Laura Sutherland

March 3, 2015

Eight Wild Rides

Filed under: Uncategorized — Laura Sutherland @ 4:36 am

carousel frog

A ring of pretty ponies spinning around a circular track is one way of looking at carousels – but it’s definitely old school. How about circling around on a bald eagle, an okapi, a giant grasshopper or one of Dr. Seuss’s cowfish as the jolly pipe organ plays?

Carousels have moved beyond traditional carved horses and now include all kinds of exotic creatures. The brand-new carousel opening soon in Manhattan’s Battery Park puts the riders inside imaginative iridescent sea creatures that ride through a sound and light show. At the Bronx Zoo, children sit atop insects such as ladybugs, beetles and fireflies; the Philadelphia Zoo’s merry-go-round is all Amazon animals, such as a toucan, a jaguar and an iguana; and the Houston Aquarium, fittingly, has all aquatic animals such as seals and sea horses spinning around its platform. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Battery Park, New York – Iridescent glass fish – opening in 2015
2. Bronx Zoo, New York – All insect carousel
3. Totally Kid Carousel, Riverbank State Park, New York – Carousel animals designed by children
4. Philadelphia Zoo, Pennsylvania – Amazon rain forest animals
5. Universal Studios, Orlando, Florida – Dr. Seuss creatures carousel
6. Houston Aquarium, Texas – All aquatic animals
7. St Louis Zoo, Missouri – Classic zoo animals
8. San Diego Zoo, California – Rare and endangered animals

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February 12, 2015

Put Yourself on a Packing Diet!

Filed under: Uncategorized — Laura Sutherland @ 7:26 pm

Eat a handful of almonds or peanuts every day for a month and you’ll put on a couple of pounds. Toss them in for a year and you’re going to be spilling over the top of your skinny jeans.

It’s the same with packing. The smallest items start to add up and before you know it, you’ve got a serious muffin top bulging up and out of your suitcase.

The formula for dieting is pretty straightforward: eat less, slim down, lose weight. Same goes for packing: pack less, slim down, lighten up.

But the benefit of packing light isn’t just about weight, it’s about convenience, too. It’s so you don’t find yourself pawing through your overstuffed suitcase hunting for your mini umbrella. If it isn’t jampacked in the first place, everything is easy to find and easy to put back.

Think back to the last trip you took – most people admit they wore the same few items over and over again and left many articles of clothing folded and unworn in the suitcase. The trick is to anticipate — and use self control.

1. Think small portions. Every item needs to go with absolutely every other item in your suitcase. No blouse going rogue, no skirt with an independent streak. All must happily hang together.

2. Make friends with dark colors. Or think patterns. Or even better, think dark patterns. Of course you’ll want to sponge off the red wine spill or ice cream drip, but you won’t see what you couldn’t get out if it blends into a busily patterned blouse or dark jacket.

3. Handwringing works. Test clothing to see how much it wrinkles by twisting it in your closet or crushing it in the store…the sales girls might wince, but you shouldn’t buy it if it creases badly.

4. Shoes are the chocolate cake of the suitcase –if you don’t resist you’ll pay later. Wear your biggest and heaviest pair of shoes on the plane and pack one other pair. One pair of walking shoes and one pair of dress shoes that you can easily walk a couple miles in if there’s a subway strike and you can’t find a taxi.

5. Think double duty. Flats can be bedroom slippers, a raincoat can be a bathrobe, a dressy tank top can be worn out to dinner or under a shirt for warmth if the weather turns frosty. A straightening iron can smooth out wrinkles in a pinch, and hey, a hair drier can even toast a bagel.

6. Forget all the tips about tucking small items in your shoes and the corner of your bag. Instead, throw small loose items like chargers, transformers, straightening irons and mini umbrellas and in a zippered mesh or plastic bag. It becomes your “junk drawer” and you won’t have to dig around and mess up your suitcase.

