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Last year, we wrote about a progressive green community with a fitting name--Greensburg, Kansa--that continues to set new standards in eco-development.

After a May 2007 tornado ravaged this town of 1,500 residents, the community voted to rebuild Greensburg as energy-efficient as possible. According to a New York Times article, community leaders' goals were to "build a sense of economic dynamism that would generate new businesses and jobs and persuade Greensburg's talented young people not to leave." 

One of the newest additions to the town, the Sun Chips Business Incubator (above), is designed to help local businesses recover after the tornado. The Business Incubator, completed in May 2009, received a LEED Platinum rating, the highest rating possible, due to its greater than 50% energy savings and innovative water reuse system.  Strategic window placement and skylights allow the Incubator to be mostly day lit, while photovoltaic panels mounted on the roof supply 10% of the building's energy needs. Water from the sinks and showers is collected and reused to flush the toilets.

Forget the white sheets this Halloween and go on a hunt for some real ghosts.  And what better places than abandoned prisons and hospitals?  The following include some of the most haunted asylums and penitentiaries in the country.  Many of them offer tours... are you brave enough?

Waverly Hills Sanatorium - Louisville, Kentucky

Opened in 1910, this treated tuberculosis patients during the TB epidemic of the early 1900s.  Fresh air and bed rest were the main treatments during this time - patients were kept outside on porches for most of the day, even during the winter (this led to the invention of electric blankets).  Heliotherapy, or "sun treatment", was also used, as it was believed the sun helped kill the bacteria that cause TB.  Other treatments included ways to temporarily restrict a portion of the lung in order to "let it rest".  One of these treatments, the "shot bag" method, included placing a one pound bag of shot on both collarbones of the patient. The amount was increased by four or five ounces each week until the patient would carry 5 pounds on the upper part of each lung. More permanent treatments involved various methods of collapsing one of the patient's lungs.

Visitors to the Sanatorium can take a 2-hour guided historical tour or spend a half-night (4 hours) or a full night (8 hours) hunting ghosts.  One common spot to have paranormal encounters is in the Body Chute, or Death Tunnel, which was once used to transport the bodies of deceased TB patients down the hill to waiting hearses or trains. Many patients died each day during the epidemic and the staff preferred to use the Body Chute rather than carry them through the main hall in an effort to keep morale up.  Unusual experiences at the Sanatorium include seeing shadows, smelling food from the abandoned kitchen and hearing voices screaming and moaning.  During the month of October, visitors can brave the Terror on the Hill, a haunted house at Waverly Hills.

Home to more than cows and cheese, bars and beer, Wisconsin has a history of spooky sightings. Be prepared when the sun goes down...

Milwaukee has two haunts that are worth a visit: Heaven City Restaurant in Mukwonago offers fine dining in a beautiful old house and registered Wisconsin Historical site that is said to be haunted by A.J. Moore, a street preacher and early resident. The restaurant claims reports of ghost sightings, disembodied laughter and voices, doorknobs turning, and even feeling the touch of "an unseen child presence." Allegedly situated near Native American burial grounds and underground tunnels that lead to a nearby river (it's theorized these were used for gangster bootlegging activities), Heaven City has so many reasons to be haunted it can get confusing.

If eating amongst the spirits isn't enough for you, stay a night at The Pfister, which is said to be visited by its former owner, Guido Pfister. Hotel employees insist that he isn't scary--he just seems to be proud of the elegant hotel that he built in 1893.

Looking for a winter getaway that still leaves you with some cash for holiday shopping? Some hotels are offering special winter rates to encourage travel during the off-season. Most of these offers aren't available during holidays, but they offer a great option for a winter vacation. (None of the following rates include taxes)

Maswik Lodges, Grand Canyon National Park: from $82 per night

"If you think winter is a weird time to visit the Grand Canyon, think again. The snow-dusted scenery is stunning, the crowds thinner, the hiking can be great (absent a snowstorm) and some lodge prices are lower," writes Jane Engle in an article from the LA Times. Taking in the beauty of the Grand Canyon without fighting off throngs of tourists sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Xanterra Parks and Resorts has made it even sweeter by offering rooms in their Maswik South Lodge for $82 a night and in their Maswik North Lodge for $105 a night.

This deal isn't advertised on their website, but if you make an online reservation during the qualifying dates (November 29 through March 4, except for December 19 through January 2 and February 12 through 14) the discounted rates will automatically be applied.

