8 national park lodges partner with Historic Hotels of America

Eight national park lodges have joined Historic Hotels of America, a program for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The hotels are in Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Death Valley, Zion and Crater Lake National Parks.

 Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

• El Tovar —  Sometimes described as a cross between a Swiss Chalet and a Norwegian villa, El Tovar opened Jan. 14, 1905. It was built at a cost of $250,000 and was operated by the Fred Harvey Company. The 78-room hotel was designed by architect Charles Whittlesey. The hotel has undergone many renovations but still retains its rustic charm.
• Phantom Ranch — Built in 1922, Phantom Ranch is the only lodging facility located below the rim. Originally built for mule riders, its bunk-style cabins are a welcome respite for hikers, mule-riders and river rafters today. The multi-functional main lodge building serves as a registration office, restaurant, store, post office and gathering place. Both the Bright Angel Lodge and Phantom Ranch were designed by famed Fred Harvey Company architect Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, whose architectural creations throughout the West are still lauded by historians and architects today.
• Bright Angel Lodge & Cabins — Listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1982, Bright Angel Lodge features panoramic vistas of the Grand Canyon. The park’s oldest building, the “Red Horse Cabin” recently reopened after an extensive refurbishment. The two-room cabin was built in 1890 and was moved to the Grand Canyon 22 years later to serve as a tourist hotel and post office. It was incorporated into Bright Angel Lodge as guest accommodations in 1935 by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter.

 Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

• Lake Yellowstone Hotel — Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1991, this elegant structure features a massive sunroom overlooking Yellowstone Lake. The hotel was constructed in 1889. Although there have been expansions and renovations over the years, the hotel has retained the look and feel of a grand historic hotel.
• Old Faithful Inn — One of the best known national park lodges, this massive structure has been a National Historic Landmark since 1987. A partnership of the Yellowstone Park Company and Northern Pacific Railroad, the Old Faithful Inn was constructed of logs and stone during the winter of 1903-04. Some 40 craftsmen built this architectural masterpiece under the direction of architect Robert Reamer.

 Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

• Crater Lake Lodge — Originally opened in 1915, Crater Lake Lodge has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1981. The deteriorating lodge was closed by the National Park Service in 1988 and reopened in 1995 after a massive renovation that restored it to its original elegance. 

 Death Valley National Park, California

• Inn at Furnace Creek — This gracious inn opened in 1927 with 12 guest rooms that cost $10 per night. Tourism boomed when Death Valley was designated a national monument in 1933, and another 56 rooms were eventually added.

 Zion National Park, Utah

• Zion Lodge — Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1987, Zion Lodge was designed in the 1920s by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood and built by the Union Pacific Railroad.

 “These properties are so much more than overnight accommodations as they provide special and unique experiences,” said Andrew N. Todd, president and CEO of Xanterra Parks & Resorts, operator of the lodges. “They are part  of our social fabric, they were around during our grandparents’ time, and they will be creating lifelong memories for our grandchildren and beyond.”

“Historic Hotels of America is pleased to be partnering with Xanterra Parks & Resorts,” said Thierry Roch, executive director of Historic Hotels of America. “We are delighted to be able to promote these historic accommodations located in the national parks, our nation’s great historic treasures.”

Hotel group offering special rate

Aqua Hotels & Resorts (www.aquaresorts.com), a full-service Hawaii hotel management company, is offering a 15 percent discount on best available rates for travelers who may be stranded in Hawaii by Hurricane Sandy and need to extend their stay.
The discount is available at 20 participating hotels for check-in now to Nov. 1. Rates start at $76 at Ewa Hotel Waikiki, Pagoda Hotel and White Sands Hotel on Oahu; $76 at Kauai Sands Hotel; $93 at Maui Beach Hotel and $135 at Hotel Molokai.
The rates are subject to availability and cannot be combined with any other offer. For reservations, call Aqua at (808) 924-6543 or toll free at (866) 406-2782.
Aqua also announced it will not charge any cancellation or no show fees incurred by guests cancelling or changing their Hawaii travel plans as a result of Hurricane Sandy.
Penalties for cancellation are being waived for check-in through Nov. 1. Normal refund rules will apply.
“We’re stunned by the force of the hurricane that is pummeling the eastern seaboard, stranding travelers and displacing residents in the battered areas,” said Elizabeth Churchill, senior vice president sales & marketing, Aqua Hotels & Resorts. “As a state that also suffers from the damages caused by natural disasters, we send our best wishes for a quick rebound and recovery.”

