January 2011

I was expecting a dusty old museum or a weed-grown cemetery. Instead I have been dropped onto the set of Gone With The Wind. As I get out of my rental car in front of the old country compound the Campo, two other cars pull up, and out come seven teenage girls in white pink, and green hoop skirts and one young man in Confederate gray.

I was expecting a dusty old museum or a weed-grown cemetery. Instead I have been dropped onto the set of Gone With The Wind . As I get out of my rental car in front of the old country compound the Campo, two other cars pull up, and out come seven teenage girls in white pink, and green hoop skirts and one young man in Confederate gray.

The easiest way to get to the Bechler area of Yellowstone National Park is by driving twenty-six miles east of Ashton, Idaho. About seven miles east of Highway 20, turn right on Green Timber Road (also marked for Yellowstone National Park), and drive nineteen miles. Once inside the park boundary, watch for signs pointing to the Bechler Ranger Station and Cave Falls. Both areas have trailheads with information on day-hiking opportunities, and the ranger station is open daily during the summer. There is no phone. One way to trek into Bechler is with the tour company Llamas of West Yellowstone, which designs trips around each client’s abilities and interests (406-587-2661).

Our Public Schools Then and Now Our Public Schools Then and Now Our Public Schools Then and Now Our Public Schools Then and Now Our Public Schools Then and Now Our Public Schools Then and Now The Last Flight Lewis and Clark’s Legacy Space Doggerel

When William Gregg, a manufacturer and national parks enthusiast from Hackensack, New Jersey, visited Yellowstone National Park in 1920, his initial impressions were much like those many visitors take away today. “The tourist automobiles are now so thick on the park road that the superintendent has to establish one-way-street traffic regulations,” he reported in an article for The Saturday Evening Post. “And the designated camping grounds are so inadequate that often the auto caravans find themselves huddled uncomfortably. They fail to get that sense of bigness and freedom for which they come.”

Last October, we proclaimed Saratoga Springs, New York the first winner of our annual Great American Place Award. Naturally, the choice of future Great American Places stirred interest among not only our readers but also convention bureaus, mayors, and localities large and small across the country. The mail poured in. One packet of pamphlets that nearly burst the bounds of its envelope arrived a few weeks ago from a group based in northeastern Minnesota and called the Northern Lights Tourism Alliance. It wanted us to know about vibrant natural attractions like the north shore of Lake Superior, the upper Mississippi River, and the Mesabi Iron Range.

Trinity opens to the public on the first Saturday of April and October. Fly to Albuquerque, New Mexico, then connect (or drive) to Alamogordo. Your visit will be much enriched if you prepare for it by reading Richard Rhodes’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster, 1986). For more information, contact Public Affairs Office, Building 122, White Sands Missile Range, NM 88002 (phone: 505-678-1134.)

Time is a viscous fluid, and occasionally it sticks to places, leaving the residue of certain centuries attached to the edges of buildings, or to markers on the streets, or to the insides of tourists’ heads. In Boston that clinging moment is the colonial period and the American Revolution. When tourists think of Boston, they think of Puritans and patriots, of minutemen and Paul Revere.