NJ couple eat, drinks and walks around Portland, OR

The Washington Post's "Going our way" section profiles the Sommers' (picture right) walking trip to Portland, Oregon.

"One of America's best walking towns" (Walking magazine). "So green you could serve it as a side dish" (Outside). "Cool, quirky style surprisingly affordable" (Budget Travel). "One of the top 10 cat-friendly cities in America" (CATalyst Council).

Okay, so the accolades are getting a little wacky. But you get the idea. Portland, Ore., is a much-loved city, celebrated for its locally sourced food and wine scene, its vibrant downtown, its walkable neighborhoods and outdoorsy, laid-back vibe. It's an ideal vacation choice for Gladys and Howard Sommers, who like to explore smallish U.S. cities and experience the unique flavor of each.

Read the full story: Portland, Ore: A town where you can eat and drink... and walk it all off

Photo from Gladys and Howard Sommers

Ride Amtrak, expect delays

The Washington Post reports that more people are riding Amtrak trains but on time arrivals are less frequent.

Though many trains do run on time, or close to it, rail passengers frequently find themselves stuck in travel purgatory, because some unforeseen situation has tripped up Amtrak: A sluggish freight train is blocking the way; the engine's power source has conked out; a ne'er-do-well cow has wandered onto the tracks; there's cleanup on Track 1. The causes are legion, the delays legendary.

"It's a love-hate situation," said Jim Wrinn, editor of Trains magazine. "There's this promise of a really nice ride and experience, but it's really not there."

Still, many starry-eyed travelers continue to harbor hope that their Amtrak trip will succeed, especially now that the other modes of transportation are failing us.

Read the full story: Amtrak ridership is up, but passengers grouse about frequent delays

Photo by Jennifer Beeson Gregory / The Washington Post

Maine woods eco-lodge

The Washington Post reports on a Maine eco-lodge reached only in the winter by skis. Diane Daniel writes about her trip.

We were looking for a silent, snowy and achingly beautiful winter weekend. Five hours north of Boston, in the western Maine woods, we found it.

Even better, we spent two nights in off-the-grid full-service comfort deep in those woods, thanks to one of the most ambitious environmental projects in the state: the Maine Huts & Trails system, a nascent network of year-round hiking, biking and skiing trails connecting alternative-powered, eco-friendly huts where guests can spend the night.

Read the full story: Deep in the Maine woods

Photo from Maine Huts & Trails

Ride subway, exit in "Asia"

The Washington Post reports on the New York City subway ride that will let you out in "Asia."

Brain Yarvin takes you on the plane-less journey to Flushing, Queens, only $2.25 and about a 45 minute subway ride from Midtown Manhattan.

Most out-of-towners will head toward Flushing for Citi Field or its neighbor, Arthur Ashe Stadium, and if they're not in the loop, they'll take in a baseball game or a tennis match and leave. The rest of us know better. Here's a neighborhood that really seems to be part of China, only with New York City street signs. When I step off the train at Main Street, get my first whiff of scallion pancakes, make my first sighting of a new menu or find some ingredient that exists nowhere else in the Eastern United States, I know that I've come to the right place.

Read the full story: Flushing, Queens: Taking the 7 train from Times Square to Asia

Scenic byway in New Jersey

The Washington Post reports on New Jersey's historic Millstone Valley Scenic Byway. It's a hiking and driving path that meanders through untouched nature; not something that one would think exists in the Turnpike and strip mall state.

Isolated from the rumble of six-lane traffic and the sprawl of strip malls, the byway seemingly travels backward, to the 19th century, when the Delaware & Raritan Canal was a watery highway of commerce; to the Revolutionary War, when George Washington and his men tromped through the lowlands after two victorious battles; to the 1700s, when Dutch settlers farmed the fertile valley; to the pre-Colonial Native American settlements of the Lenni Lenape.

Read the full story: Thrown for a loop in New Jersey

Photo by Lardner/klein Landscape Architects From National Scenic Byways Online

Escape from crowded Capri

The Washington Post reports on getting away from the crowded parts of Capri with a scenic trek.

Capri is a beautiful and heavily-touristed island near Naples, Italy. It may seem hard to escape from the crowds but Kristin Harrison managed to do it on a three-day trip:

On a Sunday morning last May, my boyfriend and I strolled through a field of pink and yellow wildflowers on the island of Capri, following a dirt path that seemed more suitable for goats. There wasn't another person in sight. We scrambled up rocky bluffs and hiked along a grassy meadow until the path ended abruptly at a steep drop-off to the Mediterranean Sea. Yachts and sailboats dotted the waters below, small flecks of white on a canvas of azure, turquoise and aquamarine.

Read the full story: Trekking the casual side of Capri

Photo by Jeremy Ginsberg

Greenland: icebergs and sled dogs

Featured in this week's Washington Post's "Your vacation in lights" is Fabia and John Mahoney's trip to Greenland.

