Playing in a tree house has long been a staple of American childhood, much like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Flinstones chewable vitamins. There is nothing like escaping the stresses of elementary school by hiding away in your treetop mansion while eating animal crackers and contemplating all of life’s complexities. Somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, we forget the joys of being perched atop an oak tree and stick to activities involving the much lower and safer surface we commonly refer to as the ground.

A recent architectural endeavor, however, has now made it acceptable to enjoy the pleasures of a tree house without having to be under the age of 12 or a member of the Swiss Family Robinsons. Sweden’s new Treehotel is quickly gaining press for its intriguing conceptualization and design.  Located in Harads, a town 37 miles below the Arctic circle, this structural masterpiece consists of four separate rooms, each secured to one or more trees between 4 to 6 yards off the ground.

Each room was designed with a theme in mind (including the birdhouse above, a UFO, and more) and allows guests to fully experience the beauty of their surroundings.  The rooms were constructed of wood and glass and come standard with a heated floor as well as an eco-friendly toilet and sink. With the hotel being open year round, it will be sure to provide an experience for everyone to enjoy, whether that be a view of the northern lights during the winter, or being able to bathe in the midnight sun beneath the summer sky. Plans are in the works to complete 24 total rooms, each from a different architect, in the next five years. The grand opening for the hotel has been set for July 17th.  At a price equivalent to about $560 per night for a room, staying in the Treehotel will cost a pretty penny.

With environmentally friendly trends and “going green” being on the rise as of late, eco-tourism is sustaining significant growth. The Treehotel plays into this progression while making a powerful artistic statement. I love this idea for a hotel and the fact that the owners are incorporating so many different architects in the process. Each room is representative of a diverse artistic style, and would be a sight to see even if you were not planning on staying. Even with global warming (or “not” global warming if that’s your cup of tea), Harads is still a bit cold so if you decide to venture to the Treehotel make sure you bring a jacket, or six.

State parks aren’t exactly notorious for best practices when it comes to utilizing new technology, so I have to say I was a little impressed when a friend of mine pointed me to this summer’s GeoChallenge Adventure from the State Parks and Historic Sites division of the Georgia DNR.

The Premise

Sealed ammo boxes labeled as a Georgia State Parks & Historic Sites GeoCache are hidden in 42 Georgia State Parks. There is a “First-to-Find” special prize for a certificate for a 1-night camping stay in each cache for the person who gets there first, and 10 of the caches contain an “endangered” gopher stuffed toy which becomes yours to keep and protect.

How To Play

• Download a Georgia State Park GeoChallenge PassPort or just the Grid Sheet.
• Get the GPS coordinates at www.Geocaching.com for the Georgia State Parks Geo-Challenge locations.
• Locate the caches by entering their GPS coordinates into a hand-held GPS unit.

The Payoff

The boxes contain a prize for the first adventurer to locate the cache, and successive adventurers are encouraged to leave a trinket of equal or greater value for the next adventurer. Log your name and any comments to the logbook, stamp your PassPort grid sheet with the unique stamp for that specific park and then share your experiences online. (Unfortunately, no direction is given as to where to share your experience online.)

There also are geo-coin (bronze, silver, and gold) for finding a certain number of caches and stamping your Geocache Passport with the stamps that are unique to each cache.

As I said earlier, I really applaud the effort. We don’t often see innovation like this from state parks and recreational organizations. That said, I think there are a handful of ways the GeoChallenge Adventure could be made even better.

How To Make It Better

• Make each cache a Foursquare/Gowalla location so that gameplay is not limited only to those with handheld GPS devices. They could even partner with these location-based services so that checking-in at a cache automatically earns adventurers a cache-specific badge (an alternative to having to collect physical stamps in the GeoChallenge Passport).
• Develop GeoChallenge Adventure smartphone apps in lieu of Foursquare/Gowalla integration.
• Incorporate StickyBits at each cache location so that user-generated content can be shared easily online.
• Create and link to a Facebook Fan page for the GeoChallenge Adventure so that adventurers have a designated place to share their adventures online.

Click here for more detailed information about the Georgia State Parks GeoChallenge.