7. Pack strong deodorant – I once went on an African safari where one guest had a clean white t-shirt for every day of the trip – that was 14 different white shirts, plus dressy tops for dinner. I packed a total of four all-purpose tops for the entire trip. She might have looked pristine every night at dinner, but she was miserable lugging her enormous bag while I could practically lift my bag with my pinky.

8. Pack like a French Woman – Learn to wear a scarf. On a recent winter trip to London and Switzerland, I wore the same black sweater for eleven straight days. Different scarves saved my companions from screaming with boredom, a tank top added a light layer of warmth and cleanliness and gobs of deodorant kept the sweater fresh.

February 6, 2015

Zoos That Say, “Please Feed the Animals!”

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — Laura Sutherland @ 4:27 am
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Feeding the giraffes at the Houston Zoo

Whether it’s a rubbery-lipped giraffe gently plucking a leaf of lettuce from your hand or a rainbow-colored lorikeet sipping nectar from a tiny cup you hold, getting up close and personal with exotic animals is becoming a regular feature at zoos nationwide.

It can be as simple as buying an ice cream cone full of snack pellets to offer a camel or as involved as spending an afternoon feeding hay to the elephants or meatballs to a lion while you learn more in a behind-the-scenes tour of the zoo.

But no matter what type of experience fits your interest or budget, children are much more engaged when they can interact directly with the animals and create a personal connection with them.  It makes the animals happy, too, and often has the added bonus of helping the zoos feed and fund the animals in their care.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Northeast

Philadelphia Zoo, Pennsylvania – Offer a lorikeet a cup of nectar and watch its mop-like tongue soak up the sweet liquid ($2).

Southwick Zoo, Mendon, Massachusetts – Walk through the deer forest and purchase a handful of snacks to hand feed to the speckled Eurasian Fallow deer (50 cents).  You can also feed lettuce to the giraffes ($5) and seed clusters to parakeets in a walk-through aviary ($2).

Virginia Zoo, Norfolk, Virginia – Behind-the-scenes tours give families the chance to learn about and feed peanuts to the kangaroos and feed and paint a picture with the elephants and more ($200 for up to five people).

South

Lowry Park Zoo, Tampa Florida – Feed the white rhinos and give their thick skin a scratch ($3).

Palm Beach Zoo, Florida – Bathe and feed breakfast to the giant Aldebara tortoises ($20) or learn about and meet black bears while you feed them – contact is protected and safe. ($50 per person)

Zoo Atlanta, Georgia – Special animal encounters let guests meet and feed Kelly and Tara, the African elephants ($75), or hand-feed millet seed sticks to 500 free-flying parakeets ($1).

Safari Wilderness Ranch, Lakeland Florida – Enter a ring-tailed lemur habitat with a guide and feed grapes to the friendly, furry creatures ($20).  Or, head into the wild guinea pig colony where they will whistle with excitement in anticipation of the food you bring them. ($5)

Midwest

Lincoln Children’s Zoo, Lincoln, Nebraska – Buy a plain ice cream cone filled with camel food for $3, place it in a clever cup holder at the end of a long pole, and feed it directly to the toothy camels.

Fort Wayne Childrens Zoo, Indiana –VIP Experiences let guests learn about the animals and engage with them:  You can feed meatballs to the lions, fish to the penguins and something irresistibly delicious to the jellyfish (packages range from $150-450 for four people).

Cinncinati Zoo, Ohio – Behind-the-Scenes experiences offer special animal encounter opportunities. For example, give a bubble bath to a rhinoceros and feed her snack biscuits while you learn about the species and current efforts to save it ($1000 up for five people).

Southwest

San Antonio Zoo, Texas – Guests can purchase a cup of nectar for the lorikeets to sip while perched on their hands or resting on their shoulders ($1.50).

Houston Zoo, Texas – Offer crunchy lettuce leaves to the Masai giraffe family from an elevated platform that allows you to see all the animals in their enclosure ($5).

Phoenix Zoo, Arizona – Pat the slippery stingrays and offer them some shrimp or fish – their mouths slurp like a soft vacuum cleaner hose ($3).

West

Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle, Washington – Spend $5 for four tasty fish to feed to the penguins, or buy a seed stick for $1 to feed the birds.

