San Antonio is a far cry from the raucous, Rabelaisian crowd that attended the Fiesta Oyster Bake on the city's west side. Here, set amidst 1851-era limestone buildings, the flesh is mostly covered, more apt to display Ralph Lauren polo ponies than tattoos. The art on display is highbrow, but the humidity's even higher - it is hot today - so people are lingering in the cool shade of the oak-shaded courtyards where fountains splash, just as the Ursuline nuns must have done when this was their convent 150 years ago. Today's event is the 35th annual art fair, and the artists are of a national caliber – spread out inside the complex in bright tents that display their oil paintings, ceramics and sculpture. The fair's getting crowded.  I'm worried someone might elbow a glass vase (the prices here aren't cheap) and be out a few grand.

No one cares. The 12,000 or so participants are all too busy gabbing with friends, sipping drinks and tapping their feet to the music of the Sisters Morales, a pair of soulful singer-songwriters up on a stage between a pair of French-colonial-styled buildings. The folkies are pumping out a catchy Spanish ballad that the crowd adores.

"They say Austin's got the 'cool'," someone says, "but San Antonio's got the soul."

And, it seems, few travelers know about it. Fiesta is a big deal in the city, of course, and throughout Texas, but it is nowhere near as popular – nor as overrun – as Mardis Gras. It's local, it's neighborhood and it's authentic.

The Luck of the Suck

Contributing editor Andrew Nelson is in San Antonio this week celebrating Fiesta, and he'll be sending us dispatches from the road all this week.

How hard is it to eat a Texas-sized bucket of baked oysters? Really hard, I'm discovering. Each mollusk is the size of your fist, shut tighter than Area 51, they mock my feeble efforts to pry them apart.

I'm at the 92nd annual Oyster Bake, one of the kick-off events Fiesta San Antonio, a ten-day-long party that is to the Texas city what Mardis Gras is to New Orleans: colorful parades and raucous revelry marked by too much food, too much drink and way, way too much fun.

Around me swirl many of the 70,000 people who will pour into the campus of St. Mary's University on the city's west side, home of one of the USA's oldest and proudest Mexican communities.  Tonight San Antonians of all backgrounds are going to drink, dance, listen to Tejano and rock and roll, and wolf down entire beds of shellfish. This is their party, and San Antonio, unlike Louisiana's Crescent City, appears to have kept the fun to themselves. Few travelers outside of Texas it seems have heard of Fiesta. But while it's on, America's seventh largest city can think of little else.

Fiesta San Antonio began in 1891 as a way to honor the battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto. It's evolved into 100 different events, which include over-the-top balls held by San Antonio's Old School Old Money elites, spectacular parades and satirical mockery of pretense in a counter-cultural Fiesta Cornyation. Here's a guide to the whole shebang.

Cinematic Road Trip: Nevada

John Ur is back this week with a detour in Nevada...

In 1924, the AASHO (American Association of State Highway Officials) and the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Public Roads began to lay out the proposed routes of Interstate Highway System. Since that time, Americans have driven across the country for pleasure and for business, with family, friends, or solo. I remember the itch I felt in the seat of my pants reading about Sal Paradise speeding through the middle of the country headed to the promised land of California in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. America is made for road tripping.

The excitement of the road comes partially from the air rushing past the window as you fly down the asphalt and it comes partially from pulling out a large map of the country, taking a marker and drawing the first lines of what could be your future path. The United States, with our vascular structure of easily accessible roads, lends itself to an infinite number of routes for a cross-country trip. What it does not give is one convenient path to hit all of the lower 48 states.

Nevada is the first state of many that we will explore that does not fit cleanly into an itinerary. It is one of many landlocked states that does not border an ocean or another country and requires a bit of zigzagging to reach. The question for you when planning your trip becomes – when do I zig and when do I zag?

Global Eye: Hearts in Nevada

"Sky Heart" by Mary Hockenbery

Photographer: Mary Hockenbery, Dixon, New Mexico.

