Day: January 12, 2023

Weather ruin your vacation plans? Take a car-free Portland staycation instead

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Plans change. If you want to travel, especially using transit, and also want to have fun and stay somewhat relaxed, it’s best to go in with the understanding that you might need to pivot to a very different destination.

Anyone traveling out of Portland, or probably anywhere in the entire country, around Christmas, learned some hard lessons about flexibility. I was one of those people – our planned vacation was canceled when the flight was canceled three hours before takeoff, with no option to re-book for days and seven-hour wait times to speak with customer service. Luckily, we were just supposed to be going on a fun vacation and didn’t get stuck at an airport. Many, many people had it much worse.

So, we pivoted (thanks really to my husband who had this idea, since I was not really feeling the “fun” of flexibility two hours into being on hold instead of on an airplane) and spent two nights in the Pearl at a hotel with a pool.

Then, the next week, I found out my parents couldn’t come with me on my next transit mini vacation with a toddler, which generally wouldn’t be a problem, but this one was a bit ambitious: Take city buses to Timberline Lodge in the winter. This requires three different buses, one of which operates on a mountain in the winter. Delays and outright cancelations for weather are always possible, and if that happened and I was stuck, with no other adults, on a mountain with limited cell service and one cold three-year-old … I wasn’t ready to risk it.

Read more: Take a cozy, car-free family mini-vacation to Cannon Beach

I will do that trip when I have more adults or the weather is better, but, for now, once again I pivoted.

Our Pearl District staycation was so nice, I thought, let’s do it again, this time using only transit. And, I decided to stay in a different hotel, so I could compare the two options for readers who only want to make the best choice.

Nona and Lizzy at The Fields Park.

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A 12 months in Food Art, From the Gorgeous to the Weird

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This year, Gastro Obscura explored some of the culinary world’s most visually-hanging creations. In the palms of the ideal chef, uncooked meat can come to be an lovable little hedgehog, butter can be sculpted into a person’s experience, and gingerbread can be remodeled into New York City’s skyline. At times pleasant, other instances disturbing, 2022 was a feast of food stuff artwork.

by Diana Hubbell, Associate Editor

From the truffle-studded towers of 18th-century royal banquets to the sword-skewered, lobster-topped creations of great-eating establishments in the late 1800s, aspic has long served as a system for culinary showmanship. But in mid-20th century America, gelatin took a switch for the unusual. In this pleasant deep dive, Diana Hubbell explores why American cooks so enthusiastically embraced jelly creations that pushed the boundaries of superior flavor.

Gerry Kulzer sculpts butter in a refrigerated chamber at this year’s Minnesota Point out Reasonable. Star Tribune via Getty Illustrations or photos

by Sam O’Brien, Senior Editor

This September, I visited the Minnesota State Honest on a mission. Even though some seek out the fair’s deep-fried delights and prize-successful livestock, I arrived for the butter sculptures. Within a substantial, refrigerated chamber, youthful girls pose for an artist who sculpts their likeness from a 90-pound block of butter. The women are finalists in the Princess Kay of the Milky Way level of competition, which celebrates younger personnel in the local dairy market. This calendar year, for the very first time in 5 a long time, the level of competition had a new sculptor, Gerry Kulzer. I visited Kulzer in the butter booth and we spoke about how he skilled for this strange gig, what it’s like sculpting in a 40-diploma chamber, and what the winners do with their butter busts when they’re concluded.

by Sam Lin-Sommer, Editorial Fellow

Gingerbread homes tend to seem like anything out of “Hansel and Gretel”: very small cottages with gumdrop doors and white-icing shingles. But at the Excellent Borough Bake-Off, gingerbread takes the form of New York skyscrapers, columned mansions, and even the Staten Island Ferry. Hosted by the Museum of the Metropolis of

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Rowlett hotel will allow you waste away in Margaritaville

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A Florida developer plans to give North Texas lodge visitors a opportunity to stay like Jimmy Buffett. Compass Lodges by Margaritaville are encouraged by the singer-songwriter’s laidback Key West way of living. Described as “upscale boutique motels,” they offer you a Florida seaside resort vibe.

Sarasota, Fla.-primarily based Floridays Advancement Co. designed the 123-space Compass Resort in Anna Maria Seem, Fla. The developer is eyeing a very similar venture in Rowlett.

The accommodations include things like a foyer “welcome cabana, a dwelling room lounge and complimentary satisfied hour.

“Our friends are captivated to pleasurable, non-regular and experiential accommodations that support them escape the day-to-day and elevate their trip,” the marketing and advertising pitch on the hotel chain’s internet site says. “Join fellow attendees in the yard the place the out of doors pool, ice cold drinks and relaxed hammocks are calling your name.”

The 3 current Compass Accommodations by Margaritaville resorts are in Florida, North Carolina and Oregon.

The Rowlett resort will be section of the $1 billion Sapphire Bay progress on Lake Ray Hubbard, in accordance to planning paperwork filed with the condition. Design is set to start off on the 130-room, $16.5 million lodge job in March, with an opening date in 2024.

A Floridays formal verified this will be the company’s very first these progress in Texas.

Florida-centered Miles Architecture Group is building the task. Which is the similar architect that did Floridays’ Anna Maria Seem resort.

Ideas for the Rowlett advancement also consist of a 9,300-square-foot “Landshark” restaurant.

Floridays Improvement has been in business enterprise because 1990, with major jobs which include the Floridays Resort Orlando lodge and the 32-tale Oasis condominium tower in Fort Myers.

The developer is also developing two apartment communities at Sapphire Bay with extra than 600 units.

Floridays has constructed an apartment project in Garland and is establishing a lodge in Austin.

The Compass Inns aren’t the only developments planned in Texas with a Margaritaville topic.

Early previous yr, Tampa-based mostly Minto Communities United states stated it intends to establish Margaritaville-branded housing communities in important Texas metro place locations. And Grand

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Student Farm provides engagement chances across campus

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College PARK, Pa. — As a new escalating period strategies, the Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross Pupil Farm prepares for yet another calendar year of supporting the campus foods technique. Whilst the farm can make about 16,000 pounds of generate every calendar year, there is more to the four-acre farm than sustainable vegetable output.

The farm collaborates with numerous classes each individual calendar year to exemplify real-lifestyle implementations of ideas. It also serves as a house for college students to build capstone initiatives. For illustration, one particular capstone class routinely corresponds with the farm as a client as pupils work to deal with present-day issues in plant science.

Liana Burghardt, teacher for the PLANT 461 (Emerging Challenges in Plant Sciences) capstone class, reported that her students’ partnership with the farm is “mutually effective,” because college students get a prospect to produce competencies that are typically skipped in a common classroom setting whilst addressing the farm’s demands.

“One of the genuine positive aspects of these group tasks the place they produce material for a stakeholder is practising becoming engaged in a partnership, receiving incremental comments, soliciting that feed-back and obtaining that entity determine and tutorial what they are accomplishing,” she mentioned. “That is so diverse from most of the coursework that they have, but it is specifically like what transpires in real-planet get the job done contexts.”

At the beginning of the semester, Burghardt fulfills with team at the College student Farm to discuss their needs and brainstorm how her students’ skillsets can be used to deal with them.

“The farm presents an astounding assist framework for me to generate these activities for pupils,” she stated.

Burghardt and the workers pitch tasks to the students, who expend the semester studying and building realistic options. At the stop of the program, learners exercise orally presenting their proposals to diverse audiences.

“From a school point of view, it is so remarkable to have the Scholar Farm as a useful resource and a companion in this,” Burghardt mentioned. “It makes my lifestyle less difficult to know that there are people today that can pitch issues

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