For those who missed my Wednesday posting, I wholeheartedly apologize. I can, for the most part, blame being on the road for 7 hours, but the truth probably has more to do with the insane amount of food I’d just consumed over a very short 3 days in Washington, D.C. (Which I will now refer to simply as D.C. For non-American readers, here is a clue to telling some Americans from others: Easter Coasters call the nation’s capital Washington; but West Coasters are obviously much smarter because we, knowing that Washington is in fact a state, refer to it as D.C.)

After getting a hurried several-day eating tour by our foodie friends who live outside the city, I was beyond sated — stuffed, saturated, and at some points almost engorged.

The above photo of Cafe du Parc, located at the historic Willard Intercontinental Hotel just off the Mall, was just the tip of the iceberg. Lemon tarts, madeleines, and cafe au lait at the regal-looking institution where Julia Ward Howe wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic and Martin Luther King polished off his “I Have a Dream” speech was a slight topping on a day that started out with some of the best salad I’ve ever had (besides my own) at Chop’t. Pick your lettuce, pick from a huge array of cheese, nuts, veggies, fish, or chicken, and watch it all get chopped up together and tossed with fresh dressing, then dumped in a to-go bowl the size of a dog bucket.

For now, Chop’t is only in DC and New York, but I seriously hope the idea takes off countrywide.

I didn’t think I’d eat for the rest of the day. But our friends swiped our toddler for an evening and booked us in for a several-hour tasting menu at Vidalia, one of DC’s most renowned restaurants with an award-winning chef who focuses on local produce and seasonal menus. The sommelier-matched wines might have dulled my brain during the five-course meal, but nothing could cover the delicate and practically aphrodisiac-filled fois-gras and mushroom soup, or the thinly sliced grass-fed beef topped with morel mushrooms (give me mushrooms, I’m happy). Something with chocolate and cherries for dessert — is there any better description of heaven?

There is, and was. The next day saw us tucking into piles of Peruvian chicken at El Pollo Rico in Wheaton, a DC suburb. This unassuming family-run joint was voted by several food critics and newspaper reader surveys as serving the absolute best chicken in the city. My son chowed on his own whole breast and left me with mostly spicy green hot sauce and wings. But I still didn’t need the big pile of wedge fries.

Not being a foodie, and living for the most part on salad, stir-fry, and peanut butter, I would have stopped at this point. But our friends know their city, and wanted us to love it, too. There wasn’t much space left in my stomach on Tuesday, but somehow into its already expanded corners I managed to wedge in artisan and local cheeses (and a much-needed cup of freshly ground, freshly brewed coffee) from Cowgirl Creamery while we waited for the National Portrait Gallery to open; and a lunch of fresh sashimi bento boxes and satay sticks at Teaism afterwards. No way could I think of dessert, which is why my friend and I split a peanut butter-topped, chocolate chip-filled cupcake at Red Velvet, one of the city’s premier cupcakeries (did you know there was such a thing as a cupcakery? neither did I).

And then we just kind of waddled into dinner at 2 Amys Pizza, a certified Neapolitan pizza maker and member of Verace Pizza Napoletana Association. They make crazy good pizza and salads in their family-friendly restaurant (translation: lots of shouting kids throwing food, which is a relief if you, like us, have a stubborn toddler — but don’t avoid it for that reason; they have an upstairs which is ‘understood,’ we understand, to be more for quieter diners, like those above the age of 10).

Are you stuffed to the gills yet? Feel like living on water and sorrel for a week? Me, too. But that didn’t stop us from making one last lunch stop, just before leaving for home, at Nava Thai back in Wheaton. Its owners supposedly stated that they had started a restaurant for Thai people because they didn’t like American Thai cuisine. But guess what? All the Americans liked it so much they voted it the best Thai food in the city in the Washingtonian magazine. Red curry with bamboo shoots for me, and tom yum soup with chicken for my son, and we were good to go.