Sonoma Hotel, Sonoma, CA: from $99 per night

The Sonoma Hotel, a 19th-century hotel located in the heart of the Sonoma Wine Country, is offering a $99 per night special for rooms booked Sunday through Thursday between now and March 2009.  These rooms normally run between $110-$170 a night.  A "Superior" room can also be reserved at the reduced price of $125 (normally $165-$190).  

The Hotel offers complimentary wine every evening, not that you'll need it after a day of tastings at the local wineries. This "bed and breakfast style inn" is located an hour north of San Francisco on the Sonoma Square near a variety of local artisan shops.

One of a number of popular speakeasy-themed bars sprouting up across the nation, Chicago's The Violet Hour just may be the best. (Don't believe us? just ask these guys.) Toby Maloney--the über-bartender of New York's Milk & Honey fame--has gathered a team of fellow bartenders who see mixing as equal parts science and art.

The elegant bar hides behind an abandoned building exterior; the only piece out of place is a door handle sticking out of the wall, which, once pulled, leads to the Violet Hour's dark waiting room. On my visit, my group and I were initially disappointed at being led to bar seats--we had wanted to sit in the ultra-high-backed chairs grouped around candlelit tables, or better yet, next to the fireplace. But we immediately realized that we had been awarded the best seats in the house. The dimly lit bar gleamed with varieties of booze that I didn't recognize (a bit different from the collection at my local college-town bar). Bottles that looked like they contained potions were lined up as if to say "at your service." I found out later that these were the homemade bitters, syrups, and hand-squeezed juices used in the cocktails.

Popular culture has done Cleveland a disservice. Most of its references to the city are negative: Drew Carey's "Cleveland Rocks" anthem did little more than reinforce stuffy mid-Western stereotypes; basketball star Lebron James is from there, but can't ever seem to stop talking about leaving town; David Foster Wallace used it as the ideal-because-it-isn't-ideal setting for his first major novel, The Broom of the System; even Dr. Seuss commented on the polluted state of Lake Erie in The Lorax. There was that unfortunate burning river situation (due to pollution) back in the '60s, and more recently, this series of "hastily made" tourism videos, which have drawn over a million views on YouTube, haven't helped. 

As we noted earlier this year, Cleveland is making strides to clean up its act. And you gotta love a city that doesn't take itself too seriously, as evidenced by the annual tongue-in-cheek Burning River Fest. But the one attraction that has me itching to visit Rock City, despite negative media representations, is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum (pictured above), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Interestingly, the celebratory concert will be held in NYC's Madison Square Garden (on October 29 and 30), rather than in the Rock Hall's hometown. And with the opening of the Rock Annex in New York last year, it looks like Cleveland may be experiencing some competition to maintain its nickname. In the meantime, click through the jump for a few reasons to add the original Rock City to your destination list:

In conjunction with his upcoming book, Here Is Where: In Search of America's Great Forgotten History, we're following historian and Legacy Project founder Andrew Carroll as he drives, flies, walks, boats, buses, bikes, and hikes to seek out little-known historic sites in all 50 states. Bookmark all of his posts here.

While heading to southwest Minnesota to research a little-known Sioux Indian site, I made a short detour to photograph a story related to a historic flight over St. Paul.

During the Civil War, military personnel from other nations came to the U.S. to observe combat operations. One of these visitors was a 25-year-old Prussian officer who was fascinated by the Union Army's Balloon Corps, which conducted reconnaissance missions over Confederate territory.

"Just now I ascended with Prof. [John] Steiner, the famous aeronaut, to an altitude of six or seven hundred feet," the young Prussian wrote from St. Paul to his father back in Wurttemberg on August 19, 1863. "Should one want to harass with artillery fire [opposing] troops...the battery could be informed by telegraphic signals where their projectiles hit. The above technique has at times been used with great success by this country's armies. No method is better suited to viewing quickly the terrain of an unknown, enemy-occupied region."

The experience had a dramatic impact; "While I was above St. Paul I had my first idea of aerial navigation strongly impressed upon me," he would later say. "[A]nd it was there that the first idea of my Zeppelins came to me." His full name was Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin, who went on to manufacture the eponymous airship. By World War I the Germans were utilizing almost 70 Zeppelins both for bombing raids and intelligence gathering against the Allies--including American troops.

