Great Camping Destinations Around The Country

Do you love packing only the essentials and setting up camp in the great outdoors? If you’ve ever gone camping or even just dreamed about it, then you understand the appeal of escaping the rigors of modern life by immersing yourself in the natural world. Here are five of the best camping destinations in the country, certain to help you experience nature in a unforgettable way:
 
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
Many serious camping aficionados consider Grand Canyon National Park to be America’s best camping destination. The landscape is startlingly beautiful and the opportunities for outdoor fun are endless – including backpacking, vigorous hiking, rambling nature walks, guided mule rides, and boating and fishing trips on the Colorado River. There are two central campground options in the park: The Mather Campground, a great choice if you want a bustling camp experience full of fellow outdoor-loving folks, and the North Rim Campground, a wonderful option if you’re interested in a wilder, more secluded place in which to set up camp.
 
Bowman Lake Campground, Montana
This gorgeous campground is located in the Glacier National Park in northern Montana. You’ll bask in a glorious view of Bowman Lake and the surrounding mountain vista. If you like water activities, the lake is a great place for kayaking, fishing, and canoeing. Bowman Lake Campground is an especially ideal location if you’re an experienced camper looking for a very remote and authentic camping experience rather than a campground full of first-time campers and tourists. 
 
Blackwoods Campground, Maine
This natural wonder of a campground is located in Acadia National Park. You an opt for an entirely solitary, self-directed camping experience or else take advantage of the park’s offerings for guided private and group activities – including nature walks led by park rangers and evening campfire programs. The Blackwoods Campground offers over three hundred camping sites, each with room for up to two tents and one vehicle. If you’re looking for an active camping experience, you’ll love hiking the park’s granite peaks, biking and walking on the historic carriage roads, and taking a guided boat cruise to learn about the area’s sea life and natural history.
 
Chickasaw Campgrounds, Oklahoma
At these campgrounds, located in the Chickasaw National Recreation Area, you’ll find a lush natural oasis away from the bustle of regular life. You can watch majestic blue heron fly over the Lake of the Arbuckles, swim and fish in the area’s many cool creeks, and enjoy the breathtakingly beautiful sunsets over Veterans Lake. You’ll also relish the area’s abundance of unique and gorgeous prairies plants, including Coneflowers, Little Bluestem, and Yucca. If you love to watch wildlife, then you’ll enjoy catching glimpses of flying squirrels, armadillos, white-tailed deer, and Eastern Meadowlarks.
 
Moraine Campground, Colorado
This camping area in the gloriously beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park offers five drive-in campgrounds. You’ll enjoy extensive hiking, walking, and biking trails, rafting and fishing opportunities, guided trail rides and backpacking trips, and wildlife sightings that can include glimpses of elk, moose, bears, bighorn sheep, and even mountain lions. There are also several well-mapped-out routes for glorious scenic drives through the park and surrounding areas. Some of the popular family-fun-options include cowboy sing-a-longs, ranger talks, and marshmallow roasts. 
 
 

Best Illustrated Children’s Books

When you look at books for kids, you can’t help but be amazed at the artistry that goes into every page. Some incredible talent is working in the field of children’s book illustration. Here is a selection of the most visually stunning illustrated children’s books of all time.

The Polar Express
Made into a major motion picture, the incredibly realistic art in Chris Van Allsburg’s modern holiday classic bewitches the eye, hiding incredible amounts of detail and expression on every page.

Where The Wild Things Are
Maurice Sendak’s classic is drawn in a style that manages to be both expressive and incredibly detailed. Every element of Max’s nighttime wanderings is rendered perfectly. Truly a monumental achievement.

Over and Over
Written by Charlotte Zolotow, it’s the astounding illustrations by storybook master Garth Williams that really sell this simple, charming story of a young girl learning about the passage of the seasons.

Anansi The Spider
Gerald McDermott’s brightly-colored, geometric illustrations are a perfect complement to this West African folktale. They’re deceptively blocky at first, but soon you realize the incredible care that went into creating them.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
This timeless classic by Ron and Judi Barrett is jam-packed with detail and tons of funny sight gags that go perfectly with the surreal story of a town where food falls from the sky.

Five of the Most Beautiful Beaches in America

Do you love soaking up warm rays while listening to water lap the shore? If you’re like most people, you relish spending time on a gorgeous beach in the summer sun. The next time you’re daydreaming about a beach vacation, consider heading to one of these fabulous destinations:
 
The Outer Banks, North Carolina
The Outer Banks are a breathtakingly lovely chain of barrier islands off of the coast of North Carolina. They have long been one of the most popular East Coast beach destinations. The Outer Banks are known for their calm surf and great swimming conditions, as well as for the variety of great activities offered – horseback riding on the beach, hang gliding, and a variety of water sports. You can also tour shipwrecks, visit the famous Currituck Beach Lighthouse, or make a fascinating trek to the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hill.
 
