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Entry bubble Show Your Passport at the Border

By: Jake | December 08, 2008 | Category: Travel

Passport picture

We've been getting a lot of calls at the National Contact Center about the new passport requirements that take effect on June 1, 2009. People want to apply for or renew a passport now because these new requirements state that U.S. citizens traveling to Mexico and Canada will be required to present a passport or passport card to enter or re-enter the U.S. on June 1. Currently you only need a passport to enter or re-enter the U.S. from a border country by air, but the new requirements will require a passport or passport card to enter or re-enter by land, sea and air.

If you don't have a passport, I suggest you get one ASAP because it could be cheaper, you'll get it quicker and you'll save yourself some headaches. Earlier this year, I found out firsthand that passport fees can rise at the beginning of the year. I know from past experience that processing times will take longer as the deadline approaches and you don't want to pay extra money to expedite your passport.

The current routine processing time for passports is three weeks. Here are the new rules from the Department of State:

On June 1, 2009, the U.S. government will implement the full requirements of the land and sea phase of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI). The proposed rules require most U.S. citizens entering the United States at sea or land ports of entry to have a passport, passport card, or WHTI-compliant document.
Please Note: Children under age 16 will be able to continue crossing land & sea borders using only a U.S. birth certificate (or naturalization certificate) after the new law takes effect in June. The original birth certificate or a copy may be used. See the Department of Homeland Security's Ready, Set.. Go! for more information on the changing travel requirements.

The good news is if you're going directly to Puerto Rico or another of the U.S. territories, they're considered part of the U.S., so you don't need a passport! Makes a great case for visiting the U.S. Virgin Islands!

| Post a Comment | View Comments [3] | envelope E-mail This Entry | Tags: canada   jake   mexico   passport   travel  

 

Entry bubble Museums and Halls of Fame

By: Jim | September 29, 2008 | Category: Travel

Museum at nightA recent weekend away got me thinking about some of the historic and artistic destinations in the DC area that I’ve not yet seen. A lot of them free at that! Why is it that so many of us who live in cities with a variety of attractions rarely take advantage of them? For example, I have yet to finish touring all of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution or go to one of its Folklife Festivals.

If you're like me, you probably have the usual excuses, like being too busy or wanting to wait until you have houseguests. Others of us may have children and think the kids may not enjoy a trip the local museum. Not to fear! Museums and Learning has tips on how to prepare for and enjoy a trip to the museum with your kids. If you think you're not ready for a trip to the Museum of Modern Art with the kids, then maybe a visit to a children's museum is in order.

For something a little unusual, try a hall of fame. Back home in Northeastern Ohio there are such diverse venues as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, and the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron. If you or your kids have a particular interest or hobby, do a quick search using your hobby with the term "hall of fame" or "museum" and see what you come up with, like the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum in Gatlinburg, TN. Another way to find about interesting cultural opportunities is to go to your town's chamber of commerce or department of tourism. Check out USA.gov's history, arts, and culture page page for more ideas, too.

Does your home town have an unusual attraction?

| View Comments [6] | envelope E-mail This Entry | Tags: art   children   culture   hall_of_fame   hobby   jim   kids   museum   travel  

 

Entry bubble The Climbing Chinook at the Bonneville Dam

By: Stephanie | July 18, 2008 | Category: Travel

Bonneville Dam fish ladderHere's a ladder that you can't use to paint your kitchen or screw in that hard-to-reach lightbulb. It's reserved for use by Oncorhynchus tshawytscha and Acipenser transmontanus. That's chinook salmon and white sturgeon, for short. At the Bonneville Dam in Cascade Locks, Oregon, venerable fish such as these swim up "fish ladders" made just for them. The ladders, which are used across the U.S., allow fish to bypass dams and natural barriers, usually on their way upstream to spawn.

As my husband and I stopped in to the Bonneville Dam's visitor's center awhile back, Woody Guthrie's "Roll On Columbia" played in my head. While we were interested in seeing the historic dam, who knew that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could make watching fish swim a truly captivating endeavor?

