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Here is an Alaskan festival that is more on the focus for nature than anything else. The Whale Fest Kodiak.

The Whale Fest Kodiak is a week-long event that features the whales in their natural habitats. Commonly featured are the mammals of the sea, the gray whales that pass through the small island of Kodiak, in Alaska. It’s more of a festival on the small scale, featuring several lectures about the whales, art shows and galleries, movie features, activities by the local schools and by the community as a whole.

The whole event actually lasts for ten days, in celebration of the migratory return of the whales from the Pacific Ocean to the waters of Alaska. The first inhabited stop is the island of Kodiak, off the gulf of Alaska. This is the height of whale-watching, and the visitors are not disappointed by the outcome. A lot of the resident whales aren’t camera shy, and some do well with posing for the cameras.

Admittedly, it is not the festival that draws the crowd in but the mammals themselves, as their population and their immense numbers are a rare thing up in the North. Most tourists consider whale-watching as the center of the festival, and the locals couldn’t digress with this fact. For after all, the festival started with the migratory routes of the whales.

This year, more events have been added to spice up the festival. Scientific lectures, music shows and games to public forums and debates; all focused to not only educate the guest, but to entertain as well. The festival also does well to bring income to the island of Kodiak. The community receives a lot of visitors on the event height of the festival.

The festival is also a good place for school goers, those who want to see marine action up-close. Most schools take their kids up north for this annual event.

Interested in the festivals of Alaska? Visit Alaska Craft Shows for a complete directory! Ian Kleine personally uses Alaska Craft Shows for his festival-trotting.

In New Hampshire, there existed once a legendary profile of an old man’s face set on the cliff edge of Cannon Mountain in the White Mountains, New Hampshire, USA. It was the Old Man of the Mountain, the Face, or the Profile. Now, it is but a legend, with only pictures to prove of its proud existence. The Old Man’s life had ended on May 3, 2003.

When did it all start? The earliest known discovery of a mountain with a stone face was around the 16th century, when a Native American legend spoke of it. The rock was said to have been sculpted by the Ice Age, which happened around the 17th millennium BC (per wiki research). Credit was claimed by surveyors working around Franconia Notch for its discovery.

The Old Man of the Mountains was made famous by statesman Daniel Webster’s statement that “Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe, jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.” And what a statement it was.

The old man’s ‘face’ was made into New Hampshire’s state emblem ever since the mid-1940′s. It was placed into the state’s license plate, highway-route signs and even at the back of New Hampshire’s Statehood Quarter. The profile was viewable from along Interstate 93, inside Franconia Notch State Park.

Preservation attempts had been made to save the Old Man of the Mountains from impending collapse, using cables and spikes. But nature had caught up, as well as freezing and thawing had cracked the foundations. May 3, 2003 had marked its death and disappearance. The state mourned, and everyone had felt the loss. Commemorative efforts are now in place to preserve its memory.

Maryland is one of the states located near, or in, the Mid Atlantic region in the United States. It borders the states of the District of Columbia, West Virginia and Virginia to the west and the south, the state of Delaware to the east, and the state of Pennsylvania to the north. Originally, it was under the territory of the Chesapeake Colonies, a territory well known for growing tobacco plants using slave labor back in the early days.

In history, the state of Maryland was the seventh to ratify the Constitution of the United States and thus has earned two nicknames, the Old Line State for one, and the Free State for another. Maryland’s tendency for advancement has enabled it to spring forth in leading the way for biotechnology.

This inclination had caused a lot of biotechnological firms in its real to grow. Maryland is know to have at least, over three hundred and fifty biotechnological firms, institutions and research labs, considering it as the third largest of scientific clusters in the whole country. This had encouraged the growth of several more institutions over the years, and these institutions had prospered, and had made well off of its investment in Maryland.

Some of the institutions that can be found in Maryland are the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Food and Drug Administration, Human Genome Sciences, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, John Hopkins University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Maryland’s topography is very varied, oftentimes being labeled as a miniature America. Mini deserts in the representation of sand dunes that roll into the sea, being held together by sea grass and beach weeds, marshlands in the lower areas teeming with endemic plants and wildlife, whether migratory or not, oak forests lush, tall and ancient in the regions of Piedmont and pine that grows dot the mountains in the east.

The Geyser of Calistoga, dubbed the Old Faithful of California had been faithfully belching out steam and scalding vapor ever since man had first witnessed this miniature wonder of the world.

Geysers act like heat driven fountains. You have an underground river (cool or not, its still the same) that touches super hot rocks (usually from a magma source). The ensuing pressure from the steam and superheated water causes the whole thing to shoot up via a small nozzle-like feature from the ground. And this is how geysers happen.

California’s Old Faithful is one of the three geysers in the world that have an internal clock inside of them. They are able to shoot out their deadly steam at timed intervals (this one has a set interval of 45 minutes, while the one in Yellow Stone had an interval of 80 minutes). Magma location, precipitation and the stream that flows into the chamber (an earthquake might break or improve the fountain’s height and length of gushing).

The geyser has its own park, is fenced off to protect the public and to at least get some profit. The geyser has been marked as a must-see attraction when passing by the Napa Valley. Most of the visitors that came here to see and taste the wine, often make a stop here to enjoy the sight of a large, gushy, geyser.

In a nearby sectio, there are llamas and fainting goats to keep you company if you had the bad luck of entering the park just as the geyser had stopped gushing. 45 minutes of boredom is hard. And when you do hit the 45 minute mark, you have 20 seconds to enjoy the buzzy, aerial hydro-ejaculation. Miss it, and 45 minutes of anguish again. Droll.

The performance time of the geyser today has been influenced by the drought. Hopefully, with the rainy season, we could gain a few more seconds with the geyser’s gushy-gushy.

Gunnison Beach is found in Monmouth County, New Jersey and is a part of the Sandy Hook unit for the Gateway National Recreation Area. It is also the only legal nude beach in the whole state of New Jersey.

The beach was named after the Gunnison battery, a fort used to protect the New York Harbor during war times. The remains of the fort can still be seen, albeit not available for tourist use (they could still be pretty dangerous). The fort was part of present Fort Hancock, but was then made for a Nike missile defense installation. It was converted into a beach where the soldiers swam in the nude.

By the end of the 19th century, New Jersey had passed a ruling that prohibited all types of nudist and naturist activity in other activities on state beaches or municipal beaches. Gunnison beach remains to be the only legal nude beach in everywhere else. It is a clothing-optional beach however. This means that naturism is not compulsory, but one may opt to wear something. Be warned that most nudists would take this as an offense however, although the lot would just wave it off as modesty

The clothing optional beach offers a great view of Lower Manhattan and of the Verrazano Narrows. The beach is a sight to see (perverts stay away) during the summer months. At least five thousand come to see and congregate in these bathing grounds.

Gunnison Beach observes the usual rules of beaches. Trash is carry in-carry home. Means, you bring your trash with you. No littering, and no leaving of things behind. Glass containers are strictly prohibited, and alcohol is allowed, though one should drink moderately. Photos require permission from those in the photo. No lewd behavior should be displayed and respect local laws as well. Politeness is compulsory, and aggression be avoided in all levels.