Destination: Alaska
‘Into the Wild’: Sean Penn Adapts Jon Krakauer’s Book for the Big Screen
by Michael Yessis | 07.20.07 | 10:26 AM ET
Sean Penn lined up some impressive talent for his adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s beloved book Into the Wild, the story of twentysomething Christopher McCandless’s self-imposed exile from mainstream society and tragic journey into the Alaskan wilds. Penn wrote and directed the film, which stars Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, Zach Galifianakis, William Hurt and others. Eddie Vedder and Gustavo Santaolalla contribute to the soundtrack. The movie opens Sept. 21, and already I’m getting that dueling “I can’t wait to see it/I can’t believe what an awful idea this is” feeling of seeing a favorite book get turned into a movie.
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Yahoo! BuzzThe World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: The Traveler Beware Edition
by Michael Yessis | 03.02.07 | 8:01 AM ET
They’re turning people back at the Canadian border, shrinking the payout for blackjack in Las Vegas and seeing through your clothes in Phoenix. Those stories—plus journeys to Alaska, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Sweden and Mulholland Drive—are intriguing travelers this week. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (this week)
Going to Canada? Check Your Past
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Las Vegas: A Winner’s Guide to Blackjack
* Casino are starting to pay only 6-5 for blackjack. What’s next? No doubling down?
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Full-Body X-Ray Security Scanner Debuts
* The first passengers asked to submit to a full-body X-ray, apparently, “didn’t bat an eyelash.”
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Escapes Under $500: Go to Puerto Rico’s Second City
* That would be Ponce.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
The Cold Show in Fairbanks, Alaska
Most Read Travel Story
World Hum (this week)
Stephanie Elizondo Griest: ‘100 Places Every Woman Should Go’
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Wayfaring
Best Waterfront City
Project for Public Spaces
Stockholm
Travel Story of the Year
Solas Awards (2007)
Fishing With Larry by Tom Joseph
* Here are all the prize winners.
Most Competitive Country
World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitive Index
Switzerland
* What is this? “The index is not a ‘beauty contest’, or a statement about the attractiveness of a country. On the contrary, the index measures the factors that make it attractive to develop the travel and tourism industry of individual countries,” said Jennifer Blanke, Senior Economist of the World Economic Forum.
Prince of Wales Island, Alaska
by Ben Keene | 02.23.07 | 4:31 PM ET
Coordinates: 55 47 N 132 50 W
Approximate area: 2,731 sq. mi. (7,073 sq. km)
With a relatively limited amount of physical evidence, the peopling of the Americas has long been a subject of study complicated by Bering Strait-sized gaps in our understanding. Recent DNA testing on remains recovered from Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island, however, suggests that the migration from Asia to Tierra del Fuego may have occurred earlier—and faster—than previously believed. Genetic similarities between the people who occupied On Your Knees Cave here on this heavily forested patch of land some 10,300 years ago and modern descendants of native Pacific coastal populations led researchers to this new hypothesis. The third largest island under U.S. sovereignty, Prince of Wales in the Alexander Archipelago saw a period of population growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the introduction of salmon and pearl shell industries, but it has since declined.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
“A Land Gone Lonesome”: More Tales of the Yukon River
by Michael Yessis | 08.14.06 | 11:30 AM ET
The Crown Princess, The Norovirus and Titanic
by Michael Yessis | 07.20.06 | 11:12 AM ET
It’s been a tough week for cruisers. Almost two days after the crowded Crown Princess rolled 15-degrees to its left while sailing off the coast of Florida, the injury total has reached more than 200. All who were thrown out of swimming pools and onto railings were expected to recover, according to the Miami Herald. We’re also seeing the day-after rush of on-board video and reaction from passengers. Miami’s CBS affiliate has some good home video of the post-tilt aftermath. Kudos to the local anchor who kept a straight face when he ended the segment with the revelation that the scheduled movie aboard the Crown Princess the night of the accident was Titanic.
