I always held the Minnesota Zoo as the standard to the way a zoo should be since I grew up in the Twin Cities area. Through my travels though, I learned that it was a disappointing standard to have. But recently, they sure have spruced up the 500 acre facility making it a good one to have as a bar once again.

Granted it's no San Diego Zoo, but there are still some pretty great exhibits and opportunities to be had here. And after all the remodeling that's recently taken place, it's a real...

My favorite television show, the Amazing Race, was on tonight and they visited New Zealand for this leg of the race.

As I watched the show intermittently while at work, which is all I really can watch it there, I thought back to the time I spent in this wonderful country just over a year ago now.

Next to Antarctica I would say that New Zealand was the best country I've ever visited. It was absolutely gorgeous, the people were friendly, and it was quite unlike anything I had ever seen...

"A nuclear-missile silo is one of the quintessential Great Plains objects: to the eye, it is almost nothing, just one or two acres of ground with a concrete slab in the middle and some posts and poles sticking up behind an eight-foot-high Cyclone fence; but to the imagination, it is the end of the world." ~ Ian Frazier, Great Plains, 1989

I studied a lot of Cold War history, particularly from the Soviet side, in high school and college. Looking back on those days, I think they helped ma...

Businessman William Larnach had his castle built high on the hills of the Otago Peninsula on the South Island of New Zealand between 1871 and 1885 as a residence for his family. To build the large manor home workers had to pull and haul stone up from the bottom of the hill, which is no small feat considering you could be breathless just from walking up it empty handed.

I arrived late at the Otago Peninsula Motel to check in and was dead tired from my drive down to Dunedin from Christchur...