Calling all cat lovers

Loisaba, a member of the esteemed C&P Portfolio of eco-luxe safari camps and lodges, has long been a proponent of responsible tourism. In their continuous effort to support and protect their local community and environment, they now offer guests the chance to get in on the conservation action too — by tracking and monitoring the area’s leopards and lions. 

Loisaba has partnered with the Laikipia Predator Project, a local program that aims to protect the area’s large cats by studying their behaviors, monitoring their response to conservation actions and improving livestock practices (to diffuse human-wildlife conflict). Guests are able to become involved in the Laikipia Predator Project’s conservation efforts by using receivers and antennae to monitor the movements of Loisaba’s leopards and lions.

Marc Napao, the Laikipia Predator Project’s key researcher, is based at Loisaba and has developed an online database, which allows guests to report their predator sightings after each game drive. They can upload pictures and even provide their own reports on what they saw. It’s a fun, hands-on activity for families or couples, and it adds a more personal element to the standard game drive. 

The assorted accommodations at Loisaba gives guests the choice to have a private safari experience, at the House or Cottage (their own exclusive home-away-from-home), or to mix with others, at Loisaba Lodge or the Star beds.

Rates at Loisaba Lodge and Star Beds start at $520 per person per night during mid-season. Rates at the House begin at $3,060 for a family or group of four people per night and at $2,200 for a family or group of four people per night at the Cottage. Package includes full board, an assortment of drinks and spirits, day and night game drives, guided bush walks, transfers to cultural visits, bush breakfasts and sundowners, airstrip transfers, river rafting and fishing, horse riding, camel riding, quad biking, limited laundry and of course, lion tracking.

For more information about Loisaba or the Laikipia Predator Project, contact info@chelipeacock.co.ke.

— Submitted by Colleen Joyce, Montgomery Communications

Furnace Creek opens for the season

The Inn at Furnace Creek has opened its doors for its 85^th season and will remain open through Sunday brunch May 12.

The elegant hotel features 66 rooms, including two suites, and is a favorite for many people who return on a regular basis. The resort also offers a variety of packages featuring golf, discounts for seniors and rental Jeeps and bicycles along with accommodations.

“The Inn is like an old friend for guests and employees alike,” said Phil Dickinson, director of sales and marketing for Furnace Creek Resort. “Many of the property’s staff members have been there for several seasons and have developed strong friendships with each other and a familiarity with the needs of our repeat guests. It’s not unusual to hear our guests asking employees about their world travels during their summer breaks.”

The Furnace Creek Inn opened on Feb. 1, 1927 with 12 guest rooms, a dining room and lobby area. Room rates were $10 per night and included meals. Over the following eight years, additions were constructed and improvements made. In 1928, construction crews added 10 guest rooms, and in 1929 the Travertine Springs were tapped for electricity and water for a new swimming pool. The spring water is still used for irrigating the Inn’s gardens and flow-through pool. More rooms were constructed until the inn reached 66 rooms in 1935.

Tourism in Death Valley boomed after the federal government designated the region a National Monument in February 1933. This designation resulted in paved roads to and throughout the monument, thus heralding automobile and tourist access to the site. In 1994, the area was designated a National Park and expanded to 3.3 million acres, making it the largest park in the continental United States.

The dining room at the Inn at Furnace Creek serves breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as a highly popular Sunday brunch. The menu features an array of items made from local ingredients such as prickly pear cactus along with continental selections. The brunch is especially popular with private pilots who fly their planes to the nearby landing strip and catch a complimentary shuttle to the inn. Reservations are highly recommended for dinner, and the dinner dress code is “casual elegance with no shorts, T-shirts or tank tops.”

Room service is also available at the Inn. 

The Inn is centrally located in Death Valley National Park and convenient for day trips to Scotty’s Castle, Badwater, Sand Dunes, Devil’s Golf Course and other geologic wonders.

The inn also features a spring-fed swimming pool, tennis courts and meandering gardens. Just a short shuttle ride away is the Ranch featuring the world’s lowest golf course at 214 feet below sea level, general store, the Borax Museum and the Wrangler Steakhouse and ‘49er Café.

Rates start at $345 per night at the Inn at Furnace Creek. For more information about facilities in Death Valley National Park or to make reservations, call toll free at (800) 236-7916 or (303) 297-2757 or go to www.furnacecreekresort.com.