Getting the Shot: We were road tripping last summer and decided to stay the night in Baker, Nevada and tour Lehman Caves, then visit Great Basin National Park in the morning. After we got to the motel and checked out the visitor center, we took a little drive around the area and spotted this wonderful horseshoe heart on a rancher's fence.

The Details: I love my Nikon D200. I shot B&W film and had a darkroom for years - but now it's pretty much digital all the way.

IT loves our readers and sends them this heart for Valentine's Day! Love photography and want your own shot in Global Eye? Add your pics to our Flickr pool.

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Cinematic Road Trip: Arizona

John Ur makes a pitstop on his Cinematic Road Trip to give us a taste of Arizona.

Back when I was just a wee lad, my mental map of Arizona included nothing but orange sand. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could live there. To me, any desert must be like the Sahara I’d seen on TV. I had no perception that different types of deserts could exist in different climates.

Fast forward some twenty years and my perception of Arizona hadn’t much changed. I expected to see a flat, dry and sandy land sprinkled with a town here and there. Much to my pleasant surprise, Arizona is much more diverse in landscape than I pictured. True, in the south, the land is largely dominated by saguaro cacti and the rugged landscape of the Chihuahuan Desert (as can also be seen in southern New Mexico and West Texas), but as you move north from Phoenix toward Sedona and Flagstaff, the elevation gains about 5,000 - 7,000 feet, with Humphreys Peak topping the state at 12,633 feet above sea level.

Heading north through the state, you will see the landscape shift from the flat desert land in the south to the wonderful red rocks of the central region. Sedona boasts an impressive amount of rock formations, each with their own particular name (based roughly on their shape: Coffee Pot, Bell, Cathedral Rock, etc.). Flagstaff and areas further north are surprisingly green and maintain a moderate climate throughout most of the year due to their elevation. And then, of course, there is the Grand Canyon, which sits in the middle of an enormous canyon country that stretches north into Utah and Colorado and south into Mexico’s famed Copper Canyon. Did you know you could ski in Arizona? Me neither. 

Cinematic Road Trip: New Mexico

John Ur is back this week with the latest edition of his new column about films that capture the 50 states.

New Mexico is like a dream to me. Adobe houses with curved corners seem to climb out of the mud like giant ant hills. The Native Americans and Latin American immigrants who populate much of the state seem an extension of the earth and trees. Dry, red rocks that litter the landscape in the northwest, abandoned ruins of ancient American pueblos in Bandelier National Monument that are just an hour from Santa Fe, and the blanket of gypsum at White Sands National Monument all help to create the psychedelic landscape you'll find throughout the state. It’s no wonder Roswell is famous for UFO sightings. The residents were probably just dizzy from all the gorgeous abnormalities of the far-reaching horizons.   

New Mexico has a surprisingly long history of filmmaking. Many famous old Westerns have been shot in the state (Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Man from Laramie among others). If you’re a Western type of moviegoer, and looking for a modern take on the genre, 3:10 to Yuma would be my recommendation. The original 3:10 to Yuma starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin was shot on movie sets in Burbank, California, and locations in Arizona. But the 2007 remake, with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, was filmed in and around Santa Fe, Abiquiu, and Galisteo, New Mexico. Many of the film’s sets were built and designed to match the period (Civil War era) so the New Mexico that you see will be partially created. But you might get a feel of the wide open space with unforgiving, thirsty terrain in every direction. (Side note: A portion of the movie’s set built on Cerro Pelon Ranch in Galisteo has been saved. Cerro Pelon is the largest Western set in the United States and includes some of the original Silverado buildings.)

Cinematic Road Trip: West Texas

Welcome to Intelligent Travel's latest column, written by John Ur, which will map out some of the best movie sites across the 50 states. Every week, we’ll look at a state (or portion of a large state) and find the best landscape cinema for you to experience before embarking on a trip of your own.

West Texas stretches on for miles and miles...and miles.

Driving from El Paso southeast towards Big Bend National Park, I imagined at least 15 different pastimes I would enjoy more than driving through western Texas. The most drastic visual picture on that landscape was the gas station where we stopped in Alpine. Beyond the asphalt lies plains and rolling hills, and more plains and more rolling hills.