No. 21: “Road Fever” by Tim Cahill
by Rolf Potts | 05.11.06 | 9:54 AM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1991
Territory covered: Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska
A founding editor of Outside magazine, Cahill has been credited with revitalizing adventure writing—a genre that had previously been confined to breathless, semi-fictional tales of danger in the pages of low-culture men’s magazines. The tongue-in-cheek titles of Cahill’s early essay collections—“Jaguars Ripped My Flesh”; “A Wolverine is Eating My Leg”; “Pecked to Death by Ducks”—are a nod to his pulpy precursors, but his writing is the opposite of pulp: informed, nuanced, self-deprecating, and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Road Fever, Cahill’s only book-length travel narrative, chronicles a 15,000-mile dash to set a world record by driving overland across the Americas in less than 24 days. In many ways, it’s an anti-adventure book, since a large portion of the tale documents the process of making plans and procuring corporate sponsorship—but this says a lot about the competitive, publicity-driven, and weirdly postmodern state of post-Exploration Age adventure. The author’s partner in the journey is professional endurance driver Gary Sowerby, and together the duo deal with fatigue, dangerous roads, stubborn bureaucrats—and an overabundance of sponsor-supplied pudding—as they race north into the pages of the “Guinness Book of World Records.” As the miles speed by, Cahill’s exuberant reporting and eye for the absurd make for an amusing and exhilarating ride.
Nome, Alaska
by Ben Keene | 01.20.06 | 1:16 PM ET
Population: 3,592 (2004 est.)
Coordinates: 64 30 N 165 25 W
Everybody makes mistakes—including cartographers. Take a closer look at the state of Alaska’s Seward Peninsula. In the mid-19th century, a British mapmaker transcribing a naval chart apparently misread “? Name” as “C. Nome,” thus giving this small Alaskan city its appellation. And although a group of miners attempted to rename the settlement Anvil City in 1899, the United States Postal Service insisted on Nome, after the cape on the Norton Sound. Which begs the question: Did North Dakota and Texas arrive at Nomes of their own due to similar errors?
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
Free Pizza Delivery…By Airplane
by Michael Yessis | 01.10.06 | 1:46 PM ET
More proof that Americans do love their pizza: A couple of Nome, Alaska entrepreneurs have started what could be the world’s first pizza parlor delivering its goods by airplane. Nome, a city of 3,500 so remote it’s the finish line for the Iditarod, had no take-out restaurants before Airport Pizza arrived on the scene in early August. Now Alaskans from hundreds of miles away are hooked on Airport Pizza’s pies, which are carried by Frontier Flying Service.
Pork for Salmon on Alaska Airlines Plane
by Michael Yessis | 10.05.05 | 9:41 AM ET
The money that paid for the fish on an Alaska Airlines plane—a “Salmon-Thirty-Salmon”—comes from a $500,000 United States government grant to support the salmon industry, reports ABC News. Critics of congressional pork are having a field day across the web. Rightly so.
Crossing Divides: The Bering Strait
by Jim Benning | 01.06.05 | 10:17 PM ET
The final story in Tom Haines’ four-part Boston Globe series, “Crossing Divides,” was published during our winter break. It was an eloquent end to an ambitious project. The article looked at the remote world of the Bering Strait and the people who live there. “After the ice age thaw,” Haines writes, “Chukchis, Inupiat, and other indigenous peoples crossed the strait freely in skin boats in summer. But in the 20th century, distant capitals, Moscow and Washington, split the Arctic into communist and capitalist lands, making a barrier of the border through the middle of the strait and changing forever how natives and newcomers on both sides live.” The installment also featured a fascinating look at how Haines and photographer Essdras Suarez navigated the region. “The strait crossing was made aboard a 9-seat propeller plane chartered for a flight from the coastal port town of Provideniya, Russia, to Nome,” he writes. “Passengers on board included an elderly Siberian Yupik couple traveling to visit relatives on St. Lawrence Island, in the Bering Sea, and a Russianborn anthropologist returning to Alaska after months of research on the traditional use of mushrooms in native culture.” Finally, the Globe created a handsome Web page for the entire series.