Next up: Atlanta, GA

All photos and text © Andrew Carroll

When the news came out yesterday of the death of John Hughes, the world lost not only a popular director, but a huge proponent of the city of Chicago. Despite not being actively involved in filmmaking for the last ten years of his life, he continued to live in the city where he spent most of his career, a place which, he said, "[I]s a working city, where people go to their jobs and raise their kids and live their lives." His classic films like Sixteen Candles, Home Alone, The Breakfast Club, and of course, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, all could be considered postcards to the city. Here's one of my favorite scenes of all time. What's yours?

Read More: Cinematic Road Trip -- Illinois; 48 Hours Chicago; Free Cities Chicago.

Michigan needs some love. The Labor Department recently announced that it was the first state in 25 years to have unemployment top 15 percent. Though I will probably have to leave the state I've lived in for as long as I can remember in order to find a job post-graduation--and even though the winters are too long--it's hard for me not to miss Michigan this time of year. And of course, the best thing about the Great Lakes state is, well, all of the lakes. Fresh water (no salty residue), climbing up sand dunes and watching the sun set over Lake Michigan, nights that are cold enough to warrant a sweatshirt, lighthouses... these are the images the phrase "West Coast" evokes in my mitten-shaped state.

These towns are so beautiful that I was reluctant to encourage people to visit lest they become overcrowded, but my pride in my home state prevailed. I want people to know that Michigan isn't only the nexus of the diminished auto industry; it's a beautiful state full of friendly people where you don't have to clear out your wallet to have a fabulous trip. Make your way from the south end of Michigan's west coast to the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula with these personal favorite spots.

Traveler photographer Bob Krist just paid a visit to Chicago, but he wasn't just there to check out the blues. Here, he shares some of his photos from his trip, and offers a few tips on getting great pictures of the skyline.

The Chicago skyline at twilight, as seen from the Adler Planetarium.

Chicago is more than the city of big shoulders; it's a city of great architecture. Capturing its distinct and eclectic skyline is a challenging pleasure for any shooter. Here are some top places to make knockout pictures of the Windy City.   

1. The Adler Planetarium on Museum Campus. Jutting out into Lake Michigan, the Museum Campus offers a panoramic view back towards the city. The Adler Planetarium sits at the end of the peninsula and the steps on the side of the structure give you an unfettered view of the expanse of the entire skyline. It's a morning to early afternoon shot, and it's great again at twilight (right after sunset). Many cameras, even point and shoots, allow you to stitch several pictures together for a panorama, so try shooting several overlapping sections of the view and stitching it together to form a stunning panoramic. You can also do this after fact in Photoshop or any image manipulation program that offers panoramic stitching.
   

Traveler photographer Bob Krist is just back from a visit to Chicago, where he toured some of the classic blues clubs in the city.

One of my favorite things to do when I arrive in a new place is go to the highest point, it helps me get my bearings and lays out the landscape in front of me like a huge buffet table that I'm eager to dig into. But I do admit to the occasional bout of vertigo when it comes to actually looking down. So my stomach feels a little queasy right now just thinking about "The Ledge," the new glass-enclosed feature of the Skydeck in the Sears Tower in Chicago, which opens today to the public. These new glass balconies are suspended 1,353 feet (412 meters) in the air and extend 4 feet (1.22 meters) from the Sears Tower's 103rd-floor Skydeck. According to the Sears Tower:

The inspiration for The Ledge came from hundreds of forehead prints visitors left behind on Skydeck windows every week. From the memorable scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off to curious children going right up to the window, visitors are constantly trying to catch a glimpse below. Now they have a unique and unobstructed view of the city.

"The Ledge" is made from three layers of half-inch thick laminated glass, and each of the panels weighs 1,500 pounds. Apparently (and thankfully for the cleaning crew) the boxes are retractable, so they're able to be pulled into the building for easy maintenance. Because if this slide show from the AP is any indication, the number of forehead prints they're going to have to deal with will exponentially increase.

What do you think? Would you stand on "The Ledge"?

[Sears Tower Unveils Glass Balconies on Skydeck]

Photo: AP

A revolutionary leader in the organic architecture movement, Frank Lloyd Wright constructed homes that were one with their natural surroundings. Taking into consideration every imaginable perspective, Wright's designs aimed to create peaceful and harmonious spaces. In 1992 the Seth Peterson Cottage in Lake Delton, Wisconsin, was the first of six homes designed by Wright to open to the public for vacationing and events.