To understand the vastness of Texas, you must realize that is the largest state in the lower 48, about 100,000 square miles larger than California. For an East Coast boy raised in New Jersey, a state about 1/30th the size of Texas, the idea that I would drive for 6, 8, 10, 12 hours and not pass through at least four other states was daunting. Even more daunting would be to try to identify the landscape and feel of the entire state in one post. For this reason, I’ll just focus on West Texas here. More specifically, Big Bend Country.

Recently, there were two films based in West Texas that I believe hit the nail on the deserted region’s head. The Coen brothers' current masterpiece, No Country for Old Men, though gripping and gruesome in its drama, opens with some of the best lonesome shots of this area that is largely dominated by the Chihuahuan Desert. The hills in the opening sequence are poked with cacti and low-growing shrubs. The sun, unfiltered by trees or clouds, batters the dry soil and any who dare to roam below.  According to a recent interview with the Coen brothers, the only Texas locations were shot around Marfa. The rest of the film was shot in Las Vegas (New Mexico) and Mexico. Paul Thomas Anderson's recently released period epic, There Will Be Blood, was also shot around Marfa.

Art Lover's Destination Guide

We'd never heard of it until today, but American Style, "the premier arts lifestyle magazine for art lovers, collectors and travelers," has a lot of nifty content for the discerning wanderer. Each issue lists hundreds of arts festivals, gallery openings and museum events nationwide.

We got a sneak peek at their February 2008 issue, in which they've asked readers to vote on the top ten art fairs and festivals in the country. Here's a smattering of our favorites that made the list:

• Scottsdale Arts Festival (Scottsdale, Arizona, March) The civic center in Oldtown Scottsdale comes alive with the wares of 200 artists and live music and roaming performers.
               
• Long’s Park Art & Craft Festival (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, May) Each Labor D ay weekend, this 70-acre park is filled with hundreds of artists from around the country. Enjoy live performances and local wine and craft beer tastings.


• Francisco's Farm Arts Festival at Midway College (Midway, Kentucky, June) Head over to the Kentucky Music Stage to hear some bluegrass before shopping for handcrafted items on the rolling campus of the state's only women's college, situated on a 205-acre working farm.

• Des Moines Arts Festival (Des Moines, Iowa, June) Our Des Moines denizen Katie Knorovsky noted in recent (and much commented on) post: "Downtown transforms into an incredible outdoor art gallery" for this three-day party with multiple performance stages, food vendors, and more than 100 visual artists competing for a juried prize.
  

• Bi-annual Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands (Asheville, North Carolina, July & October) Folks have been attending this southern craft fair for more than 60 years. Over 200 guild members display and demonstrate their crafts, much of it traditional to the Appalachian highlands.

Baltimore-based American Style also releases an annual list of the Top 25 Arts Destinations. You can cast vote for your favorite fine arts city here. IT is glad we've found a magazine that lets us support the arts, shop, and travel all the same time! For more markets and fairs, check out Traveler's list of Worldwide Markets, part of our online Authentic Shopping Guide.

No Country for Cold Men

Traveler Contributing Editor Andrew Nelson is home in Texas for the holidays, and offers up a round of new restaurants for those of you planning to visit the area (or him) this season.

In the Big Bend of Texas winter clarifies the night sky, turning the stars to blazing diamonds. To keep warm, residents gather around fire pits filled with mesquite logs, exchanging shots of fiery sotol and gossip. This December the sotol's as potent as always, but the talk is about two just-released movies filmed here. "No Country For Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" use the romantic, empty land as both character and canvas. Travelers wandering the region will find spiritual nourishment in the region's beauty. But physical nourishment is also needed. Luckily the region is welcoming three new additions.

South of the Union Pacific railroad tracks on Murphy Street in Alpine's historic adobe neighborhood is Texas Fusion BBQ (200 W. Murphy St.; +1 432 837 1214). A classic barbecue joint run by Mark Scott, the Fusion's surrounded by parking spaces wide enough for your Ford F350 (a popular pick up). Diners can sit down or take out mounds of smoky pulled pork heaped on bbq sandwiches. And don't forget the sweet tea. Many locals agree with longtime rancher Ted Gray.