HIGHLIGHTS: Icebergs, icebergs and more icebergs. On a morning boat trip from Ilulissat, we sailed among hundreds of towering hunks of ice, each one a different size, shape and color. Another boat tour (this one 12 hours) took us to a calving glacier that, our guide said, had given birth to the berg that sank the Titanic.

Read the full story: Tip of the icebergs

A sustainable farm tour

The Washington Post reports on a sustainable farm tour in Virginia.

Polyface [Farm] has been widely praised by sustainable-farming advocates and foodies for its commitment to Earth- and animal-friendly practices, including rotational grass grazing, humane treatment of animals and local processing. With an annual average population of 6,500 laying hens (for eggs), 24,000 broilers (for meat), 1,000 head of cattle, 200 hogs, 500 turkeys and 250 rabbits, Polyface is classified as a commercial farm, but it's on the smaller side, defiantly spurning one-size-fits-all USDA regulations.

Read the full story: For locavores, a new breed of farm

77-year-old D.C.-er bikes Manhattan tip-to-tip

Maryland resident Albert Diaz, pictured above, thought what better way to celebrate his impending 78th birthday but to bike Manhattan from bottom to top.

Diaz wrote about his biking trip in The Washington Post.

He easily took the Vamoose bus line from Bethesda, Maryland (it takes bikes at no extra cost) and after being dropped off in Midtown Manhattan, headed down to his starting point at Battery Park.

His bike path of choice was the Greenway that stretches all the way up to the George Washington Bridge 11 miles north.

Read the full story: Manhattan on wheels

Bus deals D.C. to NYC

Now that gas is so expensive, more and more people are using public buses to get around.

There's always been Greyhound, but now between the busy Northeast corridor, the demand for cheaper and better rides give travelers more options to choose from.

The Washington Post has a review of six bus lines going to and from Washington D.C. to New York City.

Ecotravel News can vouch for the environmental-friendliness, cheapness, and convenience of the Chinatown buses as written in this previous post; as for safety, that's another issue.

Read the full story: D.C. to New York: The deals on the bus go round and round

Photo from Picassa website, click here to read the photographer's review of the Bolt Bus from D.C. to NYC.

Books on the endangered environment

Traveling is bad for the environment no matter how "eco" the traveler is.

And to drill in that point The Washington Post reports on four books that will "make you think about where you're going."

The titles of the books say exactly what you will encounter:

1) Disappearing Destinations: 37 Places in Peril and What Can Be Done to Help Save Them

2) Disappearing World: 101 of the Earth's Most Extraordinary and Endangered Places

3) The Quest for Kaitiakitanga: The Ancient Maori Secret From New Zealand That Could Save the Earth

4) Across the Tibetan Plateau: Ecosystems, Wildlife, and Conservation

It seems like all the books' authors have actually traveled to the places they have written about. But nothing about if they used environmentally-sound traveling policies. The one thing that always bothers me is when pro-environmentalists go all over the world to show how bad the environment is but travel in planes or other greenhouse gas producing transportation, hence worsening the problems with global warming.

It seems to me a little hypocritical.

Read the full story: Traveling to the edge of extinction

Ecotravel News described as "value-added leader" resource

As narcissistic as Ecotravel News is, somehow we are always happy and surprised to know that there are people who actually read the site. So we were pleased to find that Ecotravel News has been recommended by the Go Green travel wiki administrator Anne McDonough aka Annemcd as one of six "reliable, value-added leaders in the field" of green-travel resources. We are lumped together with such noted organizations as Lonely Planet and Carbon Fund!

In a previous post we noted the review of Ecotravel News by Ms. McDonough, and the inclusion in this list of green travel resources is another happy event:

"Several of the [green-travel] resources are among those that my former newsroom [Washington Post] colleagues and I have recommended to the general public in order to address a few of the major issues facing those who travel, including carbon off-set, myths of the "eco-travel" trend and endangered destinations. All of the resources offer concrete steps for the common traveler to take in order to decrease their domestic and international environmental impact, whether through tips and suggestions or by highlighting how these issues are addressed in the press.

There are numerous other resources that would warrant inclusion in this list; I chose organizations that are reliable, value-added leaders in the field. The first resource, for example, sends a higher percentage of every dollar donated right to supporting carbon-offset projects, then doother [sic] like organizations. I feel that each resource is either the first, the best or the most vocal in its field."

We nominate ourselves as the "most vocal."

