everyday trends: September 2011

Seven Sensational Scenic Drives for Autumn

White Mountain Trail

Courtesy of Dan Houde

White Mountain Trail (New Hampshire)

Drive: A perennial leaf-peeping favorite, this loop route in "The Whites" takes you through mountain passes and past fabulous rock formations, waterfalls, and natural pools. Time it right at dusk or dawn and you'll see moose in the bogs along Route 302 (Moose Alley) near Bretton Woods. In September and October males bellow mightily to attract mates.

Stop: Just off the national scenic byway, the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) leads easy hikes to incredible views of Crawford Notch. The hikes are free, and so are moose tours if you stay at AMC's Highland Lodge. For more great photo ops, climb aboard the Mount Washington Cog Railway or Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway.

Stay: At Appalachian Mountain Club's Highland Lodge, nightly rates in a bunkroom/shared bath are $92 per adult ($77 for AMC members), including breakfast, dinner, guided hikes, naturalist activities, and L.L. Bean gear loans. Purity Spring Resort, located on a spring-fed lake in East Madison, is an affordable family option that includes breakfast, dinner, and activities for $129 per night, per couple, or $195 per family of four.

West Elk Loop

Courtesy of Gunnison-Crested Butte Tourism Association

West Elk Loop (Colorado)

Drive: On this loop drive you'll circle western Colorado's West Elk Mountains, follow rivers, skirt canyons, and weave through the incredible aspen groves of Gunnison National Forest. Don't miss the north rim of Gunnison National Park's Black Canyon, where you can see the highest sheer cliff in Colorado drop 2,000 feet into the river below.

Stop: Explore the mountain wilderness on a trail ride near Crested Butte with Fantasy Ranch Horseback Adventures. In Gunnison, Scenic River Tours leads guided fly-fishing trips and whitewater rafting excursions. For $60, you can join one of Colorado Backcountry's half-day mountain bike rides through aspen forests.

Stay: The historic seven-bedroom B&B, Fresh & Wyld Farmhouse Inn, in Paonia has its own gardens and chickens to feed guests. In October rooms rent for $95 (shared bath) or $135 (private bath) per night and include a local, organic breakfast. Even more affordable is Gunnison's Western Motel, a roadside stop popular among bikers.

Blue Ridge Parkway

Courtesy of ExploreAsheville.com

Blue Ridge Parkway (North Carolina And Virginia)

Drive: The Blue Ridge Parkway, a 469-mile mystical mountain route dubbed "America's Favorite Drive," stretches from Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Shenandoah National Park. Head to the southwestern segment near Asheville, North Carolina, where leaf season runs long. Room rates are less expensive in late September and early November, but the colors are still beautiful.

Stop: In early fall thousands of migrating monarch butterflies bound for Mexico pass through the mountains 35 minutes south of Asheville. Best view: the parkway's Wagon Road Gap overlook. Nearby, crunch into a fresh-picked apple at Orchard at Altapass or hit the corn maze at Hickory Nut Gap Farm. The Biltmore House Architect's Tour takes you to a 360-degree rooftop view of autumn colors.

Stay: Inn on Main Street B&B, just north of Asheville, has a $195 per night Adventure Road Waterfall Tour Package that includes a picnic lunch, a guide to area waterfalls, and a personalized driving itinerary. For families, try Asheville's Brookstone Lodge for $89 to $159 per night, or go for one of the lodge's affordable zip-line or whitewater rafting packages.

Leonardo's 'Golden Horn' Bridge, Aas (near Oslo), Norway

Amish Country Byway

Courtesy of Holmes County Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau

Amish Country Byway (Ohio)

Drive: In the rolling hills between Columbus and Cleveland lies the Amish Country Byway, a network of country roads lined with thick forests and scenic farms with bright red barns. The clip-clop rhythm of horses and buggies on rolling hills takes you back to a time when life was less complicated and less expensive, and stores closed on Sundays.