"That boy's got the best food in town,"  says the respected 84-year-old.

All Aboard!

In all honesty, more often than not it’s the trivial details that impress us most here at IT. So when we heard about the Grand Canyon Railway’s giddiness-inducing plan to host a pajama-wearing, hot-cocoa-drinking trip with its Polar Express train rides, it was almost more than our inner kids could handle.

Based on the popular holiday book by Chris Van Allsburg, the Polar Express evening train rides depart from Williams, Arizona, en route to “North Pole City." As the train journeys through the wilderness landscape, pj-clad children snack on cookies and cocoa while listening to a storyteller read the classic tale. And to top off the wholesome good time, once the group arrives at the Grand Canyon, Santa boards to deliver a token gift to each child.

You can find Polar Express-themed train rides around the country, and let us know in the comments section if you know of any more worth mentioning.

Photo: Grand Canyon Railway

It's Snowing in Texas!

Well, not yet. But it will be soon. Bearfire Resort recently announced plans to build a ski resort in the Dallas-Fort Worth area by 2009 (reminding us of Dubai's indoor ski runs). IT's a bit troubled by this, but we'll let Gadling explain:

Texas skiers sporting large belt buckles and cowboy hats will be hooting and hollering their way down the state's first man-made ski resort just two years from now.

That's when investors hope to finish building a 250-foot artificial mountain and 650,000 square feet of skiing area. While moving so much earth around to create the perfect slopes is hardly a challenge, circumventing Mother Nature's 90 degree temperatures is another story altogether.

Unlike other man-made ski resorts, however, the engineers at Bearfire Resort won't be making snow in the traditional way--Texas seasons are far too harsh for this to be possible. Instead, the creators of Bearfire plan to introduce an entirely different type of snow that is actually made from a patented, lubricated plastic known as Snowflex.

According to Snowflex, the plastic substance is "a polymer composite consisting of a monofilament fibre and impregnated carrier layer. This sits on top of a unique shock layer, giving a responsive and reactive feel. Manufactured in tile form, Snowflex forms an homogeneous surface that can be made into complex features and shapes."

We don't really know what that means, but a mound of plastic snow can't be that great for the environment. IT's fond of the classic winter vacation. You know, traveling someplace with real snow. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Photo: Bearfire Resorts

Climb Down Here and Pick Up Your Trash!

Rangers worry that the gym-to-outside transition for climbers is threatening the ecology of parks.

Maybe the elevation is going to their heads, but the Associated Press reports that some rock climbers aren't being so kind to the terrain they're scaling, and are leaving litter scattered all over Yosemite National Park.

The increasingly popular sport is attracting climbers to parks all over the country in droves, but the impact of those pilgrimages has become obvious, if not obnoxious. According to writer Garance Burke, volunteers picked up more than 900 pounds of abandoned ropes, toilet paper, and wrappers in Yosemite this past September.

Longtime climbers speculate that it's the influx of novices heading to the park. There have been reported thefts and even people drilling into the rocks with power drills. The AP reports:

"There are lots of people out cruising around the woods looking for really fun boulders to climb on," said Phil Powers, executive director of the Golden, Colorado-based American Alpine Club. "But one of the biggest concerns that we have is that gym-to-outside transition."

Problems are also cropping up in California's Joshua Tree National Park, where rangers have found boulders covered in holes and stakes, and in Arches National Park in Utah, which banned slacklining last year and no longer permits climbing on any arch named on a topographical map of the park.

Bringing Meaning to Urban Design

IT caught up with urban designer Ron Fleming at a recent APA symposium on green planning. We spoke with him about the subject of his latest book The Art of Placemaking, which discusses the importance of public art in creating meaningful destinations and homes. 

What is the art of placemaking?