Spectacular contrast to fall color

Early winter storms this week added spectacular contrast to the fall color. Here’s the latest status of fall color across the Golden State.
Overall summary: A couple of feet of snow fell on high elevations in the Sierra and Cascades. The combination of snow and fall color was described by one Southern California journalist visiting the Eastern Sierra this week as “stunning” and “magnificent.” Only those leaves in forests that had already turned yellow, orange or red and that were snowed upon in the past week will be ruined this coming week by frost, browning and being blown off branches. They are located mostly between 7,500 feet and 8,000 feet in elevation. Leaves below that elevation that were lime green or just beginning to turn, will still be coloring up in the coming two weeks and should continue the show. Overall, this has been a spectacular autumn for fall color and should storms not  continue, lots of fall color will still be seen.  This week, the color continues to descend with the Western Sierra reporting color appearing in Yosemite Valley, foothill grasses brightly yellow and maroon, and California’s vineyards showing increasing splashes of ruby, orange, yellow and lime. The first reports from Southern California also indicate change occurring there, which usually closes California’s autumn in December.
Photographs and fresh reports can be read at www.californiafallcolor.com.

— Submitted by John Poimiroo

‘The Richard Burton Diaries’

I sipped some Welsh whiskey and snacked on Welsh canopies the other night as a guest at the British Consul-General’s Los Angeles residence. It was nice of Dame Barbara Hay to have me. After all, I’m just a commoner.
To be honest, I wasn’t the only guest. There might have been as many as 40 others in attendance. We were there to celebrate Richard Burton and the first publication of “The Richard Burton Diaries” by Yale University Press.
Burton wrote the diaries between 1939 and April 2, 1983, 16 months before his death on Aug. 5, 1984.   Richard Burton had a great sense of humor and the ability to observe everything that was going on around him, but most people will remember him as an extraordinary actor and the off again, on again husband of Elizabeth Taylor.
The book is edited by Chris Williams, a professor of Welsh history at Wales’ Swansea University. Burton earned six Oscar nominations but never won, including 1969 for “Anne of the Thousand Days.” He lost that year to John Wayne in “True Grit.” “Anne of the Thousand Days” also was nominated for Best Picture but lost out to the X-rated “Midnight Cowboy.”
What I remember most at that 1970 awards ceremony was how stunning Elizabeth Taylor looked in her blue gown and $1.1 million “Cartier Diamond” necklace Burton purchased for her. I was a young sports editor for a couple of Copley Newspapers’ dailies in Burbank and Glendale at the time. I also covered the Academy Awards for Copley from 1969 to 1972.
During those years, the Oscars were held in downtown Los Angeles’ Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I got on the elevator outside the press room with Taylor and Burton. Taylor sans necklace (in the hands of security, no doubt). She was the most beautiful woman this young kid from a small Connecticut town had ever seen. Tanned from a stay in Puerto Vallarta, Liz was beyond gorgeous.
As the elevator made its way down to North Grand, we talked about the night’s winners. When the elevator door opened to Grand Avenue, Liz was mobbed by autograph seekers. As she signed autographs, Richard and I walked together to their waiting limo. As we walked, Burton turned to me and said, “I knew I should have worn my strapless gown tonight.” That was 42 years ago last April 7 and the night I became a fan of Richard Burton.
In his diary dated the next day, April 8, 1970, Burton writes: “We went to the party afterwards and sat with George Cukor the Pecks and the Chandlers (owners of the LA times) but were surrounded by scores of photographers, who, to my delight, took very little notice of anybody else including the winners. Barbra Streisand who fancies herself a big star was completely eclipsed. And a whole queue of people, literally hundreds, passed the table to stare at E and tell me that I was robbed and after all these protestations we began to wonder who in the world voted for Wayne.”
The book is available at bookstores, through online booksellers, at yalebooks.com or by calling Triliteral Customer Service at (800) 405-1619.
What does this have to do with travel, you ask? You might want to visit some of the places where Burton called home over his lifetime —from his birth in Glamorgan, Wales to Switzerland to Puerto Vallarta. I love Wales and its many castles (both north and south) and places such as Swansea, Cardiff and Hay-on-Wye (better known as the bookshop capital of the world). It is the world’s largest repository of second-hand books, on sale in about 30 bookshops.
My favorite Welsh castle is Caerphilly Castle in southern Wales, with its series of moats. I once had a dinner in its banquet hall. It is the largest castle in Wales and the second largest in Britain after Windsor Castle. It was built between 1268 and 1271.

