Adventures in Las Cruces Week—Exploring the Mesilla Valley Wine Trail
Head south from the historic town of Mesilla on Route 28 and you enter the Mesilla Valley, a short section of the historic El Camino Real route. At the end of the 16th-century, Spain created a 1500-mile route from Mexico City to Santa Fe that would bring settlers, horses, and goods to these lands. Old mission churches still remain, sharing the road with large tracts of pecan trees, orchards, and vineyards. Las Cruces has an ideal climate for vines with warm days, cool nights, and mild winters. Thanks to Franciscan monks, New Mexico started creating wine about 150 years before California. Today, New Mexico is home to over 60 wineries and ten of those wineries in the southern part of the state form the Mesilla Valley Wine Trail.My first stop was Rio Grande Vineyards, started in 2009, and now creating 15,000 bottles a year. We tried their signature wine, Queue Tendre, a semi-sweet white wine aged in Hungarian oak barrels, before moving on to my favorites, the dry red zinfandel and the sangiovese. Tastings are done in a classic ranch-style tasting room or outside on the back deck offering glorious views of the Organ Mountains. Back on Route 28, I passed over the Rio Grande River and under an umbrageous tunnel of mature pecan trees, courtesy of Stahmann Farms, the world’s largest family owned pecan orchard. Not surprisingly, the shaded roadway is cherished by road bikers.
Soon I arrived at La Vina Winery, just in time for their annual Harvest Wine Festival. Bands were playing live rock, bluegrass, and country tunes and booths were selling local crafts, and, of course, spiced pecans. But most folks were here to taste the excellent wine. I really enjoyed the sauvignon blanc and the smooth syrah. Glass in hand, I walked over to a tent to listen to the music, looked up at the clear blue sky, and enjoyed the slight breeze. Life is good on the ole El Camino Real.
With the deluge of snow and rain in the Northwest thanks to El Nino, whitewater rafting outfitters are already predicting this could be a banner year due to high water levels. 
Best known for their properties in Laguna Beach and Deer Valley, the hotel brand Montage also runs the vast 
Follow my cue and wake up with a morning snorkel to the reef just beyond the beach of the 
North of Bolton Landing, Lake George feels more lake a river, narrow and hemmed in by the peaks, offering vintage Adirondack beauty. You peer out at ridge after anonymous ridge and a carpet of trees, with few signs of civilization. When I tell people that I find Lake George more exquisite than Lake Tahoe, Lake Powell, or even that wondrous lake to the north, Champlain, they often look at me bewildered. They equate the lake with the honky-tonk village on the southern tip, packed with T-shirt and fudge shops, video arcades, hokey haunted houses, a requisite water park, and my personal favorite, Goony Golf, a miniature golf course crowded with huge fairy tale characters. All they have to do is drive about ten miles north on Route 9N to Bolton Landing and the lake becomes far more serene. Growing up in Schenectady, New York, we would make the hour-drive to Bolton Landing on a regular basis to reach our sailboat docked just out of town. Now I return on an annual basis with my family to treat my kids to a good dose of natural adventure. 
One of the great benefits of living in Toronto, the 4th largest city in North America (after Mexico City, New York City, and Los Angeles) is its diversity. Over 180 languages and dialects are spoken here, and approximately half of Toronto’s population was born outside of Canada. Everywhere I go locally, I learn something about another part of the world. A small but powerful outdoor show at the