Do you ever ride your bike at night? Have you ever come close to getting clipped by some driver who was not paying attention? Many cities now have dedicated bike lanes that make urban riding a little safer for all, as a bike lanes create a visual “envelope” around a cyclist as the bike lane provides a well-defined boundary between the bike and motorized traffic.

The unfortunate fact is that for all the municipal bike lanes, there are thousands of roads where no such lane exists. The makers of LightLane rethought the concept of the traditional bike lane for a design competition to promote bike commuting and while they did not win, there was enough interest in their idea that they’ve gone into development with the LightLane. The concept is simple: Adapt the bike lane to the cyclist instead of the cyclist having to adapt to the bike lane.

By projecting a virtual bike lane on the ground using lasers, the cyclist is surrounded with a bright “lane” that drivers will see at night and hopefully steer clear of. In essence, the cyclist is wrapped in a virtual envelope, and the darker it is, the more effective the lightlane becomes.

As a person who rides my bike a great deal at night, anything that helps protect me from distracted drivers is a good thing. Maybe the makers of LightLane will come up with an ingenious way to avoid getting doored as well?

Some people like to trick out their wheels. If you prefer to roam using the self-propelled, two wheeled variety of transportation, you know, a bike, and you like to be noticed when you are cruising, then here’s a cool DIY kit called SpokePOV that can add some flair to your ride.  The cool part is you can customize your spinning image, so whether it’s a character from The Simpsons or a Pac Man avatar, you’re in business. According to the site, all you need is a minimal amount of technical knowhow, a soldering iron and the ability to follow instructions. The kit can be used with road, mountain or BMX wheels. The added bonus is that your visibility to traffic is much higher at night.

A SpokePOV is a ’stick’ of LEDs with a magnetic (hall effect) sensor on the outer end. When a magnet passes by, the microcontroller takes note. By counting how long it takes between magnet passes, SpokePOV can tell how fast its rotating and quickly blink the LEDS to present an image. Therefore, no matter how fast you are riding, the image will show up correctly!

Brooklyn Chowder Surfer, a.k.a. Ben Sargent, is a New Yawkah who loves his chowdah and some good surf. His grandfather taught him the family’s secret chowdah recipes when he was only five years old. Having now opened and operated two successful seafood restaurants, Sargent is travelling the nation’s bays, coves and shorelines in search of the ultimate recipes. And he obviously doesn’t go far without his camera crew.

So, you are off to your favorite music festival this summer. You’ve got your high priced ticket, you’ve got a car load of friends, and you’ve got your cheap family size tent which you might trash and throw away. One young, entrepreneurial fellow in England, James Dunlop, noticed that many people abandon their ripped and muddy tents to the trash man when the festival is over (it is estimated that 15,000 tents were abandoned after Glastonbury 2007. It tends to rain at many of these English festivals) and he decided that there must be a better, more environmentally friendly way of accommodating festival goers. There is, and he calls his venture Myhab, and it’s a cool, albeit rather expensive, way to enjoy a big music festival, with minimal hassles, and with a few luxuries thrown in.

Myhab is a reusable/recyclable, luxury accommodation service for festival-goers, that is an affordable, green alternative to a soggy tent. The myhab service saves festival-goers the hassle of taking and pitching a tent. It also helps the organizers by reducing the number of orphaned tents they have to get rid of. Myhab is the new way to enjoy festivals.

It’s a great idea. Since the myhab shelters are set in their own little village on the festival grounds, they offer all sorts of amenities like showers, 24-hour onsite help and lock boxes for valuables.

“We offer festival-goers an ethical, eco-friendly, luxury accommodation service,” says James. “Myhab is for anyone looking for a more comfortable and convenient alternative to a tent, as well as anyone trying to reduce the amount of un-recyclable waste they produce at each event. We’re all about making the festival-goers experience a more enjoyable one.”

Myhab is only in England at this time, but something like it would be a perfect fit for the big U.S. festivals, of which there seem to be more added to the calendar every year.

I’m a big fan of old postcards. So it’s with pleasure that I point you to the website of Fly Lajitas, a carrier with the sum total of two routes—Austin to Lajitas and Dallas to Lajitas.

