Conroy book sparks tour

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- A new walking tour is being offered in Charleston based on places featured in the new Pat Conroy best-seller "South of Broad."

The two-hour tour is available Tuesday-Saturday, departing from the lobby of the Mills House Hotel at 115 Meeting St., and ending outside the Gibbes Museum of Art at 135 Meeting St. Both places are mentioned in the novel.

Tour stops linked to the book include St. Michael's Episcopal Church, where characters Chad Rutledge and Molly Huger were married; Legare Street, one of Charleston's most elegant streets and part of protagonist Leo King's paper route; Water Street, where characters in the novel ride out Hurricane Hugo; and the Dock Street Theater, visited by Leo's parents the night of a family tragedy.

The tour is $25 a person, which includes admission to the Gibbes Museum of Art and choice of a cocktail or dessert from one of Conroy's favorite Charleston restaurants, named Slightly North of Broad.

Tickets for the walking tour must be reserved in advance at 843-568-0473 or http://www.oldcharlestontours.com/southofbroad.html.

Winter Trails starts Jan. 9

McLEAN, Va. -- Winter Trails will celebrate its 15th year Jan. 9 at locations throughout the U.S. with free snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

The annual event is designed to offer kids and adults who are new to snow sports a chance to check them out with free equipment and trail access.

You can register online for your preferred location at http://WinterTrails.org. Most locations offer snowshoeing and cross-country but some only offer snowshoeing. Venues include alpine resorts, Nordic centers, state parks, National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service land. Details can be found on the Web site. You can also register onsite at each location.

Winter Trails is part of "Learn a Snow Sport Month," set for the entire month of January to raise awareness of skiing, snowboarding and snowshoeing. Information about other snow sports learning programs can be found at http://WinterFeelsGood.com and individual programs are described at http://LearnaSnowSport.org.

Cities are in Da Vinci mode

NEW YORK -- Several cities around the country are in da Vinci mode with shows about Leonardo da Vinci's work.

In New York, "Leonardo Da Vinci's Workshop: Inventor + Artist + Dreamer," opens Nov. 20 at the Discovery Times Square Exposition and runs through April 4. The show offers full-scale, interactive models of da Vinci's inventions, including his ideas for the airplane, automobile, robot knight and mechanical lion.

In Baltimore, "Da Vinci -- The Genius: A Traveling Exhibit" at the Maryland Science Center through Jan. 31 features some of his inventions, anatomical drawings and writings, plus "secrets of 'The Last Supper' and the 'Mona Lisa' revealed in 3D animation. "

In Atlanta, an exhibit of sculptures and sketches by da Vinci and his contemporaries is at the High Museum, including some never before seen outside of Europe, borrowed from the Vatican's art collection, the Louvre in Paris and the royal collection at Windsor Castle in England.

The exhibit will be at the High until February, when a modified version of the show travels to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The centerpiece is a nearly 30-foot recreation of da Vinci's destroyed horse statue, which towers over the plaza outside the High. Inside the museum are the meticulous drawings and anatomical notes he made of horses in hopes of perfectly capturing the animals' motion. The work was never completed because the bronze intended for the statue was used to make cannons, and a plaster model was destroyed by soldiers.

Yellowstone closes roads

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- Roads into the interior of Yellowstone National Park have closed for the winter, limiting access to Old Faithful, Canyon, and Fishing Bridge until the snowpack is cleared from the roads in the spring.

The roads will reopen for guided snowmobile and snowcoach travel beginning Dec. 15.

Outside the park, US Highway 212 is closed east of Cooke City, ending travel for the season over the Beartooth Highway to Red Lodge and over the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway to Cody.

The road from Gardiner, Mont. through Mammoth Hot Springs to Cooke City, Mont., is open to wheeled vehicle travel all year.

Frank tree is Idaho-bound

BOISE, Idaho -- A human rights memorial in Idaho's capital city will receive a sapling grafted from the chestnut tree that grew outside the secret annex in Amsterdam where Holocaust victim Anne Frank hid from the Nazis.

The 3-foot-tall sapling is to be quarantined at a Boise tree nursery for two years before it's planted at the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, located just south of downtown along the Boise River, according to the Spokesman-Review newspaper.

The Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, in cooperation with the Anne Frank Center USA in New York, took applications from dozens of U.S. institutions interested in getting a sapling from the 150-year-old chestnut tree.

In all, 11 U.S. places are getting them, including the White House, the World Trade Center site in New York, and Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., where forced racial integration was carried out in 1957. One sapling also will go to Seattle's Volunteer Park, not far from the location of a fatal 2006 shooting at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.

Amy Herzfeld, executive director of the Idaho Human Rights Education Center in Boise, visited the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam in 2007 with a group of Idaho schoolteachers. She says she remembers the big shade tree that Anne Frank mentioned in several entries of her famous diary.

"It was beautiful," Herzfeld told the Spokesman-Review newspaper. "It was very striking."

After her family's hiding place was discovered in 1944, Anne Frank died in a German concentration camp at age 15.

In February 1944, she wrote in her diary, "The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air, and we were so moved and entranced that we couldn't speak."

And in May 1944, just three months before she and her family were captured, Frank wrote, "Our chestnut tree is in full bloom. It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year."

Boise's Anne Frank memorial was dedicated in 2002, after thousands of individuals and corporations donated to help build it and schoolchildren across Idaho collected coins to fund a $42,000 life-size bronze sculpture of Anne. She's depicted peering through an attic window in the hidden annex where she and relatives sought shelter during World War II.

Work begins on golf resort

EDINBURGH, Scotland -- Workers are clearing rocks and other debris from the site where a controversial golf resort is to be built by Donald Trump.

The work began in late October after planners at the Aberdeenshire Council granted permission.

Grass will be planted from November to March on an environmentally sensitive stretch of sand dunes to stabilize the beach for development into a championship golf course.

Trump was given permission last year to build the resort featuring a five-star hotel, 1,200 homes and two international-standard golf courses north of Aberdeen.

Some local residents opposing the project have threatened legal action, claiming violations of environmental laws and planning procedures.

Ship plans Alaska trips

KETCHIKAN, Alaska -- A new small-ship cruise line will start weeklong voyages between Ketchikan and Juneau in 2011.

InnerSea Discoveries is a new brand created by the owner of American Safari Cruises, which has operated luxury yacht cruises in Alaska since 1997, according to the Ketchikan Daily News.

InnerSea has acquired the 80-passenger Wilderness Discoverer and the 66-passenger Wilderness Adventurer. The shallow-draft vessels were last operated by Glacier Bay Cruiselines during the 2005 season.

American Safari vice president Tim Jacox says the vessels will explore Prince of Wales Island plus the Baranof and Kuiu islands area, Frederick Sound, Admiralty Island and Endicott Arm.

Ancient world is on display

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Long-hidden art and artifacts from the ancient Mediterranean are on display for the first time in years at the University of Michigan's newly expanded Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.

A 20,000-square-foot addition to the museum, funded by an $8.5 million gift from the late Edwin and Mary Meader, has just opened.

"As an undergraduate in the 1930s, Edwin Meader saw rare artifacts, pottery and sculpture, excavated by U-M scholars in the Mediterranean and Near East, being delivered to what was then called the Museum of Classical Archaeology ... and said to himself, 'These things deserve a better place," university spokeswoman Maryanne George wrote on the school's Web site.

In 2003, the Meader estate made the gift for what has become the William E. Upjohn Exhibit Wing. It's named for Mary Meader's grandfather, who founded the Upjohn pharmaceutical business.

The museum itself bears the name of the late Michigan professor Francis Kelsey and holds more than 100,000 ancient artifacts. Many are materials excavated from Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East in the 1920s and '30s.

Items include art, toys, burial items, pottery and jewelry.

"Professor Kelsey was a man ahead of his time," museum director Sharon Herbert said in a statement. "He understood the power of objects to connect today's people with people of the past."

But for decades, the space limits prevented many of the objects from going on public display.

"People have no idea what we have here," said Elaine Gazda, the museum's curator of Hellenistic and Roman antiquities. "People will be stunned by the richness and depth of collections."

Details at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/kelsey.