One of Wright's last commissioned works, the Seth Peterson Cottage was built in 1958 overlooking Mirror Lake. Although the home is small in square footage, it appears much larger because of the abundance of natural light and other design elements. A masterful stone fireplace is the focal point in the home, while the great room is walled by picture windows and extends in to the fully functional kitchen. The intimate bedroom is also lined with windows and offers views of the hillside.

The home is secluded and would be a unique and peaceful retreat for design enthusiasts or anyone looking for a special getaway. Located near the Wisconsin Dells, there are a wide variety of activities available within ten minutes of the Seth Peterson Cottage including hiking, golf, spas, fishing, etc.

The home is open all year and rental rates range from $225-$275 per night. A two-night minimum reservation is required and the cottage sleeps four people. If you are just interested in visiting, the home is open the second Sunday of every month for tours.

For more ways to stay Wright, check out our past post on his buildings in Pennsylvania.

Photo: Courtesy of the Seth Peterson Cottage Conservancy

Traveler and Photo District News are currently hosting our annual World in Focus Photo Contest, and this year we're letting readers preview the submissions and vote on their favorites. Here's one of of the featured shots from this week:

Hey there, city-lovers! St. Louis, Missouri, is often overshadowed by other Midwest metropolises like Chicago, but Sara Arnold tells us why the Gateway to the West is a must-visit.

Want to see your city on IT? Copy and paste our list of fill-in-the-blank questions into an e-mail, fill in your answers, and send your responses to IntelligentTravel@ngs.org. And if you're still waiting for us to feature yours, fear not! We're going to keep posting as long as we keep getting them (please include photos and links!).

St. Louis, Missouri is My City

The first place I take a visitor from out of town is the Arch! Not necessarily 'cause I would prefer it, but that's ALWAYS their preferred first stop. Don't get me wrong, I think its beautiful, but St. Louis has so much more to offer.

When I crave Vietnamese I always go to Pho Grand. This is the best pho I've ever had. Beautiful restaurant, great neighborhood, friendly service, decent prices.

To escape suburbia I head to Castlewood State Park. Only about 40 minutes from downtown this is a phenomenal park with a great hiking trail overlooking a cliff on the Meramec River. Great day-trip picnic!

If I want to people watch I go to the Delmar loop. Great shops and restaurants with sidewalk seating. Perfect to watch passersby.

For complete quiet, I can hide away in Left Bank Books downtown. Fantastic selection, independently owned!

Forty years ago, Cleveland's river burned. Literally. The Cuyahoga River, which winds through Cleveland and Akron, was once one of the most polluted rivers in the United States, having caught fire more than a dozen times since 1868. When it burned in 1969, Time magazine described the Cuyahoga (which means "crooked river" in Iroquois) as the river that "oozes rather than flows" and where a person "does not drown but decays." Needless to say, the 1969 fire spurred environmental concerns and a plethora of environmental legislation was passed, including the Clean Water Act and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

But where is Cleveland today? According to MSNBC, Rock City still ranks among one of the most polluted cities in the U.S. (In fact, one fifth of the top 25 air-particle polluted cities are located in Ohio. Ouch.) But the city, if ever slowly, is hopping on the green bandwagon, trying to dispose of its bad rap.

Hunter Braithwaite visited the Buckminster Fuller exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, and says the he "started off thinking that this guy was a genius, then shifted to kook, then settled on a mix of the two." You can determine for yourself by checking out the exhibit, on display through June 21st.

In this season of layoffs, the clichéd "doing more with less" seems inescapable. But did you know that the term wasn't coined by a regional manager somewhere, but by Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, almost-inventor of the flying car, and founder of the modern day sustainability movement? Now you do.

Here is the back story: Fuller, twice-expelled from Harvard, unemployed, and unable to provide for his family, contemplates suicide on the shore of Lake Michigan. In the end, he decides against it, choosing instead to help as much of humanity as possible while using the smallest amount of resources. Or, to do more with less. If this came as a revelation, and you find yourself in the Chicago area before June 21st, check out Fuller's retrospective "Starting with the Universe" at the Museum of Contemporary Art.  
 
