Travel | Hotel | Vacation
- Yosemite offering more sites for campers
(AP)
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – Yosemite National Park is offering more sites for campers, including a campground that’s been closed for 13 years. Park officials said Yosemite Creek Campground is open for the first time since 1997.
- First family wraps up packed Maine holiday
(AP)
BAR HARBOR, Maine – President Barack Obama and the first family had an energetic weekend vacation along Maine’s Atlantic coast. The president, first lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha boarded a small military jet serving as Air Force One and took off from the Bar Harbor airport Sunday after a weekend of hiking and biking in Acadia National Park.
- Virgin Galactic spacecraft makes 1st crewed flight
(AP)
MOJAVE, California – A company working to send tourists on suborbital flights tested its spacecraft with a crew for the first time. Virgin Galactic says the craft remained attached to a specially designed airplane throughout a six-hour flight over California’s Mojave desert Thursday.
- AC back on in AC; 2 casinos back to normal
(AP)
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.
- Biscuit Basin boardwalk reopens in Yellowstone
(AP)
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – One of Yellowstone National Park’s famous geyser basins is open to visitors again.
- Airlines preparing for cargo-checking deadline
(AP)
FORT WORTH, Texas – Airlines are buying giant X-ray machines and other machinery to meet an Aug. 1 deadline to begin screening all cargo that goes on passenger planes. Federal officials say the new rules will close a large security gap
- ESPN reporter sues hotel chains for secret tapings
(AP)
CHICAGO – ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, who was secretly videotaped nude while staying at hotels, filed a lawsuit Thursday against seven hotels and the suburban Chicago man who admitted making the tapes. Andrews filed the suit in Cook County against the hotels for negligence and invasion of privacy, about seven months after Michael David Barrett, of Westmont, Ill., pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles to interstate stalking
- Short-snouted dogs most likely to die on planes
(AP)
WASHINGTON – Short-snouted breeds such as bulldogs and pugs account for roughly half the purebred dog deaths on airplanes in the past five years.
- Website, Google Earth offer 3-D views of Hawaii
(AP)
HONOLULU – A new website backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar says it will offer potential visitors to Hawaii the ability to view hotels, shops and tourist attractions in three dimensions and from different angles in an interactive virtual tour. Team Vision Virtual launched 3DHawaii.com on Thursday, promoting the website as the “next generation travel-planning and booking tool.” The company has signed up three dozen hotels and stores, which can be viewed on the site along with almost 2,000 beaches, museums and other tourist attractions — from Kilauea volcano on the Big Island to Saint Damien’s grave on Molokai and the Duke Kahanamoku statue in Waikiki. Hawaii is the first of 10 states for which the Honolulu-based company plans to build a similar 3-D portal incorporating Google Earth technology.
- Obama’s Maine island long visited by rich, famous
(AP)
BAR HARBOR, Maine – Serving as a summer retreat for Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Morgans, this town and the surrounding area have long been known as a place where well-heeled and well-known visitors could beat the heat – and have their privacy respected. President Barack Obama is the latest influential visitor to flee to Maine in search of a cool ocean breeze. When he arrives Friday for a three-day visit, he’ll be the first sitting president to visit Mount Desert Island since William Howard Taft a century ago.