Placemaking is a way of thinking about urban design to maximize a people’s connection to the history, land, flora, and fauna of where they are from. It’s a way to anchor people to their locale.

Why is that important?

It makes people care about where they are from. It gives them a sense of proprietorship and belonging. It creates respect and decreases vandalism.

Big Wheels Keep on Turnin'

Irv Gordon breaks a world record every time he gets behind the wheel of his 1966 Volvo P1800. The 67-year-old retired teacher has clocked more than 2 million miles (2,593,831 as of this writing) on the car...and he's still driving it. He's got the Guinness world record for "most miles driven by a single owner in a non-commercial vehicle" and, as one might imagine, a major case of the travel bug. "Some people watch the Travel Channel. Then there's the rest of us," says Gordon. "I'd rather be there and see it in person."

Gordon pulled over to talk to us on Interstate 70, while on his way to Las Vegas for an auto trade show.  We asked him what drives him to, um, keep driving, and for some of his favorite stops along the way:

Gordon's not the type to go to art museums, but the Devil's Rope Museum in McLean, Texas, is right up his alley. An ode to that sharpest of American inventions, barbed wire, it used to be a brassiere factory in the 1940s, he says. Best of all, it's free.

The tiny town of Gothenburg, the "Pony Express Capital of Nebraska," is worth a stop for its station museum.

The Henry Ford Museum is another favorite, good for road trippers from Chicago. It's actually in Dearborn, Michigan, nearly 300 miles east, but with Gordon's internal gauge, anything within a few hundred miles is certainly worth a side trip, he says. (We're sure Ford would be proud).

Creepy Sleeping

Personally, we prefer to get a little shut-eye when we stay at any hotel. But some hotels just beg to be haunted. If you're planning  to stay at any of these ghastly quarters, you won't even need your own ghost stories. To these ghosts, it doesn't matter if it's Halloween.

Construction of the Victorian-style Ocean Edge Resort began in 1907, when banker Samuel Nickerson decided to replace the site’s original home, which had burned down a year earlier. Nickerson completed the Cape Cod mansion—which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places-- in 1912 for his son Roland, who died before the new house was completed. But his wife, Addie, seems to have loved the place so much, she can still be seen roaming the halls today (she is said to be looking for her husband). About two hours away is the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem (also haunted - but then again, what house in Salem isn't?), which hosts an annual Halloween Costume Ball.

New Mexico: An old Sante Fe Trail outpost (which is linked to Jesse James and Billy the Kid), the St. James Hotel reportedly still sees visitors from the Wild West. One Trip Advisor traveler attests to hearing a scream at 3 a.m., and to seeing a ghost vortex through a camera lense. Even if you can't find any ghosts, every few months the hotel hosts "Murder Mystery Weekends," a two-night event where guests become Annie Oakley or Doc Holliday and try to solve their own murder mystery.

Buggin' IT with Butterflies

Summer’s not quite over yet, but as IT melts in the D.C. heat, we’re already thinking ahead to autumn, when East Coast foliage turns to a sea of russet and orange and parts of the country are witness to their own wave of black and orange: the annual monarch migration.

Beginning late August and ending in November, millions of monarchs make their way from Canada to the California coast and the Transvolcanic Range in Mexico. No one’s quite sure how they do it— monarchs are the only butterfly to migrate so far over several generations, which means none ever makes the more than 2,000-mile trek more than once—fascinating both butterfly enthusiasts and scientists alike.

JuntoVenture Crosses North America

Sure, we do a lot of writing about sustainable traveling (and also practice it when we have the chance), but we've just come across a group of four who are really doing it. And we mean REALLY doing it. These four go by the name JuntoVenture and are traveling the length of North America (Death Valley to Alaska) to show the world that sustainable travel is totally feasible.

The group is using only eco-friendly clothing, food, transportation, and even hygiene products. The purpose of this trip is "to show people that they can take eco-friendly lifestyles on the road, and can have fun while doing it." Plus they're shooting video, creating podcasts, and blogging as they go. The end product will be a self-produced documentary featuring the footage they filmed along the way.

