Getting the flavor of...Utah’s most popular park

Utah’s most popular park

The landscape of Zion National Park draws adventurers and admirers of beauty alike, said Brian Passey in USA Today. This 229-square-mile “collection of cliffs and canyons” in southwestern Utah is the state’s oldest and most popular park, attracting nearly 3 million visitors annually. The 2.7-mile-long Angels Landing trail is “a must-do for thrill seekers”—near the end, “hikers grasp chains navigating a steep, narrow ridge with sheer cliffs on both sides.” The park is also “perfect for canyoneering treks—intense hikes through narrow slot canyons that often require rappelling and swimming.” Of course, gentler pleasures can be had, and artists are drawn to Zion’s colorful hues and geological formations of sandstone formed over 200 million years. Diverse wildlife also calls the park home, including deer, wild turkeys, and bighorn sheep. “If you’re lucky you might catch a glimpse of an endangered California condor—with its massive 10-foot wingspan.”

The original Tea Party protest

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The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum brings history alive, said Alexandra Pecci in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The renovated museum on Boston Harbor opened in June, after a fire destroyed the original in 2001. I brought my 3-year-old daughter there to learn the history of the colonial Boston Tea Party by re-creating their most famous act—throwing British tea into the harbor to protest taxation. First, we toured the multimedia museum. Costumed actors, “high-tech talking portraits” of historical figures, and holograms recounted the events of that fateful day in 1773. Soon we were aboard a replica ship built with precise period details, down to copper sheets lining the ships’ hulls “manufactured by the same company that Paul Revere himself founded.” We awaited orders, and then my daughter excitedly tossed mock tea crates into the sea. Behind us, someone remarked, “Sure beats standing around listening to someone talk.”