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Older Women Who Lift Weights See Cognitive Benefits

There’s an interesting story in the latest Archives of Internal Medicine, which I read religiously (just kidding), that talks about a recent Canadian study involving older women. Over the course of a year, The University of British Colombia divided 155 women in the 65 to 75-year old range into three groups—resistance training (lifting weights, using weight machines, or doing squats and lunges) once a week, resistance training twice a week, and a Tai-Chi based balance and tone training twice a week. The results: cognitive scores for the women who went to resistance training twice weekly were up 12.6 percent, once weekly up 10.9 percent, while those who only did Tai Chi fell 0.5 percent. So start pumping the iron!
 

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Spring Comes to Narragansett Bay

This is supposedly spring in New England, though I can’t really tell from the weather outside. It’s been gray, chilly, and rainy all week. Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking of a story I wrote for Yankee Magazine for their April 2015 issue titled “Spring Comes to Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.” The temperate zone along the shores of Narragansett Bay is where spring arrives first in New England. Visit the Blithewold estate in Bristol over the next several weeks and you can’t help but be awed by the colorful spring bloom. Another stop at the Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth led me to dinosaurs, unicorns, reindeer, and other animals sculpted from California privet, yew, and English boxwood at the oldest and most northern topiary garden in the United States. May 11th is their annual plant sale, when a frenzy of local gardeners will be throwing Asiatic lilies, tomato plants, geraniums, and herbs like oregano into cardboard crates. May 11th is also sheep shearing day at Watson Farm in Jamestown. The sheep will be bleating, a group of spinners will work their magic transforming fleece into yarn, kids will be laughing as they try the tree swing, and a band will no doubt be playing foot-stomping bluegrass tunes. Doesn’t get more idyllic than that! 

 
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Rafting the Classic North American Rivers—The Middle Fork of the Salmon River

May is the start of the whitewater rafting season in North America, and since I’ve been receiving a lot of inquiries lately about the best multi-day rafting trips on the continent, I’m going to review the classics this week. First up, the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. 

 
One of the original rivers in the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and a centerpiece of Idaho’s 2.2 million acre River of No Return Wilderness, the Salmon River deserves its reputation as one of the premier whitewater runs in North America. Especially the Middle Fork which boasts more than a hundred rapids in as many miles. What this means is a rip-roaring ride through narrow canyon walls, with glimpses of bighorn sheep and Rocky Mountain elk on the shores and eagles and ospreys flying overhead. Once you reach land, you can hike up side canyons, soak in natural hot springs, fish to your heart’s content, or use the time to gather your thoughts.
 
Outfitters have gone overboard in the past five years attracting clientele to the Middle Fork, featuring wine dinners with a Sonoma County sommelier or learning about travel writing with two pros in the business, Tim Cahill or Michael Shapiro. One outfitter hired a clown to entertain the kids at night. So whatever your interest, there’s a specialty tour for you. 
 
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Dream Trips 2010, Mountain Biking Bend, Oregon

Working these past 20 years primarily as an outdoors writer, it’s hard for me to admit that I’ve never been to Bend, Oregon, one of the renowned outdoor hubs in America and a mecca for serious mountain bikers. North, Middle, and South Sister Mountains rise 10,000 feet above town, forming part of the Cascade Range. Due north is Black Butte, one of the region’s many cinder cones that create a volcanic landscape unparalleled in the U.S. outside of Hawaii. I plan to bike on the Butte Loops Trail as it circles Black Butte on old logging roads that have been closed to motorized vehicles and are now part of the roads-to-trails program. Then I’m heading to the eastern part of the state to hike in the Oregon desert with my travel writing buddy, Eric Lucas.
 

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February Newsletter Now Available at ActiveTravels.com

Not surprisingly, we booked quite a few trips to Tuscany last summer. The hotels that received rave reviews from our clients are featured in this month’s newsletter, “Eat, Play, Live!” You’ll also find a detailed description of Israel from our own family trip, a highly reputable outfitter from Croatia that we recommend, and why we believe Global Entry is better than TSA Precheck. 