Stop: Take a horse-drawn wagon ride, tour Amish barns and houses, and feed the animals at the Farm at Walnut Creek. Many of Amish Country's cheesemakers, including Heini's Cheese Chalet, welcome visitors to watch the process and sample more than 50 fresh-made varieties. Find out the why behind the simple ways at Behalt Amish & Mennonite Heritage Center.

Stay: Keep it simple with a stay at an Ohio State Park Lodge. In a river valley at the west end of the Amish Country Byway, the Mohican State Park Lodge has newly renovated guest rooms with private balconies. Packages here and at the state's seven other lodges can be as low as $109 per night in October.

Napa Valley/Silverado Trail

Courtesy of Thinkstock / Hemera

Napa Valley/Silverado Trail (California)

Drive: About an hour north of San Francisco, the vineyard-draped hills of Napa Valley are awash in crimsons and golds in the fall. Harvest season's crush parties are in full swing. From the town of Napa, follow the main Highway 29 route north 30 miles past big-name wineries and quaint towns to Calistoga. Then return on the quieter, breathtaking Silverado Trail.

Stop: Buy a $25 wine-tasting card in Napa to access 12 downtown tasting rooms for only 10 cents per taste. Pick up lunch at Napa's Oxbow Market for a roadside picnic en route to a winery. You can browse boutiques and hit the Culinary Institute's flavor bars ($10 to $15) in St. Helena. See a geyser and Petrified Forest near Calistoga.

Stay: Even during the valley's high season, there are still some inns and B&Bs with select rooms available for less than $200 a night. Try the Hennessey House, Napa Inn, or Arbor Guest House in Napa. The California Association of B&B Inns posts specials and last-minute deals on its website.

North Shore Scenic Drive

Courtesy of Explore Minnesota Tourism

North Shore Scenic Drive (Minnesota)

Drive: Along Minnesota's North Shore Scenic Drive, Lake Superior competes for your attention on one side while Superior National Forest's pine, aspen, and birch trees keep drawing you back to the other. It's a lovely dilemma. The route slices through eight state parks that preserve beaches, lighthouses, raging rivers, and waterfalls.

Stop: Ride a treetop roller coaster or zip-line for less than $10 at Spirit Mountain in Duluth. Lake kayaking excursions, beach campfires, and naturalist-led hikes on the Superior Hiking Trail are free when you stay at Lutsen Resort. Nearby in Two Harbors, you can tour the 1896 Edna G. Tugboat or the still-operational Two Harbors Light Station for next to nothing.

Stay: In Lutsen rooms go for as low as $150 per night this season at the storied Lutsen Resort. If you book three nights, you pay for only two with the resort's Fall Weekend Special. A standard room at Superior Shores Resort in Two Harbors runs from $79 to $139 per night in early October.

Cascade Loop

Courtesy of Leavenworth Chamber of Commerce

Cascade Loop (Washington)

Drive: The 440-mile Cascade Loop highway starts 28 miles north of Seattle, tunnels through mountains, twists through desert land, and passes glacier-fed Lake Chelan before returning to the Puget Sound. The elevation change alone is a thrill. And there's something exciting about cruising high-elevation passes that will be closed in winter.

Stop: Raise a stein (Prost!) to Munich in the little Bavarian mountain town of Leavenworth. Huge Oktoberfest celebrations spill onto the streets during the first three weekends in October. In the cowboy town of Winthrop, browse Riverside Avenue's boutiques with Western facade storefronts. Stop for apple cider tastings and tours during harvest season in Washington Apple Country.

Stay: True to form, Leavenworth's Bavarian Lodge has the Old World charm you'd expect, and nightly rates start at $129 for midweek stays with breakfast. Bring your sleeping bag and book a heated KOA log cabin in Leavenworth or Winthrop for less than $60 per night in October.

Most Successful Cars For 2011

As if to underscore the time-honored notion in the automotive business that “new cars sell,” most of the models that showed the biggest sales gains over the first half of the year were those that either premiered or have been redesigned for 2011.