Zoo Boise, Idaho – Paji, the zoo’s Sloth Bear, loves mealworms and visitors can send him a handful through a special feeding tube in the exhibit. ($3)  Or, offer Julius and Jabari, the resident giraffes, a handful of greens. ($3)

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Colorado Springs, Colorado – Offer a leafy snack to the giraffes ( $2) or purchase a VIP experience that lets you select three animals from a list of creatures you can meet and safely feed:  moose, zebra, grizzly bear, penguin, tiger, or elephant  ($190).

San Diego Zoo –The Backstage Pass program ($99 per person) allows you to pet and feed the rhinos and touch and experience other exotic zoo residents. You can also custom design a VIP Zoo Experience for your group for a five- or eight-hour behind-the-scenes experience that includes plenty of animal interactions. ($599 and up)

February 3, 2015

Sampling the Big Island’s Bounty – Kohala Grown Farm Tours

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , — Laura Sutherland @ 8:23 pm

The guide held out a pretty little red berry and explained that it had the ability to transform my sense of taste from sour to sweet. I felt like Alice as she listened to the caterpillar in Wonderland – a little uncertain, a little suspicious. I was handed a slice of lemon to taste first and decided I was game.  “Definitely sour,” I confirmed with a pucker.

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I popped the magic fruit, called a miracle berry, into my mouth, chewed off the pulpy red coating and bit into the lemon again. This time a rush of lemon candy filled my senses and I was transported back to the candy jar in my grandmother’s living room. I bit into the lemon one more time, and sure enough, the normally tart little wedge of citrus was still cloyingly sweet.

We were on an unusual farm tour on the Big Island of Hawaii, and on our way to the fruit tasting at a rise overlooking the ocean, we walked past small fields of taro, turmeric, three kinds of ginger, four kinds of avocados, mangoes, papaya, asparagus and dragon fruit growing in the fertile volcanic Big Island soil. The fruit platter held other exotic tropical delights, and we wondered which otherworldly fruit our guides would hand us next – the one with the fleshy fat green spikes, the fluorescent raspberry pink one or the gooey yellow one with seeds that looked like bb gun pellets.

“Try this,” our tropical plant expert guide from Kohala Grown Farm Tours suggested, handing us the gooey yellow one and a spoon – a welcome courtesy so we didn’t have to slurp. It was a liliko’i – the tart member of the passion fruit family that is used to flavor all kinds of island treats, like ice cream, fancy cocktails and jam. It was sweet and zingy and not at all tart, like it was about five minutes later when we tasted it again.

Once the effects of the miracle berry wore off, we sampled the other fruit so we could experience their true taste, like the starfruit that looked just like its name and was crunchy and crisp. Next up was a jackfruit. “Juicy fruit gum,” I said with recognition when I tasted it, and it’s true, it was thought to have inspired the flavor for the popular chewing gum. Then dragon fruit, white pineapple, papaya, and an array of other fruits plucked fresh from the neighborhood.

The Big Island’s startling variety of terrain – from tropical rain forests and volcanic deserts to high altitude peaks dusted in snow – contains all but two of the world’s micro-climates. Just about anything can be grown and everything flourishes.  This particular Farm Tour was showing us around the northernmost region on the island that has become a center of organic farming.

Our fruit tasting was just the first stop of our Big Island farm tour. Next up — coffee, chocolate, coconut and more.

January 27, 2015

Found Object Fixes for Unusual Travel Travails

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — Laura Sutherland @ 5:16 am

A little ingenuity goes a long way when you’re a long way from home. That’s one of the things I like best about travel. Your bag of tricks is just a suitcase and your imagination so you have to be resourceful.

On a ski trip in Colorado my son was very sick, and when he was finally able to eat something it was late at night. We were in a hotel without room service and there were no stores or restaurants still open in the resort area of Snowmass. I wandered about and found an AM/PM that had frozen bagels and brought them back to the room, where I thawed and toasted them to a gentle bronze with the hotel hair dryer. The hair dryer turned the bagels into something soft, warm and delectable and I credit them with launching Walker’s recovery. But moral of the story – don’t ever be caught without food when you’re traveling with children. The blander the better.

