Travel Maven Blog ... posts from The Travel Mavens.com

Cruising New Zealand, slipping through Milford Sound

After two days and three nights at sea from Tasmania on the southern tip of Australia, Celebrity Century plunged into Milford Sound at sunrise.

You would not want to sleep-in on the day that your cruise ship slips through the three sounds on New Zealand’s southwest coast, not if you want to see Milford, anyway.

Our tour from the sea to the end of the Milford fjord was only two hours, so we were back out to sea in plenty of time for a full breakfast.

SATW Phoenix awards honor New York, Canada

Five tourism projects -- two in New York City and three in Canada -- are winners in the 2010 Phoenix Awards from the the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW).

Phoenix Awards recognize conservation, preservation, beautification and anti-pollution accomplishments.

In New York,  SATW honored the High Line, a vertical public park, and the Central Park Conservancy.

In Canada, Phoenix Award winners were Miscou Island in New Brunswick, the Trans Canada Trail, and Dr. Mary Majka and Mary’s Point Western Hemispheric Shorebird Reserve in Harvey, New Brunswick.

For the Phoenix Awards video, click Phoenix Awards 2010 from SATW Video on Vimeo.

Drift logs piled high on Olympic Peninsula

On Washington's Olympic Peninsula, Highway 101 runs along the Pacific Ocean between Queets and the Hoh Indian Reservation. To the east are the rain forests of Quinault, Queets and Hoh.

You'll find some vast beach views and access to the sand at several points, including Kalaloch, above, and below, where great gobs of drift logs are piled high this spring, having run off the rain forest rivers.

The beaches are wide, hard-packed, and nearly vacant in May.