Luckily, the exhibition's curators do not share Fuller's passion for resource conservation. "Starting with the Universe" is a maximalist account of Fuller's life. Mining years of journals, the show is an in-depth narrative of Fuller's personal and professional growth. The walls are silkscreened with quotes, drawings, and enormous portraits of Fuller. There are models of his houses and developments. Unfortunately, the Dymaxion car isn't present. With a length of thirty feet, it wouldn't fit in the museum's freight elevator.

The exhibition charts Fuller's ambition as he moves from single-family homes to planned communities, from domed cities to plans for reallocating international resources. And toward the end of his life, things really took off. He made plans for cities that floated in the ocean. After that, he planned cities that floated in the sky. Some of these blueprints are little more than scribbles on notebook paper, but they raise the universal question, "what could he do had he lived for another decade?" The last room of the exhibition baits the viewer to pick up where Fuller left off. It is the Dymaxion study center, where visitors can browse over 400 volumes by and about Fuller.

Even though the National Cherry Blossom Festival is well under way here in Washington, D.C., that doesn't mean it's the only place to spot the famous pink and white trees. I just got back from a weekend in St. Louis and made a stop at the Missouri Botanical Garden, where over 150 cherry trees are in full bloom. The trees are dotted around the 14-acre Japanese strolling garden, the largest in the Western hemisphere. Walk the path along the four-acre lake and make sure to stop on the bridge to feed the giant koi (25 cents buys a handful of fish food).

The Japanese garden isn't the only reason to visit the Botanical Gardens. The 79-acre park has heaps to do, from visiting the Climatron, which houses some 1,200 tropical plants, to the temperate garden (above) to the Victorian District (complete with a maze), and the Children's Garden, which has lots of hands-on activities for kids.

The Missouri Botanical Garden is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Photo: Jeannette Kimmel

I take great pride having roots in the Midwest. Unfortunately, the to-dos of everyday life keeps me from visiting Missouri as often as I'd like, but every once in a while I run across something that truly makes me miss the kindheartedness--and sometimes quirkiness--of the folks who live in middle America. Case in point: Lambert's Cafe.

In a barn-like structure a few hours south of St. Louis,  hungry patrons are catching their supper--literally. Lambert's Cafe dubs itself "the only home of the throwed rolls." And rightly so. At each of the three locations, guests simply raise their hand if they want one of Lambert's famous rolls, and the server throws one to them (the video above speaks for itself).

How did this wacky practice get started? Though Lambert's Cafe, in some form, has been around since the 1940s, Norm Lambert was passing around rolls to customers on a particularly busy day in the 1970s when an impatient man told him to "throw the #@$#@! rolls." And throw them, Norm did. A tradition was born.

The restaurant's traditional Midwest menu--chicken and dumplings, meatloaf, barbecue pork steak, and chicken wings--is mixed with somewhat more eclectic items, like chicken gizzards, livers, and hog jowl. Vegetarians, don't despair. Lambert's serves a few veggie-friendly items, and everyone ordering from the menu is entitled to the "pass arounds" as well. Servers waltz around with big bowls of fried onions and potatoes, macaroni, and fried okra, and diners can take large helpings of whatever looks good.

[Lambert's Cafe]

Do you have any wacky restaurants where you live?

Hey there, city-lovers! Cynthia Farrell writes to us from chilly Minneapolis, Minnesota, and tells us why her city is much more than just a frozen tundra.

Want to see your city on IT? Just complete our list of fill-in-the-blank questions then copy and paste the list into an e-mail, fill in your answers, and send your responses to IntelligentTravel@ngs.org. And if you're still waiting for us to feature yours, fear not! We're attempting to post them as fast as we can (if you include photos and links, we're likely to get the post up faster).

Minneapolis is My City

The first place I take a visitor from out of town is Minnehaha Falls.

When I crave Neapolitan-style pizza I always go Punch.

To escape the airplane noise over my house I head to the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in the southwest suburbs.

If I want to take a walk in the woods, summer or winter, I go to Fort Snelling State Park, right in the city.

For complete quiet, I can hide away in a cabin up on the North Shore of Lake Superior, only a 3-4 hour drive away.

If you come to my city, get your picture taken with the Mary Tyler Moore sculpture on Nicollet Mall.

If you have to order one thing off the menu from Café Maude it has to be the house cut fries with truffle fontina fondue.