What’s the Strangest Travel Book Ever Written?
by Jim Benning | 05.13.04 | 12:51 AM ET
According to writer John Derbyshire’s recent article in The New Criterion, it’s “An African in Greenland,” Tete-Michel Kpomassie’s story of his experience in Greenland in the late 1950s and 1960s. First published in French, the book was translated into English in 1983. Why did Kpomassie leave his home in a tribal society bordering the Gulf of Guinea to visit Greenland? “After Kpomassie had an unpleasant encounter with a snake, his family elders decided that he was destined to become a priest in a local snake cult,” Derbyshire writes. “This involved living in the deep jungle among pythons. Kpomassie was not keen on the idea. At just this time, at a bookstore in the nearest city, he happened to see Dr. Robert Gessain’s book ‘The Eskimos from Greenland to Alaska.’ Kpomassie was seized with the idea that he should go and live among these folk. By a sustained effort of will, and through many difficulties—it took him six years just to work his way to Europe, two more to get to Greenland—he eventually did so. It is, as it sounds, the strangest travel book ever written.”
Skyhigh Airlines: The Relentless Pursuit of Adequacy
by Michael Yessis | 11.26.03 | 9:42 PM ET
Just how bad have things gotten for commercial airlines? They’re now making fun of their own industry. Alaska Airlines’ latest advertising campaign centers on the faux SkyHigh Airlines, a carrier that embodies everything wrong with modern air travel. High prices. Lost luggage. Callous employees. The idea is to contrast Alaska with the misery of this hilarious, straw man airline. According to Wall Street Journal reporter Scott McCartney, it’s a risky strategy. He writes, “Alaska must now ensure its own customers don’t have a SkyHigh Airlines experience.” (McCartney’s story is available online only to WSJ subscribers.) At the very least, anyone who flies should find the accompanying Web site good for a laugh. My favorite features: The rotating slogans—“Flying More, Caring Less” and “A Commitment to Mediocrity” among them—and the travel tips, including this one: Don’t talk to freaks. “Man, are there some nut jobs out there! And given the chance, they’ll talk a hole through your brain. Word to the wise: If you see a guy skipping toward you with rainbow stockings and a handful of spoons, act unconscious.”
Note: Peanut Butter, Batteries and Air Travel Do Not Mix Well
by Michael Yessis | 10.30.03 | 8:48 PM ET
That’s the word from David Menzies, who, after sending a two-kilogram jar of Kraft Extra Creamy Peanut Butter and a six-pack of Duracell C-size batteries through the X-ray machine in Anchorage, Alaska, was called out by security. Why? Read his amusing tale in the National Post.
Peter Matthiessen in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
by Jim Benning | 01.30.03 | 10:35 PM ET
The acclaimed travel and nature writer journeyed into Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) last summer to see for himself the rugged land the Bush administration would like to open to oil drilling. In a thoughtful essay in the February issue of Outside, Matthiessen writes about his sightings of cream-colored grizzly bears, musk ox, golden eagles, polar bears and porcupine caribou. What would happen if the area was opened to drilling? For starters, the caribou “would probably calve farther to the east, producing fewer young and altering the migration patterns on which Gwich’in villages and the whole ecosystem depend,” Matthiessen writes. “And this disruption of a fragile wilderness would almost certainly lead to widespread ecological degradation.” Matthiessen’s essay isn’t available online, but the magazine’s Web site does feature many of photographer Subhankar Banerjee’s stunning images from the region, and they’re well worth a visit.
Into the Wild
by Michael Yessis | 04.29.02 | 7:03 PM ET
Peter Jenkins went to remote Alaska for 18 months to research his latest book, “Looking for Alaska.” As always, he brought along his family. Turns out the trip made a lasting impression on his daughter Rebecca. Father and daughter spoke about their experiences and motives on The Savvy Traveler this weekend. “So many of us are stuck in places because we’re afraid to leave, we’re afraid we might miss something, It’s also why so many people stay as a member of the flock,” the elder Jenkins says. “They’re afraid to step out and do something a little different. One of the reasons I wanted to have Rebecca experience Alaska was to see that she could stand alone on her own.”