Jewel Skate Country has been around for more than 30 years. Big speakers were blasting out Camila Cabello's "Havanna" and there is a new lighting system, but the rink fells like you are stepping back into the 1980s.
Category: Travel

The time I drove across the Cascade Mountains and the ‘Red Headed Stranger’ rode shotgun
I recently made a long, solo drive from Seattle over the Cascade Mountains, and I found a great road trip companion: Willie Nelson’s “Red Headed Stranger.” In Eastern Washington and Oregon on my way to the Columbia River Gorge the haunting songs with sparse arrangements …
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The kindness of the Kaua’i koi pond gardener
My son befriended the gardener who tends the koi ponds where we stayed near Poipu Beach on Kaua'i during our holiday visit. The gardener lopped off the top of a water jug and made him an aquarium stocked with guppies and aquatic plants.

The Oregon trail where cyclists can meet a dairy farmer, a coyote and a towering old train trestle
The Banks-Vernonia State Trail offers lucky cyclists a glimpse of the past and the future in one corner of Oregon’s old timber country. Oregon’s first rails-to-trails linear state park is on the edge of the Northern Coast Range that tumbles down to the Pacific Ocean. …

Canada’s Reifel Bird Sanctuary is a haven for swans, cranes, owls and the people who love to gaze at them
British Columbia’s George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary is the best place on the West Coast to see some of the world’s most spectacular birds, including trumpeter swans, eagles, owls and sandhill cranes. This pit stop for migratory birds is the perfect reason to linger …