Miami Beach, Florida
Miami Beach is popular with people from all walks of life – well-moneyed vacationers, the 20-something party crowd, families with kids, and folks just looking for a low-key and relaxed getaway. The white sand beaches are stunning and the warm Atlantic water offers wonderful opportunities for recreation, including kayaking and surfing. There are excellent restaurants, shops, and spas in the area, as well as more serious cultural offerings like the Bass Museum and the Holocaust Memorial.
 
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Myrtle beach is located just a short drive from gorgeous Charleston, SC. It’s a favorite East Coast hotspot for beachgoers of all stripes. The area offers large resorts at reasonable prices, as well as opportunities for boating, myriad watersports, and snorkeling and scuba diving. Myrtle Beach is also a great choice for you if you’re looking to include some golfing in your vacation getaway, since the area boasts over a hundred high-quality golf courses. If you’ll be traveling with kids, make sure to visit the area’s hugely popular Family Kingdom Amusement Park. 
 
San Diego, California
San Diego is a destination that lets you relish the surf and sand while also enjoying a variety of urban attractions just nearby. The area is famous for its glorious weather, ever-sunny skies, vividly blue ocean water, and bright white-sand beaches. The opportunities for watersports (particularly surfing) are endless. When you’ve had your fill of the beach, you can head out to great cultural and recreational offerings like the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla and SeaWorld San Diego. In addition, the area offers wonderful hiking, walking, and running trails, like the hugely popular trails at the Torrey Pines State Reserve.
 
U.S Virgin Islands
This Caribbean hotspot offers you a wonderful combination of remote peacefulness and bustling entertainment. You’ll enjoy relaxing on the quiet and expansive beaches, as well as engaging in fun watersports like parasailing, snorkeling, and jet skiing. The area also offers wonderful restaurants and shopping venues. If you’re a history buff, you’ll enjoy learning about the colonial past of the U.S Virgin Islands, since there are ample opportunities for exploring the historical background of the area. There are three islands you can visit, each with its own unique flair – St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. Why not visit all of them while you’re there? 
 

Book Buzz: Four Unforgettable Fictional Villains

What’s a worthy protagonist without a formidable rival? If you love diving into a good book, then chances are you’ve come to appreciate the tension and complexity that a memorable villain can add to a piece of fiction. Here are five of the most unsettling and enduring villains to ever appear between the covers of a book:
 
Long John Silver from Treasure Island
Long John Silver is one of the most fiendish characters ever created by author Robert Louis Stevenson. He is a shrewdly calculating and treacherous one-legged pirate whose duplicitous nature makes him quite a slippery challenge to the story’s hero, Jim Hawkins. Though he starts out as a mentor to Hawkins, his commitment to his own best interest makes him willing to turn on his young mentee without an ounce of regret. 
 
Bill Sikes from Oliver Twist
Bill Sikes is among the most vicious characters ever penned by Charles Dickens. He is a rough, violent, and brutal career criminal, both a robber and an exploiter and abuser of children. He is prone to sudden bouts of terrifying rage and even goes so far as to explode in anger and beat his girlfriend to death, one of the most viscerally terrifying scenes to appear in any of Dickens’s novels. Dickens gives Sikes no redeeming qualities, and this makes him one of the darkest villains in literary history. 
 
Tom Ripley from The Talented Mr. Ripley
Tom Ripley is the brilliant villain in a series of crime novels by Patricia Highsmith. He starts out as a petty criminal getting by on his smarts in the realms of forgery, deception, and impersonation. Eventually, he goes so far as to murder a wealthy young man and assume his identity. Whenever Ripley’s charade is questioned, he is willing to resort to extreme (and often bloody) measures to keep his assumed identity protected. His wicked and ever-scheming ways make him one of the brilliant bad guys ever inked onto paper. 
 
Count Fosco, The Woman in White
This villain from Wilkie Collins’ popular novel became the archetype for many crime-novel antagonists – a corpulent, refined, cultured, self-indulgent but shrewdly intelligent and calculating villain, hiding deviance beneath a well-dressed exterior. Fosco conjures a scheme to deprive Laura Fairlie of her wealth and soundness of mind, and chillingly destroys Laura’s sister without an ounce of regret. 
 