Lajitas is a border town in West Texas and home to Lajitas, The Ultimate Hideout, a member of The Leading Hotels of the World. The property is a 25,000-acre private estate nestled between Big Bend National Park and Big Bend State Park along the Rio Grande River.

See Visit Big Bend for more.

According to Gizmag, there’s a new blimp in the air. Aeros has introduced the new Aeroscraft ML866 which can be utilized as a private air yacht, corporate air vehicle, business office in the sky, or commercial commuter, providing its passengers with far more space than any existing business jet.

The Aeroscraft ML866 offers 120 knots top speed and over 5,000 square feet of interior compartment. The helicopter like vertical takeoff and landing capability and ability to operate from unprepared fields enhance the scope of the Aeroscraft by enabling access to remote areas anywhere in the world.

And Aeros isn’t the only company advancing the blimp concept. According to de zeen art director Tino Schaedler and Michael J. Brown are working to launch their Strato Crusier, a luxury helium-filled airship contains a gourmet restaurant, a spa, a swimming pool, a resident DJ and so on.

At the turn of the 20th century, New York City had as many as 15 “floating baths” moored along the East and Hudson Rivers. The rectangular structures were held afloat by pontoons and allowed river water to run through, providing summertime recreation for city residents prior to the invention of air conditioning.

According to Gotham Gazette, in 1910 the Health Department closed down the floating baths because the rivers were too polluted. Five were retrofitted to hold fresh water and operated until 1935, when Robert Moses began building pools on land with funding from the federal Works Progress Administration. Moses opened 11 enormous and beautifully ornamented pools in the summer of 1936, setting the standard for public pools in the city. Ten of these are still in use today, including Astoria Pool, where Olympic trials were conducted in 1936 and 1964.

Now, with the help of Ann Buttenwieser’s Neptune Foundation, a new floating pool designed by architect Jonathan Kirschenfeld is ready to be unveiled along the Brooklyn waterfront this summer. The new floating pool is four feet deep, 82 feet long and has seven swimming lanes, as well as a snack bar and dressing rooms.

Colleton River marsh

South Carolina’s Council on Competitiveness, also known as New Carolina, has “declared independence from mediocrity.”

We, the tenacious people of New Carolina, declare independence from mediocrity. We will reach beyond past mistakes and build on historic successes toward a bright future that lifts our families, our schools, our businesses. From this day forward, we will demonstrate a new will and forge a new way. With tireless passion, bold leadership and decisive action, we will silence the nay-sayers, the doubters, the cynics. We will encourage the innovators and teachers, and celebrate the courageous. In doing so, we will become a leader in public education, entrepreneurial success, personal income and quality of life. Each day we will reach for, and push each other, until one day the world will acknowledge us as ‘The New Land of Opportunity’. New energy. New ideas. New action. New Jobs.

While platitudes typed in the dark of night won’t get the job done, recognizing real world opportunities will.

Kirsten Singleton, reporting for Bluffton Today, points out that New Carolina claims there are immense opportunities in travel and tourism throughout the Palmetto state. This, I’m inclined to believe.

In a report commissioned by New Carolina, Marion Edmonds, director for South Carolina’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism said, “In almost every geographic area of the state there are some tourism products that could be developed that would strengthen the tourism appeal of that area of region. The state has vast natural and cultural resources that offer opportunities for development—as yet unrealized.”

Among the recommendations for Hilton Head Island and the rest of Beaufort County (where BFG is headquartered): access road improvements, Bluffton urban regeneration, Palmetto Bluff Resort development and expanded ecotourism.

More than 10.5 million visitors come to Beaufort County annualy—an average of 28,972 people a day. Tourism accounts for a whopping 60% of Hilton Head Island’s economy, providing $1.5 billion in revenue annually.

Susan Thomas, vice president of the area’s Visitor & Convention Bureau believes the area needs to put greater emphasis on the Gullah story. It’s also important to use environmentaly friendly building methods in hope of preserving the natural beauty that brings people to the Lowcountry in the first place, she said.