Link to the full Go Green resource list

No worries in Alaska's ANWR

The Washington Post reports on an epic-ish trip to "one of North America's last remaining wild expanses" - aka - Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). A trip that author Paula Stone worried about ahead of time incessantly and needlessly since the trip turned out to have beautiful weather. Dangers and annoyances like huge mosquitoes and bears were dealt with humor and awe respectively. And the experience and vistas were worth it:

"No amount of reading could have prepared me for the beauty of this treeless place. I kept kneeling on the tundra to inspect gorgeous wildflowers, grasses clinging to fragile soils, swelling berries and tiny spiders, while [my husband] clambered on the rocks. Overhead, chattering birds -- most of which had migrated thousands of miles to breed here -- raced the clock to raise their young during the short summer season. The vistas were enormous, stunning: a distant mountainside was awash in pink; another bloomed wispy white. We walked along ancient animal trails, over spongy tussocks, across shivery streams, in the wake of bear, wolf and caribou tracks. A rainbow halo encircled the sun."

Read the full story: No roads, no regrets

Climate change prompts rise in sled-dog vacations

The Washington Post reports on the strangely growing trend of dog-sledding vacations. Travelers head to the northern reaches of Canada and Scandinavia to sit on sleds and be pulled by teams of furry dogs:

"Dog breeders and tour operators said the rising interest comes in part from the bull market for environmentally friendly vacations. 'There is a kind of beauty in it -- it's environmental, and the down-to-earth part of it attracts people,' said Kenth Fjellborg, a [Swedish] dog breeder who said he takes at least 5,000 people on dog-sled tours a year, up from 200 people in the early 1990s."

Read the full story: Dog-sledding, like climate, heating up

Spot endangered dolphins in Hong Kong

Among the high-rise buildings and disappearing nature in Hong Kong is the endangered dolphin watch tour. The Washington Post reports on this rare ecotravel sight:

"The dolphins are going head to head with Hong Kong development, and bets are with the builders."

Read the full article: Hong Kong's dolphins will tickle you pink

Ecotravel guidebooks

The Washington Post had a recent article on "green guidebooks." Popular travel guide series such as Lonely Planet and Rough Guides among others have published books on how to travel the environmentally friendly way:

"'In general, the U.S. market is just becoming aware of eco-travel, carbon footprint and the impact of travel on the planet,' said Fodor's Travel publisher Tim Jarrell. He said that as Americans 'increasingly become concerned about global warming, they will begin to examine different parts of their life.'"

Read the full story: Guidebooks show travelers how to go green

Enjoy Natural Wildlife Refuge Week

Next week (10.7-13) is the start of Natural Wildlife Refuge Week. The Washington Post compiled a list of seven different places where one can commune with nature and enjoy the week.

Read the full story: Take a trip to where the wild things are

Sharing bicycles in Paris

The Washington Post has published an article about the French capital's new shared public transportation bicycles. The Velibs, which is a clever combination of the French name for bicycle, velo and freedom, liberte, can be cheaply rented around the city by just using your credit card:

"Here's how it works: Velibs can be picked up and dropped off at any of a thousand stations around the capital, where users insert credit cards into a machine to sign up for a day (one euro, or about $1.40), a week (five euros) or a year (29 euros). A fee of $205 is taken from your account if the bike is not returned. Caveat: At this point, only smart-chip Visa cards and America Express cards are accepted.

The system is designed to encourage short journeys: After paying your subscription fee and picking up a bike, the first half-hour is free. The second half-hour costs one euro, the third costs two euros and a fourth would cost an added four euros, to encourage people to stick to the half-hour system."

So using a bike to get around is a green way to see Paris.

Read the full story: Free wheeling: Paris's new bike system

Wash Post tells you how to ruin the environment

In this era of environmental accountability and responsibility, The Washington Post countered this trend by printing a completely backwater article today about tearing up sand dunes with all-terrain vehicles, or ATVs, for the simple pursuit of so-called fun.

It also went on to list the beaches or dune areas where one can actually "tear it up" with an ATV. That is like giving terrorists maps of prime locations of where to plant bombs and giving them instructions of exactly how to do it. But here a so-called "media giant" newspaper is helpfully informing polluters and environmental destroyers how to do more damage to the fragile environment - just so they can have a good time.

The writer of this horrible story, Cindy Loose, should definitely be ashamed of herself. Check out this excerpt:

"The section of the [Oceano] dunes [within the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Preserve] and beachfront open to ATVs and other vehicles is a point of controversy. The Santa Lucia chapter of the Sierra Club won a lawsuit in 2005 that increased the size of the area fenced off for nesting birds. The environmental group is now pushing to make the nesting area off-limits year-round, so that the habitat on which the birds depend is kept in good shape for their annual arrival...

Hiking the dunes would certainly have been better for my health, but I confess a tendency to see an inverse relationship between what's healthy and what's the most fun. And riding the dunes definitely falls into my "most fun" category."

Congratulations Cindy on writing one of the least-environmentally responsible travel articles ever.

Read the full story: Hey, Dune