Yellowstone National Park Lodges announces winter packages

Yellowstone National Park Lodges, operated by Xanterra Parks & Resorts, the manager of lodging, restaurants and activities in Yellowstone National Park, announced its line-up of Winter Getaway and Adventure packages for the upcoming season.

The park’s winter season begins Dec. 18, with the opening of Old Faithful Snow Lodge and Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. The lodges provide the only wintertime accommodations within the park. Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel will close for the season March 4 and Old Faithful Snow Lodge will close March 3.

“No matter how many times you have visited Yellowstone in the summer, a winter trip is like seeing a completely new park,” said Rick Hoeninghausen, director of sales and marketing for Xanterra Parks & Resorts in Yellowstone. “We have created these packages so that our guests can focus on the fun and fascinating aspects of Yellowstone such as the skiing and snowshoeing, wildlife watching and touring the park in over-the-snow vehicles.”

Each package includes Xanterra’s “Snow Card” good for 10 percent off meals, in-park transportation, tours, ski shop services and select retail items. Rates quoted here are per person, double occupancy, plus tax and utility fee.

Adventure Package

“Trail of the Wolf” provides travelers with an opportunity to explore the park’s interior with a guide and learn about its abundant natural features in places such as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone as well as to observe wildlife in the Northern Range of the park. The package includes guided snowmobiling in the interior of the park. Also included are three nights of lodging split between the two lodges, round-trip guided snowmobile tour between Old Faithful and Mammoth, “Wake up to Wildlife” tour of the Lamar Valley, two breakfasts per person, welcome gift, unlimited ice skating and skates and Snow Card. Rates start at $459 per person for double occupancy for two nights at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and one night at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge. Rates start at $605 per person for double occupancy for two nights at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, snowcoach transportation to Old Faithful from a gateway entrance and one night at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel.

Trail of the Wolf is offered on Mondays and Thursdays Jan. 3 to Feb. 28.

Getaway Packages

“Frosty Fun at Mammoth.” This package includes a minimum of two nights in a room with a private bathroom at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, breakfast per person for each night’s stay, welcome gift, unlimited ice skating and skates and Snow Card. Rates start at $135 per person for double occupancy and $226 for single occupancy. It is available Jan. 1 to March 4.

“Frosty Fun at Old Faithful.” This package includes a minimum of two nights of lodging at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, breakfast per person for each night’s stay, welcome gift, unlimited ice skating and skates, round-trip snowcoach transportation and Snow Card. Rates start at $319 per person for double occupancy and $479 for single occupancy. It is available Jan. 1 to March 3.

“Nordic Heaven at Mammoth.” This package includes a minimum of two nights of lodging at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, breakfast per person for each night’s stay, welcome gift, full-day ski rental and unlimited ski shuttles per person, unlimited ice skating and skates and Snow Card. Rates start at $191 per person for double occupancy and $282 for single occupancy. It is available Jan. 1 to March 4.

 “Nordic Heaven at Old Faithful.” This package includes a minimum of two nights of lodging at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, breakfast per person for each night’s stay, welcome gift, full-day ski rental, unlimited ski shuttles per person and a round-trip snowcoach tour per person, unlimited ice skating and skates and Snow Card. Rates start at $375 per person for double occupancy and $535 for single occupancy. It is available Jan. 1 to March 3.

Winter rates for single or double occupancy, plus tax, for individual room nights at Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel start at $91 for a room with a shared bathroom or $123 for a standard hotel room with a private bathroom. Rates at the Snow Lodge are $229 for a king room, $219 for a lodge room, $156 for a Western Cabin or $99 for a Frontier Cabin, all with private bathrooms.

Except for the road from Gardiner, Mont. to Cooke City, Mont. via Mammoth Hot Springs, transportation within the park is limited to snowmobiles and enclosed heated snowcoaches during the winter. Snowcoach transportation is available daily to a variety of park locations. Xanterra also offers a wide range of half- and full-day snowcoach, ski and snowshoe tours and ski and snowshoe rentals as well as expert instruction and other services. 

Yellowstone National Park Lodges and the Yellowstone Association Institute also offer six Lodging & Learning programs combining expert guides, accommodations, transportation and meals.

Winter Getaway and Adventure packages may be booked by phone by calling (307) 344-7311 or toll-free 866-GEYSERLAND (866-439-7375) or by submitting the secure online package reservation request form found on the website. Complete tour details also are available at the website www.YellowstoneNationalParkLodges.com.