Getting the flavor of...Rockin’ the high seas

Rockin’ the high seas

Who better to embody the inherent campiness of a celebrity cruise than money-loving, makeup-wearing Kiss? said Dave Hoekstra in the Chicago Sun-Times. Since its first rock cruise in 2002, the Atlanta-based cruise company Sixthman has booked jaunts with dozens of headliners, including John Mayer and Kid Rock, but none before created anything like the scene on October’s Kiss Kruise. Kiss began playing as soon as the ship set sail with a show that was “a rarity, featuring the band unplugged and without makeup.” The group performed the next two nights with all the frills before hopping ship in Nassau, Bahamas, a day early. Kiss promises to do another cruise, but for fans who need a fix sooner, “a world of travel escapism awaits,” thanks to the Kiss coffeehouse in Myrtle Beach, S.C., a Kiss-themed golf course in Las Vegas that’s set to open in January, and even Kiss Kaskets—“for the ultimate road trip.”

A dip in the Great Salt Lake

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Ever since childhood, I’ve imagined floating weightlessly in a salt lake, said Peggy Turbett in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The idea came from a photo in my fifth-grade Weekly Reader, of a couple lolling in Utah’s Great Salt Lake with a full-service tea tray floating nearby. The lake is only 10 to 28 feet deep, so “you might just call it a giant puddle,” though one that’s about 75 miles long and five times saltier than the ocean. Visiting Salt Lake City recently for a wedding, I detoured 20 miles west to Great Salt Lake State Park and enlisted a stranger to photograph me in the water. After he returned my camera, “I sloshed through the wonderfully warm water” and eased onto my back again. “Yes, it was salty, but oh, did it feel good drifting in water barely a foot deep.” I relished the moment, despite an approaching storm, before finally rising to my feet. “Ponytail stiff with salt and body crusted in white,” I walked slowly to my car.