Hike Blue Mesa, Petrified Forest National Park
Driving east of Flagstaff, the dry arid Arizona terrain gives way to colorful bands of rock, as if some Impressionist painter laid down his brushstroke on the badlands. Welcome to the glorious Painted Desert. Continue a wee bit south and prehistoric rock gives way to 200 million year old petrified wood, also colored in rainbow hues, the home of Petrified Forest National Park. Once a playground for dinosaurs, Petrified Forest also was a settlement for a long line of Native Americans as evidenced by the Agate House, an ancient pueblo built of petrified wood. By all means, get out of the car with camera in tow and take several of the short hikes. A one-mile loop called Blue Mesa brings you to the multi-hued sandstone, while the half-mile Giant Logs Loop leads to the biggest trees in the park, some with trunks close to ten feet in diameter.
You could toss a Faberge egg from the new Four Seasons Hotel Moscow to Red Square, that’s how close the property is to the legendary landmark. Starwood Hotels just unveiled W Verbier in Switzerland and will debut W Bogota and a new St. Regis in Kuala Lumpur in the upcoming year. The ultra-modern Hilton Santa Fe Mexico City recently opened in the financial core of the city. New Langham Place properties will dot the Chinese map, from Guangzhou to Xiamen to Haining. And the late, great actor Marlon Brando’s dream of housing a sustainable property on his private French Polynesian isle of Tetiaroa will finally come to fruition this summer. 
They say Eureka has more artists per capita than any other place in California. A walk around town Sunday introduced me to many of the impressive local wares. My first stop was the 
In 1990, I left my job as an insurance broker in Manhattan, booked an open-ended ticket to the South Pacific, New Zealand, and Australia, and wrote my first travel story, “Dining with the Descendants of Cannibals on a Fijian Island” for the Miami Herald. It would prove to be start of a career where I would write more than 1500 stories (over 300 articles for the Boston Globe alone) and visit over 90 countries. Then the recession hit. I lost more than half my editors in 2008-2009 as magazines folded and newspapers either eliminated or greatly reduced their travel sections. Wanting to utilize my travel expertise, I convinced Lisa to join me in a business venture and become an accredited travel agent. 
Austin Adventures recently announced the wise decision of making Kasey Austin president of the company. I had the pleasure of traveling with Kasey and her dad, Dan, founder of Austin Adventures on a