What is Pinterest?

Have you heard the online buzz about “Pinterest” and found yourself wondering what exactly it is? Read on to learn about this exciting photo sharing website that is has been rapidly gaining in popularity since its launch in 2010:
 
An Overview of Pinterest
Pinterest is a social photo sharing website with a pinboard-style format that enables users to create and organize image collections based on specific themes – for example, certain events, interests, holidays, and hobbies. As a Pinterest user, you can browse other people’s photo pinboards, hit “like” on photos you admire, and “re-pin” other people’s images so that they will appear in your own collection. Both Twitter and Facebook have options that allow you to share your Pinterest “pins.” Essentially, Pinterest acts as a personalized media platform in which users’ content can be browsed on the main page.
 
Background of Pinterest
Development of Pinterest began in December 2009 and started with small test group of invitation-only members. Just nine months after the website was officially launched, it had over 10,000 users, and shortly after that it was named Time Magazine’s August 2011 issue as one of the “50 Best Websites of 2011.” By December of that same year, Pinterest had become one of the largest social networking services on the web, with over ten million visits per week, and shortly after that it was recorded as having 11.7 million unique users, which made it the fastest site in history to break through the ten million unique visitor mark. The popularity of Pinterest has continued to spread at a rapid pace and it is now the third largest social network website in the United States. 
 
Using Pinterest
How do people use Pinterest? In a nutshell, the site is designed so that you can connect with others around the world over imagery that relates to mutual interests. So Pinterest essentially serves two main functions, a personal one and a social one. On the personal front, it provides a forum for the preservation, archiving, organization, and displaying of photos that matter to you, arranged around themes of your choosing – like a virtual version of your own family albums. On the social front, its purpose is that it allows you to share those images with other users and also interact with those users’ photos, connecting with others based on similar interests. 
 
Getting Started With Pinterest
To register a new Pinterest account, you can either receive an invitation from a friend already registered or go to the Pinterest site and directly request an invitation. You can also establish and access a Pinterest account by linking Pinterest to a Twitter or Facebook account – however, it’s important to note that, in order to interact with Pinterest on Facebook, you need to have the new Facebook Timeline format activated. In addition, once you have a Pinterest account, you can get the Pinterest app for iPhone (which was recently updated with exciting new features) and the company now has an iPad app in development. If you’re a non-iPhone user, you can use Pinterest Mobile to access the site from your mobile device.
 
Other Useful Aspects of Pinterest
Pinterest is designed to help you connect with things and people that interest you. Here’s how it works – on the main Pinterest page, a “pin feed” appears, displaying the chronological activity from the Pinterest boards that you have chosen to follow. To help you find new boards and pins that might compel you, you can visit a “Tastemakers” page that recommends content to you (based on your past pins, etc). There are presently four central sections to browse, under the following titles: everything, videos, popular, and gifts. These categories are in place to help you connect as quickly and conveniently as possible with pins and boards relevant to your taste and interests. 
 

Never Arrive Empty Handed: Great Housewarming Gifts

When a family member or friend moves into a new place, it's nice to help them celebrate with a great housewarming gift! It need not be expensive, just a little something to add to their new home or to celebrate the hard work and stress that went into moving in. If you're wondering what to get, check out our list of favorites that will make you welcome in their new home!

For the first-time homeowner, it's a great idea to put together a tool kit of useful items — things such as screwdrivers, a hammer, a flashlight, a tape measure, and the like. Especially if they came from apartment living, having their own tools will be a welcome gift!

The same idea can be used for kitchen utensils as well—a new can opener; a spice rack with spices, mixing and baking tools like a spatula, whisk, and cooking trays; or some nice dish towels will all be welcome additions to a new kitchen.

Or, a safe bet is to offer a nice bottle of wine or champagne, or fresh baked goodies. These are always welcome in a new home! Most likely they'll be opened or eaten at the first housewarming party, or your friends will have your gift to savor just for themselves.

And lastly, if you can’t think of anything they really need, gift cards to stores like Crate and Barrel, Williams Sonoma, or The Home Depot will help the new homemakers furnish their new place in style.

10 Ways To Save Money At The Grocery Store

With the prices of food and household items going up, it's essential to do all you can to cut costs while food shopping. Whether you’re shopping for yourself or a large family, below are a few easy ways to fill your belly without emptying your wallet.