Outside the visitor's center, I could clearly see the fish ladder coming from the Columbia River. Designed to simulate a set of rapids, it has helped an average of more than one million salmon and other fish migrate past the dam each year. Inside the center, we were greeted by huge windows that surprised us with an underwater view into the fish ladder itself. Schools of steelheads and jacks swam by in the cloudy water as we ran to the windows like little kids to get a better look. We also were lucky enough to spot a lone lamprey, which stopped to rest on the glass with its suction-cup mouth before it continued its fight against the current.

Bonneville Dam fish counter in her office

And file this under "cool government job." We met one of the fish counters at the dam—a very nice woman who sits in an office with a huge window for hours at a time, counting and identifying the various fish that swim past her window through the ladder, for conservation and other purposes.

If you want to see a murky view of what the fish counters see in real time, visit the Bonneville Dam's Fishcam. It sure beats watching an aquarium screen saver any day.

Have you been to an interesting government visitors center?

| View Comments [5] | envelope E-mail This Entry | Tags: bonneville_dam   columbia_river   fish_ladder   government_job   salmon   stephanie   visitors_center  

 

Entry bubble Bald Eagle Status

By: Jake | July 14, 2008 | Category: Travel

Thanks to Jim for posting last week while I was on vacation. I spent some time exploring the Pacific Northwest and from the comfort of my hotel balcony I witnessed our national bird in action. Bald Eagle on a Pole

One morning I noticed a blackbird attacking a bird sitting on an old dock post. I thought it was a heron, and my girlfriend suggested since the bird was shorter and had a beak and legs smaller than a heron, it might be a bald eagle. She was right, as you can tell from our photographic evidence.

It didn't really cross my mind that we were looking at a bald eagle at the time because when I was a kid the only place I had seen a bald eagle was the zoo. The Pacific Northwest has a large population of bald eagles, but they are making a huge comeback in the rest of the U.S. I know there is a pair of bald eagles nesting here in Alexandria, and my brother tells me he spots them on occasionally when he's driving in Eastern Virginia.

It's hard to believe that in 1782, when the United States adopted the bald eagle as a national symbol, there were as many as 100,000 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the nation. In 1967 that number was down to 417 due to shooting, habitat infringement and the use of DDT pesticide. This is why that same year the Department of Interior began to protect all bald eagles south of the 40th parallel under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966.

Eagle on the sandBy 2006 there were approximately 10,000 nesting bald eagle pairs and the Department of Interior took the birds off the federal list of threatened and endangered species in July 2007 with a promise to monitor the status of the species. Of course we are not back to the 100,000 pairs yet and the recovery process is delicate. By March 2008 DOI had returned bald eagles in the Sonoran Desert of central Arizona to the federal list of threatened species and the birds also grace a number of state-level threatened and endangered species lists. Still I'm happy to know that you don't have to go to the zoo to see a bald eagle anymore.

| View Comments [8] | envelope E-mail This Entry | Tags: bald_eagle   birds   conservation   jake   threatened_species  

 

Entry bubble Avoid Toll Traffic

By: Colleen | June 18, 2008 | Category: Travel

If I'm forced to be on the road while gas prices are sky-high, few things bring me more joy than cruising tollright through toll plazas while lines of cars, each paying cash, sit in traffic and prolong their gas guzzling.

Suckers.

I can honestly say that my E-ZPass has changed my life—maybe not to the extent that my iPod has, but it has saved me much time and considerable road rage over the past three years.

With the help of a transponder mounted to your windshield, E-ZPass allows you to drive right through specifically marked toll lanes without stopping. Your transponder is linked to your personal checking account, and simply deducts the cost of the toll from your balance. No stopping. No reaching in the seat cushions hoping for exact change. No risking rolling up to the tollbooth with insufficient funds. (This MAY have happened to me, summer of '04 crossing the Walt Whitman Bridge into Philadelphia.)

E-ZPass specifically works for toll roads in the Northeast, reaching into the Midwest, and the southern border of Virginia. Other regions of the country have their own E-ZPass equivalent systems. Check out your state's department of motor vehicles website to see what program they have to offer.

Hopefully, saving time not sitting in toll lines will get you to your summertime destination a little quicker, and you'll have to suffer from one less "are we there yet?" coming from the backseat.

Road trips not your thing? Here are some travel tips to expedite the airport security process.

| View Comments [3] | envelope E-mail This Entry | Tags: car   colleen   e_zpass   toll   traffic   travel  

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