Group Tour Blogs

Last week when I was visiting the public library I remembered a book recommended by George Grozde, the knowledgeable guide and retired Chrysler employee who took me around the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Mich. If you are interested in Chrysler, he advised, read Vincent Curcio's Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Automotive Genius.

Sure enough, there it was in the stacks at the library: a huge 1.5-inch-thick volume of 700 pages. I'm just getting started in the biography, which paints a detailed picture of Walter Percy Chrysler, who was born on April 2, 1875, in Wamego, Kan., the second son of hand-working people. His father was a railroad engineer.

Chrysler started out as a sweeper in the Union Pacific Railroad shops in Ellis, Kan. Here's how Curcio describes the position: "For 10 cents an hour, ten hours a day, he swept the greasy planks of the shops as they had never been swept before, and did all the other jobs a janitor was supposed to do. ... No matter how hard the work was, he loved it. At the shops he could see the mechanics work on the mysteries of the locomotives' exposed engines, and he envied them their knowledge and labor." Walt Chrysler, who soon became a machine-shop apprentice with the Union Pacific (where he earned 5.5 cents a hour), loved playing baseball with the Ellis Nine and playing the tuba in the railroad band.

The Walter P. Chrysler Museum tells Chrysler's story, including his experiences in the railroad. A display holds Chrysler's original toolbox containing tools he made himself in the 1890s. According to Curcio, "an old carpenter in the shop with a practiced eye had watched Walt make his tools, and in a workman's gesture of admiration made him a box to keep them safe from the nightshift men who had a habit of permanently 'borrowing' any that they found lying around."

The museum includes more than 70 antique, custom, and concept vehicles that celebrate the heritage of an American automotive original. Three floors of vehicles, along with interactive displays and exhibits, tell Chrysler's story and its contributions to automotive design, technology, and innovation. Walt Chrysler's transition from railroads to automobiles is also covered. Visitors learn about the introduction of the Hemi® engine in 1951 and can see classic and muscle cars from the 1950s to the 1970s.

After an odd detour through backwoods Appalachia (which seemed to serve no purpose other than giving Mr. Bryson an opportunity to complain about ignant Americans), the author led me through a chapter that was packed with the names and places of early America: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Colonial Williamsburg, and (more than a century later) the great Booker T. Washington.

We actually missed the Booker T. Washington National Monument, thanks to a misguided not-so-short cut, but visitors that actually make the destination can get a look at the life of a slave who would become a self-educated orator, author, and the founder of the first college for African Americans. Stop by the visitor center for exhibits and audio-visual material that focuses on Booker T. Washington and African American history. Walk the Plantation Trail to see reconstructions of 19th-century farm buildings, visit the farm area to explore the 1850s tobacco farm, and learn about the work of slaves at in the garden area.

Next on the list was Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, where visitors can tour the distinctive home and gardens of the third American president. Guided 30-minute house tours, as well as tours of the plantation community and the garden and grounds, are available.

Continue the walk through history with a visit to George Washington's Mount Vernon. "The house was very much Washington's creation," Bryson notes. "He was involved in the daintiest questions of decor, even when he was away on military campaigns. It was strangely pleasing to imagine him at Valley Forge, with his troops dropping dead of cold and hunger, agonizing over the purchase of lace ruffs and tea cozies. What a great guy. What a hero."

And while Colonial Williamsburg isn't tied directly to a particular American hero, it's worth a stop for a look at the re-created Colonial town. The restored city is presented in the 301-acre Historic Area, which comprises 88 original buildings and hundreds of homes, shops, public buildings and other structures that have been reconstructed, most on their original foundations.

Bryson again: "I was becoming captivated by it all…It really is quite lovely, particularly on a sunny morning in October with a mild wind wandering through the ash and beech trees. I ambled along the leafy lanes and broad greens. Every house was exquisite, every cobbled lane inviting, every tavern and vine-clad shoppe remorselessly adrip with picturesque charm."

I'm sure that the real Williamsburg had a dark side, but it sounds like the restored village is a picture-perfect destination.

This is the tenth post in a series as Josh blogs his way through Bill Bryson's travelogue, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America. The previous post can be found here.

Last week, I wrote about the slow loris, a type of small primate that is rarely seen in North American zoos. Their larger cousins, lemurs, are much more plentiful and easy to find in zoological parks across the continent. If I drove from the Group Tour Media headquarters, I could see lemurs in less than two hours at the Potter Park Zoo. Located in Lansing, Mich., the zoo is home to three types of the fun and playful primates: the mongoose, red-ruffed, and ring-tailed varieties. 