Here's a teaser from their blog (which is a must-read full of the snafus and victories on their journey):

Amtrak Adds Luxury Cars

IT's always been a bit partial toward trains, so we had to share this news: Amtrak recently announced that it has teamed up with GrandLuxe Rail Journeys to offer luxury accommodation on popular Amtrak routes. Beginning this fall, seven exclusive GrandLuxe cars will be attached to the back of select Amtrak trains.  GrandLuxe passengers will be pampered with five-course meals, private cabins, live music, and all the luxuries of a fine hotel. Routes will include Amtrak’s California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco and the Silver Meteor from Washington, D.C. to Miami. The partnership was made in response to increasing train ridership and to introduce a more appealing option to travelers who want a bit more out of their rail vacation.

But fine dining and fluffy pillows come with a hefty price tag: a one- to two-night trip will cost between $789 and $2,499 per person.

Our opinion? Trains are over 17% more energy-efficient than airplanes, according to the Transportation Data Energy Book. And while air travel is unarguably the fastest way to get around, it can also be the most frustrating. Customer satisfaction with the airline industry is lower than ever, due to tight cabin space, the seemingly neverending list of security-checkpoint rules, long lines, and mishandled (or missing) luggage.

San Antonio Sandbar

IT constantly craves Tex-Mex, and until recently, we never knew that too many tacos, burritos, and beans—smothered in cheese and salsa—(and washed down with several frosty margaritas) could ever be a bad thing. But after several days of such gluttonous eating in San Antonio, Emily had an epiphany (er, stomachache) and ushered her still-hungry family to the most Anti-Alamo establishment possible: The Sandbar Fish House and Market, at 152 E. Pecan St.:

Owned by chef Andrew Weissman—whose tutelage at San Antonio's five-star Restaurant Le Rêve earned him a Best Chef: Southwest nomination at this year's James Beard Awards—the Sandbar reminds you of that magical San-Fran oyster bar scene where small tables are crammed together and loud clanks from plates and glasses echo from wall to wall. We ordered a selection of seafood—tuna sashimi, sea urchin, oysters, lobster bisque, shrimp salad, and ceviche—and asked that the dishes be delivered one at a time. The two-hour process of plate-passing, bite-size eating and Pinot Grigio sipping proved the antidote to our earlier overindulgence…until our waiter set dessert on the table. The chocolate cake was forgettable, but the key lime pie was so impressive I vowed to blog about the place as soon as I returned home. Tart, creamy, explosive, slightly crunchy—I can't do it justice in words.

IT can't quite understand why this gem de la crème doesn't have a website, but we recommend it wholeheartedly. Get there early (but after opening at 5 p.m.)—the place fills up quick.

Reno-vated

Krista Rossow, Traveler's assistant photo editor, recently did her bridesmaidly duty and took three planes to get to Reno for her future sister-in-law's bachelorette party. She thinks she's unlikely to return to "the biggest little city in the world," so IT is honored to share with you the details of her once-in-a-lifetime experience:

Nestled below mountains including the breathtaking Sierra Nevada, Reno itself is an expanse of strip malls, chain restaurants, and neon-laced casinos. Its location, however, makes it a prime destination for outdoor enthusiasts in every season because of its proximity to Lake Tahoe and the great skiing at Heavenly.

We hit the ground running on Friday night, heading to the Eldorado's popular martini bar, Roxy's. This European-bistro-style bar is located in the underground labyrinth connecting three downtown casinos, the Eldorado, Circus Circus, and Silver Legacy.

Lightning Field of Dreams

                                       

IT loves both nature and art , so when Bryan Lavietes, the senior Washington producer for Court TV (and onetime Harvard English major), suggested a piece combining the two, we lent him our ears…then, gave him a pen:

I don't remember the first time I heard of The Lightning Field (near a one-street town called Quemado, New Mexico), but it's been on my 'things to see before I die' list ever since. A fall wedding in Tucson last week finally gave me the opportunity. The Lightning Field is a work of land art by Walter De Maria, commissioned and maintained by the Dia Art Foundation.