While touring four European cities for a magazine round-up, the buckle on my only pair of walking shoes broke off from the strap. I used the awl on my Swiss army knife to punch a new hole in the leather and used dental floss to sew the buckle back on. Then I superglued the whole thing with the superglue I always carry with me in case I’m way out in the middle of nowhere and need to “stitch” a nasty gash or cut (as if!). Moral of the story – always take a sewing kit, but dental floss (or duct tape) works well in a pinch.

Lunch at the top of the mountain in just about any ski area is frightfully expensive so I often pack a lunch and carry it in a backpack when skiing with the kids. But on another trip to Colorado, I forgot the hard plastic sandwich boxes that keep sandwiches from getting punched and pummeled on the chairlift. I happened to have strawberry baskets on hand, as well as individual cereal boxes – perfect sandwich protectors. A little embarrassing when I took the turkey sandwiches out of a mini Frosted Flakes box at the picnic table at the mountaintop restaurant in tony Aspen, but hey, it saved me $40, which I later spent on beers, milkshakes and an order of truffle fries at a chic outdoor cafe at the bottom of the mountain. Moral of the story – Buying pizza and hamburgers in the mountaintop restaurant is fun, but sipping on a refreshing beer while people watching at the end of the day is better if you’re on a budget.

The kids’ dirty socks were getting ripe in the suitcase laundry bag….and I’d forgotten to pack laundry soap for handwashing. Desperation drove me to try the hotel shampoo, and it worked just as well as the Woolite. Now I never bother to pack laundry soap, but instead suds up with the shampoo in the hotel sink.

Please don’t let the sanitation police arrest me for this one! While traveling through Europe with a baby and a toddler we got into a city late and the only accommodation we could find had neither a tub nor a shower. A very dirty little baby really needed a bath, so we plugged up the sink and washed him. Moral of the story: Always make a reservation when you’re traveling with kids. (But at least we didn’t have to sleep in the car!)

January 13, 2015

Duct/k Tape – Best All-around Travel Fix-all

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Laura Sutherland @ 3:07 am

Most of you know you can create crazy clothing out of duct tape…

and if you read Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild you’d know she fashioned hiking boots out of duct tape when she lost her too-small boots. But Duct tape is a brilliant fix-all for all kinds of other problems on the road, too. You don’t need a big roll, just a few feet rolled around a short pencil or dowel…or even an old Tinker Toy –

Here’s what I’ve used it for over the last few years:

1. Suitcase repairs of all kinds, from sealing up rips and tears to securing wheels to the suitcase frame.
2. Babyproofing a hotel room– cover sharp table corners and electrical outlets
3. Blister protection – when you run out of moleskin
4. Creating padding for a sharp backpack strap
5. Patching a hole in a sleeping bag
6. Lint remover
7. Repairing glasses
8. Repairing my son’s headphone cord
9. Hemming pants
10. Plugging the hotel sink so I could do handwash

Here are some interesting other uses for it:

1. Bot fly infestation cure. If you’re ever bitten by a botfly, a nasty little larvae begins to grow under your skin. You don’t even know it’s there until a red bump begins to swell as the creature grows. Cover the bump with duct tape and the wicked maggot can’t stick its little nose through your skin to breathe. You suffocate it with duct tape.
2. Tape your passport to your belly and put your clothes over it. I suppose you could put some money in a plastic bag and tape that on, too.
3. Short term automobile hose fix

April 19, 2011

Lindsey’s packing tips for international travel

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Laura Sutherland @ 9:47 pm

Twenty-nine-year-old PhD candidate Lindsey Farnsworth has traveled extensively to foreign destinations. She’s worked in Ecuador and Bolivia and studied in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her most recent treks were to Bangladesh, India and Nicaragua.