Too bad we had to go back home, where all I get is my own darn cooking. Sometimes it pays to visit a place where you know people, especially if they know their food. But I’m not looking at my bathroom scale for at least a week.

I am a city kid, and I like it that way.

Even in Texas, we do not all live on ranches amongst Longhorn cattle and tumbleweeds.

When traveling through agricultural areas, I spend a lot of puzzled time thinking, “What IS that thing?!” and learning farm kid basics like the anatomical difference between a bull and a steer.

So it was when I arrived in Hutchinson, Kansas for a blogger’s press/media trip….as we passed this humongous long, white building that dominated the flat skyline, all I knew was that it was somehow grain-related.

The helpful local guy driving me to the hotel, Glen, explained that it was the World’s Longest Grain Elevator, stretching for about a half-mile.

At capacity, it can hold 18.2 million bushels of Kansas wheat (that’s about 1.3 billion loaves of bread, which is a lot of PBJs, I must say.)

Glen was rather bemused when I asked to jump out and take a photo; when you live somewhere for a long time, it’s easy to forget that a local landmark is quite striking to the new visitor.

Apparently the owner, ADM – the agricultural conglomerate formerly known as Archer Daniels Midland did a KFC on themselves – doesn’t give tours.  Too bad; I’d pay to get in there and see the elevator’s inner workings, although such buildings have blown up and killed people.

There are railroad tracks running past the elevators so that grain cars can pull up, fill up and then head to places like the Port of Houston to export American wheat to the world.

In travel, there is always more than meets the eye, of course. From where I was standing to take the photo, I could have drilled straight down below me for a little over 600 feet and I’d have broken through and bounced on the floor of a museum connected to a working salt mine.

But that’s another Hutch post….

(Update June 2009 – I’ve decided that my Hutch posts warrant an additional disclosure line since some readers might not understand the term “blogger fam tour.” The Cosmosphere and Hutchinson CVB paid for my lodging and expenses while I was in Hutchinson. They did not tell me what I could or could not write about. I paid my own airfare to/from Kansas.)

How committed are you to travelling green?

It’s the question that will confront anyone who starts reading Babs2Brisbane, a book about a woman who decided to take the most eco-friendly route possible from Wales to Australia.

It was definitely the question haunting me when I started reading this book while sitting at 36,000 feet on a plane heading for Sydney for a four day holiday. I had done all the usual green things – offsetting the carbon credits, picked green accommodation – and knew that when I was in Sydney, I would be relying on foot and pedal power to get me around. Still, compared to Barbara Haddrill, I wasn’t even a light shade of green.

Barbara also needed to get to Australia, in her case for a her best friend’s wedding. But Barbara is also a confirmed greenie who works for the Center for Alternative Technology in Wales. Living ‘totally off the grid’ in a caravan, Barbara uses the nearby river to generate hydro-electricity, collects wood lying on the forest floor for heating, grows her own vegetables and fruits and raises chooks for eggs.

So for Barbara, flying on a plane to Australia was simply not an option. It was too counterproductive to the way she lived her life. No way did she want to be on a plane that was emitting damaging carbon emissions into the environment. But not going to her best friends wedding was also not an option.

Luckily, with a lot of brainstorming and research, Barbara devised a plan – by bus, boat, train, bike, and even horse drawn cart – to get from Wales to Brisbane, Australia just in time for the wedding. The only catch – the 12,000 kilometer trip took 50 days instead of the usual 18 to 24 hours.

It is definitely the road less travelled.

Babs2Brisbane documents her travels through 18 countries, highlighting adventures (arriving in Bangkok in the aftermath of a coup) and misadventures (being bitten by a dog, which, thankfully, was not rapid) along the way.

Total CO2 emissions from the round trip from Machynlleth to Brisbane and back was 1.8 tonnes compared to the 11.2 tonnes that would have resulted from flying.

A greener trip you might never find.