In the heart of Miami, there's the unique opportunity to get up close to lemurs — as you can tell from the picture, up close means really close. Jungle Island’s Lemur Experience allows the chance to learn about these colorful and vivacious creatures, while interacting with them in a hands-on way. The 45-minute experience brings small groups of up to six members in the park’s Lemur Nursery, where young ring-tailed lemurs and the rare ruffed lemurs (both the red and black-and-white variety) are growing up and developing. Before the interaction begins, group members are educated about the lemurs’ natural habitat, diet, and habits and are advised of the best way to pet them and feed them their favorite treat — juicy grapes.

When everyone is comfortable, the lemurs come out to meet their newest friends (and servers). Quite the rambunctious crowd, the lemurs often make themselves right at home either on guests’ laps, shoulders, or heads. (Don’t worry; they don’t charge for their hair styling services.) After a lemur has leapt off of your head, you’ll never be quite the same!
 
Native only to the island of Madagascar, lemurs are considered very rare in the animal kingdom. While some species of lemurs have actually gone extinct as a result of habitat destruction, the three types of lemurs on Jungle Island are each classified as either endangered or threatened. 

Jungle Island’s Lemur Experience is offered daily, but advance arrangements are suggested. Reservations can be made by calling (305) 400-7275.
 
Jungle Island, Miami's entertainment destination, is located between Downtown Miami and South Beach. The multifaceted grounds host Miami's newest theme park, home to the world's most rare and incredible animals. Groups will have the chance to marvel at the engaging animal shows and presentations, participate in hands-on interactions with fascinating animals, and admire the striking landscapes and vistas. 

I've been blogging lately about the Ottawa Tourism student tour operator FAM trip that I participated in earlier this month. It was a great trip, and I discovered there is lots to see and do in Ottawa for students -- and for all travelers.

For Day Three, we headed to Fulton's Pancake House and Sugar Bush for breakfast and a tour. Real maple syrup on fluffy pancakes -- yum. It's the taste of Canada.

Next, the tour went four stories underground to Diefenbunker, Canada's Cold War Museum. You walk down a blast tunnel and into the 1960s. The 100,000-square-foot bunker was meant to house Canada's government in the event of nuclear war, and when visiting you really get a feel for the Cold War era. It's a unique educational site, and I could see how a tour would be an effective way to help students gain a real understanding of the fears during that time.

The final stop was at Canadian Museum of Civilization, an architectural marvel and packed with top-notch exhibits. We toured the Canada Hall, traveling across the country from east to west, through 1,000 years of Canadian history. We also saw a video on the Canadian War Museum, part of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation.

Although I had to wave goodbye to Ottawa, several operators stayed another night for the optional FAM extension, a half day of white-water rafting with RiverRun Rafting.

There are moments when Bill Bryson can outright wax poetic. Of course, he frequently wastes my time writing lengthy paragraphs about panty shields and Playboy magazines before giving me the good stuff. But just when I’m irritated and ready to put the book down, I come across something like this:
 

It was a perfect October morning. The road led steeply up through broadleaved forests of dappled sunshine, full of paths and streams, and then higher up, opened out to airy vistas…The mountains rolled away to a distant horizon, gently shading from rich green to charcoal blue to hazy smoke. It was a sea of trees — like looking out over a landscape from Colombia or Brazil, so virginal was it all. In all the rolling vastness there was not a single sign of humanity, no towns, no water towers, no plume of smoke from a solitary farmstead. It was just endless silence beneath a bright sky, empty and clear apart from one distant bluish puff of cumulus, which cast a drifting shadow over a far-off hill.

 
See what I mean? If that doesn’t make you want to drop everything and high tail it to the Great Smoky Mountains, I don’t know what will.
 
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is America’s most popular national park, receiving some 9 million visitors each year. Part of that can be explained, no doubt, by it’s relative proximity to America’s population-dense East Coast (as opposed to Yellowstone, for instance, which is in the middle of nowhere), but a lot of it has to do with the scenery, wildlife, and available activities.
 
Straddling the border between North Carolina and Tennessee, the national park protects more than 800 square miles of Great Smoky Mountains forest. Here, visitors can find more than 100 species of trees (more than the whole of Northern Europe), 1,660 flowering plants, and 1,500 black bears.
 
With more than 800 miles of foot trails, the park’s hiking options are almost inexhaustible. Visitors can fish more than 700 miles of rivers and streams, ride along hundreds of miles of horse trails, or escape into the woods for backpacking and camping. Additionally, nearly 80 historic structures in the park preserve the region’s Appalachian history and include homes, barns, churches, schools, and gristmills.
 
No wonder the park is so popular. As Bryson put it, “The Smoky Mountains themselves were a joy.”

This is the ninth post in a series as Josh blogs his way through Bill Bryson's travelogue, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America. The previous post can be found here.