“The best thing you can do is bring clothes that are plain and layer well,” she advises. “I’ve never been to an international destination where you couldn’t easily accessorize and fit in. Conservative is more important than trying to dress like you’re a local, especially if you’ve got my coloring. There’s no way I’ll ever look like a Latin American. Yet I want to be anonymous, so I try to look European as a way to blend in.”

“That means you don’t want your entire wardrobe to be pieces from REI (or Travel Smith) – If you’re all ‘quick dry’ you will look like an American tourist. Europeans tend to have more interesting accessories and use scarves more. They have a few more risky pieces, like one bold and bright article of clothing or colorful or unusually shaped glasses.”

“If you’re going to invest money in travel pieces they have to serve multiple functions,” she advises, “and a smartwool top is a good one with its four-season functionality. I’d also rather be hotter in something that breathes and is a dark color than looking dirty all the time in something that’s too light colored.”

When Lindsey travels for fun, she hikes, kayaks, tours cities and visits beaches, so she needs multi-purpose shoes and multi-purpose clothing. She wears Chaco sandals everywhere in warm climates. “You can get away with wearing them with skirts or tread through monsoon season without any problems,” she comments. “I’ve never been in a situation where I wished for a more sophisticated shoe, especially with the thinner, strappier models. “

Some of her must-haves for every trip – a rain jacket that fold into a little sleeve. “On an 18-hour bus ride from Dhaka, Bangladesh to the foothills of the Himalaya in India, the window molding next to my seat wasn’t sealed and water kept coming in. I put my rain jacket over the shoulder that was getting wet…and problem solved.”

“A sarong is another essential item. It can be folded around clothes to make a pillow, serve as a beach or picnic blanket or an extra layer for warmth and can be used to cover your head in places that require it. But look for something subtle with a small pattern” she advises, “so it doesn’t scream beach or tourist.”

March 9, 2011

Packing with babies

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Laura Sutherland @ 5:57 am

Traveling with Babies – You’re a Pack Animal
Why even pretend you can travel light when you’re hitting the road with a baby. On a two-month research trip through five European countries with a 2-year-old

Backbreaking baby backpack somewhere in France

and an eight-month-old I stripped it down to the bare essentials:

That would be the two car seats, a stroller, a backpack to carry the baby, a porta-crib and bedding for the toddler and a diaper bag that folded into a bed that the 8 month old outgrew immediately so we had to get another porta-crib. And then diapers, food, snacks, babyproofing supplies for the hotel (more on that later) toys and books. Oh, and their clothes. (And the endless search for Laundromats and evenings spent washing in the hotel sink.)

There really isn’t anything you can do about the amount of gear you’ll need with a baby. But there are a few things you can do before you leave that might help.

• Some vacation destinations have baby rental gear companies. Baby’s Away is one of them and they have listings in more than twenty states.
• Call your hotel to confirm that they have cribs available and ask them about other baby proofing gear they might provide – many now do.
• If you are renting a car, call in advance to see if they also rent car seats.
• Call your accommodations to see if they have laundry facilities onsite. Ask if they sell laundry detergent, too, and bring a little bag of it to get you started if they don’t.
• Ship some of your gear to your destination so you won’t have so much to juggle at the airport.

February 9, 2010

The Toss-it System of Packing for a Longer Trip

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — Laura Sutherland @ 8:26 pm

When my mother and father returned from a six-week trip to Europe some years ago, my father begged my mother to throw away her capsule wardrobe – a navy blue pantsuit and all of its matching tops.  He’d looked at her in pretty much the same outfit for a total of 42 straight days and was completely sick of it.  Apparently she felt the same way and blithely tossed them in the trash.

So a couple of months later when I headed out on an open-ended trip through Mexico during a break from college, she took me to the local charity consignment store and had me pick out a complete travel wardrobe.  “Make it much more conservative than you usually wear,” she advised, “so you will blend in better.  And then toss the clothes when you get home.”

She was right – when the trip was over I never wanted to look at those clothes again.  Plus it was easy to toss them since we hadn’t spent a fortune on them in the first place.  I would never have worn them at home anyway – they weren’t cool enough.  But they allowed me to move around Mexico incognito – another good strategy on a trip.

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