If winter fun is on your vacation agenda then Maine should definitely be on your planner.

There is so much to see and do there you may find yourself extending your vacation!  Skiing, snowmobiling, moose watching, fishing and great food in the moutons to the west!

Rangeley, Maine the area home to Saddleback Ski Area.  Saddleback “the uncrowded” mountain boasts the highest base elevation and lowest ticket prices of any major ski area in New England.

It is a great place for all the above and if you go there a stop at OUR PLACE CAFE is a must do!  This home style eatery is located on Richardson Street and features some of the best home cooking around.  After you’re done eating, enjoy the Rangeley Lake or one of the many things to do in this area.

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Have you ever wanted to get a taste of China but don’t have the budget for a trip to the Orient?

Then you need to head the car to The Forbidden Gardens in Katy, TX.

The gardens are an outdoor museum replicating some of China’s historic treasures.  You can wander through a scale copy of the Forbidden City, the old emperor’s palace in Beijing.

You can see the vacation getaway for Chinese royal — the Lodge of the Calming of the Heart.

They also have replicas of the famous army of terra-cotta soldiers.

www.forbidden-gardens.com

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Who is the first “spokes-animal” you remember?

If you are over twenty-five chances are it is Elsie the Cow, the spokes-cow for Borden Dairies.

Around before the Energizer Bunny, the Quick Bunny and even Morris the cat, Elsie was THE symbol of milk for many a generation.

You can visit the original Elsie the Cow’s grave (originally Elsie was named Lobelia) in Plainsboro, NJ.  A few miles NE of Princeton.  From Rt.  1 go east on Scudder’s Mill Road, then right at the Plainsboro Rd.  connector onto Plainsboro Rd.  After going over a small bridge, take the first right into the Walker-Gordon housing development and park in the first lot on the right.

The headstone is to the right next to the little gazebo, right down by the pond.

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If you’re in the neighborhood of Spring Green, Wisconsin this holiday season, drop by The House on the Rock for it’s annual Christmas tour.  The house was built in the 1940’s by Alex Jordan who intended it to be a weekend retreat.  However people were so fascinated by the this 14-room home literally built on a 60-foot sandstone formation known as Deer Shelter Rock, that he began to charge a 50 cent admission and the house’s fame grew from there.  The House on the Rock is known for its extremes.  Not only do they have an extensive doll collection, but they also have the world’s largest carousel and the only infinity room, which extends 218 feet over a cliff, unsupported completely surrounded by glass windows.  The whole house is two and half miles long so bring your walking shoes.

The tour takes approximately two and a half hours.  Be prepared to see over 6,000 Santa dolls, firgurines, statues, and images as well as listen to holiday music and join in the holiday spirit.  You may also visit the Streets of Yesterday exhibit, the Heritage of the Sea exhibit, the Transportation Building, the Music of Yesterday and the World’s Largest Carousel.  Shopping and food are also available.

For more information see http://thehouseontherock.com/HOTR_AttractionMain.htm

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The Poe Museum is located in Richmond where Edgar Allan Poe lived and worked.

The museum features the life and career of Edgar Allan Poe by documenting his accomplishments with pictures, relics, and verse, and focusing on his many years in Richmond.

Opened in 1922, in The Old Stone House, the museum is only blocks away from Poe’s first Richmond home and his first place of employment, the Southern Literary Messenger.

A wonderful collection of furniture and relics from Poe’s time grace this museum.

For more information you can visit http://www.poemuseum.org

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Sure, we all watch the Super Bowl to root for our favorite team, gorge ourselves on an endless supply of cheap beer, six-foot long subs and yell at the players through our TV screen.

But if what I suspect is true, many of us really watch it to see the commercials that advertisers have paid millions upon millions of dollars to catch our attention.

We all remember the Levi’s jeans, Pepsi, Victoria Secret, and Budweiser commercials of past years.

If you love these often hilarious commercials as much as I do, why not plan a trip to the Museum of Televison and Radio.  They have two great locations, one in Los Angeles and one in New York City.  Both are currently showing Super Bowl:  Super Showcase for Commercials, which is a one hour long film hosted by Frank Gifford, highlighting Super Bowl Sunday commercials that have appeared over the past two decades.