Tom Libby, an advisor with the market research firm R.L. Polk & Co, in Southfield, Mich., recently identified what are the five “most successful” models each in the premium and non-premium new-car segments. This is based largely on their increases in retail registrations this year through the end of June compared to the same period a year earlier. In addition to being among the year’s top sellers, Libby cites each model as “helping the make move forward” by boosting the brand’s aggregate sales and/or elevating its market perception.

While at one time the movers and shakers among mainstream models would have certainly been big and burly sport-utility vehicles, four out of five are now passenger cars, including two domestic-branded autos. Of these, two are family cars Hyundai Sonata and Volkswagen Jetta, one is a compact Chevrolet Cruze and one a subcompact Ford Fiesta. The former are helping their respective brands make significant inroads into the midsize sedan market, while the latter two are riding a wave of popularity stirred by a strong undercurrent of stinging gas prices.

5 tips for solving a Rubik’s Cube

The world's best-selling toy isn't a game, a doll or a spud: it's a humble arrangement of 26 cubes, invented by a Hungarian architecture professor back in 1974.

In the 37 years since Erno Rubik first created his famous cube, it's sold over 350 million units, making the man himself a household name and propelling his cuboid conundrum into the history books. Although its three-dimensional nature makes it a tricky prospect for beginners, pros can solve it well under a minute. The world record? A mere 5.66 seconds.

Hard as that may be to believe, mathematicians have proved it's always possible to solve absolutely any cube arrangement, no matter how scrambled, in 20 moves or less. Deciding which 20 is the hard bit -- but we're here to help.

Squaring up to the Cube

It's natural to think of the cube as having six faces, each with nine cubes. But don't. Instead, think of it as 26 cublets, grouped into three categories: centers, edges, and corners.

Centers have one colored side, and are fixed together by the cube's internal spindle. They can move around but can't swap places, and there are six of them, one per face. Get in the habit of thinking of these as fixed points that indicate the proper color for each face.

The twelve edge cubes have two sides and can be found in the middle of a face. Corners, meanwhile, have three sides, and there are eight of them -- four on the top, four on the bottom.

Start at the beginning

There are lots of good methods for solving a Rubik's Cube, but some are easier than others. Most of the beginner-appropriate ones start the same way: solve the top face.

How? Pick a color (any color), and find the corresponding center cublet. Then move out the cublets that don't fit, and move in the ones that do. If you get one in the right place but with the wrong orientation, move it out and come back to it later. Once you're done, you'll have not only the top face one uniform color, but the top three cublets on each side face will also match; if not, you have an edge or corner in the wrong place.

Go "through the keyhole"

Having solved one face, you're probably pretty reluctant to undo your good work. But sometimes you need to step backwards to move forwards, and that's the principle behind this handy tip.

After solving the top face, the standard next step is to tackle the bottom, opposite face. One good way to do that is to deliberately move an edge piece out from the already finished top, making a "keyhole." As you maneuver pieces to solve the bottom face, you'll find that if you move them through the keyhole each time, you won't disturb the rest of the top. Once you're done with the bottom, it's a simple matter to move the keyhole piece back into place.

Develop your intuition

Stuck? That's not surprising. Once you've got the top and bottom faces down, matters get more difficult.

We suggest stopping there, rescrambling the cube, and starting over. Once you've gone from a complete cubescramble to a couple of finished sides, you'll have absorbed most of the principles and methods you'll need to finish up that elusive middle layer. But if you're still stuck, there are some great, step-by-step tutorials on the Web -- but be prepared to memorize some pretty complex move sequences. If you can hone your own intuition without detailed guides, you'll be a better solver.

Don't forget: lube your Cube

Are your twists just not as smooth as you think they should be? Maybe your cube is running dry. Twist the top face through 45 degrees, and use a flat-bladed screwdriver to gently pry out one of the edge pieces. Spray a small amount of silicon-based lubricant -- available from your local home improvement store -- into the gap. Replace the edge piece, and give your cube a good scrambling. You should find it much smoother, and your solving times should plummet.

Friday, September 30, 2011