Tristero gets it right.

The National Geographic Society has a Center for Sustainable Destinations, which ranks various travel destinations based on the sustainability of visitation. Meaning, will you do more harm than good by visiting?

Hot springs eternal.

I’m planning a trip to north-central Idaho. It will involve driving for two days each way and camping at one trailhead or another for at least two nights. There might be stops at historical and natural landmarks of the palouse and the mighty Snake and Clearwater river watersheds for photography and, well… learning.

Hot springs will be primitive. Optional extensions include loop through Sawtooth mountains, and/or Hell’s Canyon/Blue mountains in the vicinity of Joseph, OR.

I was planning to make this the first leg of my trip to TX for Xmas, but I need a change of scenery and BAD.

I’m posting in advance. If you’re one of the people who think you’d be invited for such a trip, you are. And you should get in touch with me before the weekend proper.

Feel like crap. Not enough coffee in the world.

I did finish most of ‘Prisoner of Trebekistan’ in my sleepless hours, though… Harris has a very precocious way of writing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s tedious. There’s a lot of amusing stuff, though. I especially liked when, after losing on Jeopardy he goes to visit his mom in the midwest and discovers that all the trivia he had to learn overlaps the world of his childhood. Suddenly he has a new context for understanding the town he grew up in, and that context is all about depth and delight.

I missed Wolf Awareness Week. (Oct. 15-21) I only learned about it because I saw a mention of a place near Olympia called Wolf Haven.

Wolf Haven is a refuge for wolves of various backgrounds… Mostly the kind that can’t be released or they’d die. And Wolf Haven has photo tours.