When you want to have lunch in the town park or any national theme parks it is best to brign a salad and sandwich. You can pull out the deli meat and condiments easily straight from the cooler and just make the salads ahead of time.  All you have to do is toss a green salad mix with a bagged salad mixtures and you’re off to go.  Cutting up tomatoes, croutons, cucumber slies and some ground pper works well enough to give you a fun hassle free lunch at the park.

salads, sandwiches, tomatoes, pinic, park

One thing everyone agrees on is that beautiful Telluride knows how to party. Nestled in a remote box canyon in the San Juan Mountains toward the southern end of the Rockies, the city came into being as a mining outpost in the 1870s. A hundred years later, it turned over a new leaf as a champagne powder ski resort. Now a scenic gondola connects the ski area’s chic Mountain Village resort with the original, largely preserved Victorian town below (the whole hamlet enjoys National Landmark status), and fun rages from sunup to well after sundown, 365 days a year.

Off the slopes, visitors hike, bike, snowshoe, camp, fish, kayak, golf, ice-skate and rock-climb, depending on the season. But what really sets good-time Telluride apart from other well-heeled mountain retreats are its festivals. The town-wide party season kicks off in June with an internationally renowned balloon rally, when hundreds of the humongous contraptions take to the air at sunrise. After that, multi-day fests come fast and furious throughout summer and fall. Among the top draws: Bluegrass, Wild West, Wine, Jazz and Mushroom. By the time the world-class Telluride Film Festival pulls up stakes in September, fresh powder typically blankets the peaks. That’s the way they like it in Telluride: Every season flows seamlessly into the next, with never any doldrums between.

Hop aboard the St. Charles Avenue streetcar. It is the nation’s oldest continuously operating line for a swaying ride toward the legendary nightlife of the French Quarter. You can ride in jazz, indulgent host of Mardi Gras, capital of creole cooking and take-out margaritas — the Big Easy has been teaching the rest of America to swing ever since the original Satchmo, native son Louis Armstrong, honed his chops as a riverboat musician on the mighty Mississippi. “Let the good times roll,” natives say, a sentiment that sounds even better, sassier, in the old patois, rolling off the tongue like a Bourbon Street hurricane on a steamy summer night — “Laissez les bons temps rouler.” Part French, part Spanish, part Caribbean, shaped by African traditions, old-line gentry, and waves of Irish and Italian immigration, New Orleans serves up a cultural gumbo spiced with good music, good food and good spirits. It’s the sort of improbable place a poet would have to invent if it didn’t already exist, except no one could dream up New Orleans.

St. Charles Avenue streetcar, new orleans

One of the main highlights of New Orleans is a fun day at the Audubon Zoo.

The Spanish-moss-draped environment re-creates a gator-infested marsh, complete with fat catfish; giant, ratlike nutria; and extremely rare white alligators. Also at home in the zoo, located within the Crescent City’s vast Frederick Law Olmsted-designed urban oasis: Bengal tigers, Malayan sun bears, Komodo dragons and a baby rhino named Satchmo.

Audubon Zoo site writes: “In addition to the amazing animals, exhibits, live animal presentations and hands-on animal encounters you can ride the Endangered Species Carousel, Simulator and Swamp Train. You can also shop in our fabulous Audubon Marketplace gift shop!”

Audubon zoo, animals, wildlife

More than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. Many Americans can trace their immigrant ancestors through Ellis Island.

Ellis Island, now a 27.5-acre site located just minutes off the southern tip of Manhattan Island, New York, is likely to connect with more of the American population than any other spot in the country.

The Ellis island is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the National Park Service.

The Ellis Island Immigration Museum is part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument and is one of the country’s most popular historic sites. In 2001, The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, in partnership with the National Park Service, unveiled the American Family Immigration History Center®.