 
Since we started ActiveTravels, we have been churning out these monthly newsletters hoping to inspire your travels. One of our long-term goals was to categorize each of our headings, so members can have this library of information at their fingertips. We’re almost there. We’ve been working with web designers and we hope to be finished with this task by the end of the month. Simply type in your password and you’ll find close to 20 Quick Escapes to tempt you, or peruse our main feature, “News from the Road,” which tackles one region at a time, like Kenya, Turkey, or the Canadian Rockies.
 
I’m off to Jamaica for a much needed vacation, back on February 24th. Happy travels! 
 
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The Debut of Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum

Multiculturalism is the main reason why I return to Toronto as often as possible, a half-dozen times in the past decade. I love the diverse population—chatting to an Eritrean taxi driver about the struggles in her country, dining on sublime dim sum with a Hong Kong-born chef whose har gow (shrimp dumplings) arrives orange thanks to a mix of butternut squash (more on the restaurant Luckee later this week), to shopping for vintage clothing in Little India. So it came as no surprise to me that the Aga Khan Museum, the first North American museum devoted exclusively to Islamic Art, made its debut in mid-September in the northeastern part of Toronto. 

 
Aga Khan, the imam and prince of the Ismaili branch of Shia Muslims, who number some 15 million across 25 nations, spent more than $300 million to fund the museum. His renowned collection of art, over 1,000 pieces that span a millennium, has been on view at the Louvre in Paris and Hermitage in St. Petersburg, but now he has a permanent home worthy of the works. It took 18 years from conception to completion, but the debut of the Aga Khan Museum couldn’t have come a better time. With media constantly bombarding us with all the atrocities happening in the Muslim world, it’s downright therapeutic to walk into an exquisite setting bathed in natural light and be dazzled at the beauty of these objects. 
 
The collection is housed in a building created by the Pritzker Prize winning octogenarian, Fumihiko Maki. Artifacts are displayed on two floors, in high-ceilinged white rooms with teak floors. The galleries are centered around an open-air courtyard, which is open to the public free of charge if they simply want to relax and enjoy a cup of coffee and Turkish sweets. Before viewing the works, walk up the lapis-stone stairway into the auditorium, an explosion of teak wood already starting to garner attention for its excellent acoustics. 
 
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art might have a larger collection of Islamic Art, now housed in its new wing, but the Aga Khan has a good eye for objects. The museum is designed chronologically and starts with a blue Koran from 9th century Iran, calligraphy written in gold. The geometric patterns, whether circles found on the 12th-century robe of a Mongol warrior or a 9-pointed star seen in the woodwork of a 14th-centurty Spanish squinch, are mind-boggling. A rare piece of Iznik ceramics from the Ottoman Empire shows how the color red suddenly appeared in the predominantly “blue and white” patterns of the day. My favorite part of the collection was the brilliantly illustrated pages of the Persian epic, Shah-Nameh, a colorful portrayal on each page, which will be turned every three months in order not to damage the manuscript. An easy 20-minute taxi ride from downtown, the Aga Khan Museum is a great addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Ryerson Image Centre, and the other noteworthy art found in Toronto. 
 
 
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How a Travel Advisor Helps with Flight Delays

Last week, we had three clients miss their flight connections and one ActiveTravels member break his clavicle and ribs on a motorcycle accident in Phuket, Thailand. Before our clients even got off their planes, they were rebooked and ready to go on the next available flight. No standing in line for hours at the customer service desk with all the other passengers. The man with the broken bones is still healing in a hospital, but we were able to cancel and reschedule his first-class flight with a slight change fee. In this Do-It-Yourself World, you’re led to believe that you can easily book travel on your own. That’s certainly true, but when a mishap happens, which is inevitable when you travel, it’s good to have someone working on your behalf while you’re still on a plane with no WiFi. 

 

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