If you’ve read the book The Right Stuff or seen the movie, you’re familiar with the story of Gus Grissom and Liberty Bell 7.

It’s one of the many dramatic moments in the history of the US space program – did astronaut Grissom panic and prematurely blow the hatch on his spacecraft, thereby sinking it into the Pacific, or was he justified in his decision and has unfairly suffered a bum rap all these years?

There’s one place where you can see the actual Liberty Bell 7 and learn about its history, and it’s in….wait for it….Hutchinson, Kansas.

Yes, in the middle of wheat and sunflower country is a world-class museum devoted to the history of space exploration – it’s the Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson.

On a recent blogger’s familiarization tour to learn more about the city, we were given a behind-the-scenes look at many wonderful “Cos” artifacts by Chris Orwoll, the Cosmosphere CEO. Wouldn’t you know; he also turned out to be a former shipmate of mine from my Navy days.

Chris is a super guy and so fired up about the incredible museum that he runs – deservedly so! The treasures that he showed us are not only for “special” visitors – the museum regularly hosts free “Coffee at the Cosmo” sessions, and they rummage in the storage areas to bring out items to show guests (as if you couldn’t already spend many hours looking at the items on display out in the exhibit areas.)

There are astronaut speakers pretty frequently, and monthly adults-only “Spirits and Stars,” to sip adult beverages and enjoy planetarium shows, telescopes and special tours.

In virtual outreach, there’s a UStream video show -  What’s Up at the Cos? – and they’re on Facebook and Twitter (Chris is @CosmosphereCEO and educator Joel is @CosED.)

The video below is Chris showing some of the beautifully-preserved artifacts from the museum’s complete recovery and restoration of Liberty Bell 7, which is on permanent display at the Cosmosphere.

I’m always tickled to visit someplace that on the surface, well, might not seem to have much going on, but that’s what makes travel such a pleasure. You’ve got to keep your eyes open. Hutchinson has a lot going on (I have more posts to come) and the Cosmosphere is a jewel in the crown.

Go see it.

(If you can’t see the embedded video box below, here is the URL directly to the video on my YouTube channel.)

Related posts:

• Travel superlatives: Kansas City
• Shoot! Losing your marbles in Kansas City
• Unexpected art: the Nelson-Atkins

(Update June 2009 – I’ve decided that my Hutch posts warrant an additional disclosure line since some readers might not understand the term “blogger fam tour.” The Cosmosphere and Hutchinson CVB paid for my lodging and expenses while I was in Hutchinson. They did not tell me what I could or could not write about. I paid my own airfare to/from Kansas.)

Wouldn’t you know it; I didn’t find out until late in the day that yesterday (April 18) was Record Store Day, supporting and highlighting independent music stores around the world.

A bit of scrambling to write a blog post anyway seems justified, since I’ve spent glorious travel moments poking through vinyl, tapes and CDs in small record stores from Guatemala to Hong Kong to France.

Before anyone had heard of them, I bought my first Gipsy Kings cassette tape in a tiny shop in Villefranche-sur-Mer (yep, it still works; it’s my tape player that keeps dying.)

Here are indie record store recommendations from two of the three Perceptive Travel blog authors – Antonia is waiting for Book Store Day!

Austin, Texas (from Sheila)

Stop in to Waterloo Records (you can also shop there online) for a huge selection of music in all genres, plus an extensive section for Austin- and Texas-based musicians.  The Employee Picks are always intriguing.

You can also buy tickets to local music concerts, which in Austin means a pretty amazing selection of shows.

Waterloo is famous for its In-Stores; mini-concerts in the store by artists who are supporting their CD releases.

Sometimes fans get lucky with surprise appearances, like when Willie Nelson showed up to jam with Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel.

Wellington, New Zealand (from Liz)

In a time when the local record shop is almost a dying breed, here in Wellington vinyl fans can still buy up big at Cuba Street’s Slow Boat Records.