Museum Highlights
· The museum’s self-guided exhibits chronicle Ellis Island’s role in immigration history and include
artifacts, photographs, prints, videos, interactive displays, oral histories, and temporary exhibits.
· The American Family Immigration History Center®
· The American Immigrant Wall of Honor®
· Ellis Island Living Theater
· Award-winning film documentary “Island of Hope, Island of Tears”

museum, history, ancestry,   Island of Hope, Island of Tears, American Family Immigration History Center,   American Immigrant Wall of Honor, Ellis Island Immigration Museum

“Society is not fair, until was make it so.” This has been the battle cry of the civil action groups who fought in the labor history of the America.

The Haymarket donnybrook began at Chicago’s McCormick Reaper factory on May 3, 1886, when police killed two workers while intervening in a fight between strikers (demonstrating for an eight-hour day) and strike breakers.

It was reported that during the rally at the Haymarket Square, one of the rallyists dropped a bomb and then the police began shouting.  There were 10 casualties including police officers.

In total there were eight activists who were convicted of inciting the riot through “inflammatory speeches and publications.” Four were hanged and another committed suicide in jail. The remaining three eventually received full pardons.

In the old days, when the protection being asked were taken for granted like fair pay, safe working conditions, weekends off, brave individuals earn them by in the old-fashion way: with blood, sweat and great sacrifice. They must be defended in the same way.

freedom of speech, Haymarket, Haymarket Square

The famous Edmund Pettus Bridge was named after Edmund Winston Pettus, a Confederate Brigadier general and an eventual U.S. Senator. It is infamous as the site of the conflict of Bloody Sunday (March 7, 1965), where armed officers attacked peaceful civil rights demonstrators.

It is the landmark of civil rights movement as it has played an important chapter in the long struggle for the rights of the Americans against racism. People from all walks of life fought for the right to housing, education, and employment regardless of color.

equality, rights, racism, americans

The July 2, 1864 law creating National Statuary Hall reads, in part:
“The States to provide and furnish statues, in marble or bronze, not exceeding two in number for each state, of deceased persons, who have been citizens thereof, and illustrious for their historic renown or for distinguished civic or military service as each State may deem worthy of this national commemoration.”

Esther Hobart McQuigg was an equal rights leader who was born in Tioga Country, New York on August 8, 1812.

To promote the idea of giving women the right to vote, Morris was said to have organized a tea party for the electors and candidates for the first territorial legislature. However, her role in promoting suffrage legislation in the territory has been disputed. In any case, Wyoming became the first U.S. territory to give women the right to vote, and Esther Morris is commonly regarded as one of the heroines of the women’s suffrage movement.

women’s right, right to vote

Because of this very artistic and historic work, the Walden Pond was designated into a National Historic Landmark and the very birthplace of the conservation movement.

The Reservation encompasses 400 acres which includes the 102-foot deep glacial kettle-hole pond. Mostly undeveloped woods totaling 2680 acres, called “Walden Woods” surround the reservation.

The area is a good place to go for walking, swimming, fishing and just having picnic. Walden Pond is limited to only 1,000 visitors a day to preserve the place.  Bicycles, dogs, boats and grills are not allowed to be taken inside.

fishing, walking, picnic, historic, walden, thoreau, pond, park

“I thought you would place the house near the waterfall, not over it,” Edgar J. Kaufmann said to his architect. “E.J., I want you to live with the waterfall, not just look at it,” countered Frank Lloyd Wright to his client.

Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. Residence or famously known as the Fallingwater, is designed by  American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania.

The house was built 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. It was created partly over a waterfall in Bear Run at Rural Route 1.

Edgar Kaufman’s Sr. was a successful Pittsburgh business man who founded the Kaufmann’s department store.

At the time of its construction, the house cost a total of $155,000.[18] broken down as follows:[19] house $75,000, finishing and furnishing $22,000, guest house, garage and servants quarters $50,000, architect’s fee $8,000. Accounting for inflation, this translates to about $2.3 million in 2007 dollars[20].

architect, waterfall, fallingwater, kaufmann, department store, bear run