1. Make a list and stick to it. Go to the store with a list and a budget, and do not deviate!

2. Don’t go shopping when you’re hungry. If you're hungry, you're bound to buy more than you need.

3. Use coupons and bonus cards. Coupons are one of the most effective ways to cut costs — check out the circular coupons, or use Google to find coupons for your favorite brands. Also, register at the customer service counter for a free bonus card so that you can enjoy members-only prices.

4. Before you head to the check out, look at your cart. Do you really need every single thing?

5. Use brand substitutions. If another brand or the store brand is on sale, try it. You may find a new favorite, plus you'll save some money!

6. Only go down the aisles you need. Be purposeful with your shopping — don't tempt yourself by walking down unnecessary aisles.

7. When possible, go alone. If you can, don't take the kids. They will distract you from getting what you need, and ask for things that weren't on your list.

8. When it makes sense, buy in bulk/buy ahead. If an item you love is on sale, stock up. But, if it's perishable, be sure you only buy the amount that you can use before the expiration date.

Tips For Taking Better Pictures With Your Digital Camera

Digital photography has all but eclipsed traditional film in recent years, and the technology has advanced to the level where you can do just about anything. But there are still a few things to keep in mind to make sure that your digital pictures are the best they can possibly be.

Check your white balance settings
Most digital cameras default to an automatic white balance, which can make images look a little cooler. By switching to the “cloudy” setting, warm colors will be enhanced, with reds and yellows more vibrant.

Take multiple pictures
The onboard memory of most modern digital cameras is big enough that you can shoot freely without worrying about running out of space. The more shots you take, the greater the chance that one will be good. Just make sure to empty your internal memory onto your computer or a hard drive in between photo sessions.

Keep it steady
One of the most common photography mistake is movement of the camera during shooting. It’s worth looking into a wrist brace to make holding your camera steady, but even if you don’t want to do that, try to use two hands to keep it stable.

Use the Rule of Thirds
By drawing invisible lines horizontally and vertically across your viewfinder to divide it into nine equal shapes, you get a great tool to compose your shots. Put important elements at one of the four intersecting points towards the middle.

Don’t be afraid to practice!
It doesn’t cost anything to take more digital pictures. A strange idea can sometimes translate into a really cool image

Fun Film History Facts

Movies have given us so much entertainment and education, but did you know the long and convoluted road they had to travel to get where they are today? Here are some interesting facts about the torrid history of motion pictures.

The earliest ancestor to what we consider modern film is the photography of Edweard Muybridge, who rigged a special array of cameras to take multiple still pictures of a galloping horse. The images were then developed and put into a rotating drum that, when spun, caused the illusion of motion.

The motion picture camera was invented in the 1880s. Early silent films shocked and amazed audiences, who had never experienced anything like it before. Producers like Georges Melies created incredible narratives with early special effects that still dazzle to this day.

A number of people experimented with adding sound to movies, but it wasn’t until the 1920s that a soundtrack was directly attached to the film itself, opening a whole new world to artists.

The introduction of digital technology in the 1990s has radically changed the way people produce and view film, with new 3D projection methods being the latest example. Who knows what the future will bring?

Bird Is The Word: Five Quick Chicken Dinners

Chicken is one of the most versatile proteins available to the home cook, and it can be prepared in so many different, delectable ways. In this article, we’ll share five of our favorite recipes that come out of the kitchen in a hurry without skimping on flavor.

Stuff a chicken breast with onions caramelized in a pan until they are golden brown and soft Fontina cheese. Bake in an pan until the meat is cooked through and deglaze the pan with white wine and rosemary to make a sauce. Serve over rice pilaf or quinoa.

Lemon chicken is a classic dish that never fails to impress. Marinate chunks of chicken in soy sauce for a little bit, then dredge it in a batter made from egg yolk and cornstarch. Quickly fry in a skillet and mix with a simple sauce created from lemon juice, water, sugar and a little more cornstarch. Serve over white rice.

Cut a chicken breast into rectangles and bread them with panko, the Japanese-style bread crumbs. Cover with Romano cheese and quickly fry them until the outside is crispy, then serve with a tangy marinara sauce for an upscale take on chicken fingers.

For a simple, hearty meal that will make you think of campfire days, make tinfoil “hobo bundles” with chicken and sturdy vegetables that roast well – try small tomatoes, green beans, and sliced potatoes. Put a little butter or olive oil inside, some fragrant herbs, seal them up and put them in the oven until everything cooks. Unwrap and serve.

For a light, healthy chicken dish, batter chicken cutlets in flour and quickly fry but do not cook through. Then sautee chunks of onion and ginger in the pan drippings. Add chicken broth and bring it to a simmer, then add the chicken and slices of pear for a unique and tasty meal.

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