So, after the Super Bowl when your cash is running low from the three kegs you bought for your party, why not head up to one of these museums to get in some great laughs, for less than the cost of a movie.

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Elias F.  Stenman, a mechanical engineer who designed the machines that made paper clips, decided to make a house out of paper. He thought the paper would be good insulation.

Elias began building his house in Rockport, Massachusetts in 1922.  He started out with a wood framework, of course, and used wood for the roof and floor.  But everything else, including the furniture is paper!

Elias used rolled newspaper, heavily varnished, to cover the walls, make all the furniture (except for the piano, which is merely COVERED in paper), and even decorate!

For more than twenty years, Elias and his family constructed the Paper House, using more than 100,000 newspapers to create their two-room home.  The walls are made of 215 layers of newspaper.  Most of the exterior layer type is completely readable, and Paper House visitors can spend hours browsing through classic newspaper headlines.

The writing desk is made of newspapers detailing Charles Lindberg’s famous transatlantic air flight and the grandfather clock includes mastheads from the newspapers of each of the 48 states (made before Hawaii and Alaska joined the US).

Stenman’s family runs the Paper House now and you can visit!

GETTING THERE:  On entering Rockport, Massachusetts, follow 127 to Pigeon Cove.  After the Yankee Clipper Inn take the second left (Curtis Street) then another left on Pigeon Hill Street to No.52 (on your right).

To learn more about the Paper House, go here:

http://www.paperhouserockport.com/

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Do you have a fascination with the bizarre?  Or, perhaps, a long-neglected interest in the medical profession?

The place for you, then, is the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  A visit to the Mutter Museum is a view into a world rarely seen by those outside the medical profession.

The Museum’s collections include over 20,000 objects, including fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens, medical instruments, anatomical and pathological models, items of memorabilia of famous scientists and physicians, and medical illustrations.

You’ll see:

• The famous “Soap Woman,” whose corpse turned to soap after her death in the 19th century of Yellow Fever.
• The plaster cast of Cheng and Eng - the original Siamese twins - and their actual attached livers.
• A bizarre collection of over 2,000 objects swallowed and removed by a doctor who specialized in this strange subspeciality.
• The actual skeletons of a giant and a midget.
• The brain of a murderer.
• Skull collections.
• Animal brains, arranged from frog to man.
• The thorax of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.

The Mutter Museum is not for the sqeamish, but it’s not just a freak show either.  Originally intended for the education of medical students, the lay public can learn quite a bit too.

The Mutter Museum is located on 19 South 22nd Street in Philadelphia.

For more info, go here:  http://www.collphyphil.org/mutter.asp

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Enter the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices in Minneapolis, MN, (dubbed “The Quackery Hall of Fame”) and you’ll get a closeup look at the world’s largest display of “what the human mind has devised to cure itself without the benefit of either scientific method or common sense.

Utterly useless devices on display include the foot-powered breast enlarger, bloodletting devices, the Psychograph (an antique phrenology machine to determine your personality by measuring the bumps on your head!), and the McGregor Rejuvenator (a machine that used radio waves and ultraviolet waves to reverse the aging process).

The machines still work (as well as they EVER did, that is).

Want to see more?  Visit this unusual museum’s website at:

http://www.museumofquackery.com/

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Interested in the trappings of death?  Curious about the way people have been buried over the last two centuries?

Then visit the National Museum of Funeral History!

The museum was founded to preserve historical artifacts from the 19th and 20th centuries and to educate the public about the United State’s history of funeral service.  Here you’ll find the country’s largest display of funeral service memorabilia, as well as rare artifacts and interesting historical information about one of our most important cultural rituals.

In addition to objects, such as historic coffins and death wagons, you’ll find information about everything from great funerals in history to little-known details of the funeral arts.  You’ll also learn about ancient Egyptian funeral practices and how they preserved their mummies!

Things you’ll see:  a glass coffin (Snow White’s?), old ice box and cast iron coffins (for use in pre-embalming days), and a coffin built for three.

The National Museum of Funeral History is open seven days a week in Houston, Texas.  For hours and information, go here:

http://www.nmfh.org/

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