It’s been 30 years since “the King” passed away, but that hasn’t stopped Elvis enthusiasts from traveling to Graceland to celebrate the life of the crooner; they get over 600,000 visitors a year. But there’s bad news for the folks who weren’t convinced that Elvis had ever left the building to begin with: The Elvis is Alive Museum is about to close. The bizarre Missouri outpost, just an hour outside of St. Louis, was once a coin-operated laundry, but for the past 17 years it’s been the pet project of Baptist minister Billy Beeney. The AP reports that:

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Colorado is cultivating a new kind of tourism. Rather than erecting a Disneyland of the Rockies or enticing luxury-seeking tourists to one of the state’s hot springs, Colorado is drawing visitors to its many farms.

Tourists spent about $2.2 billion on “agritourism” in 2006, and the new trend is sprouting up all over the Centennial State. The Rocky Mountain News reports:

“It’s going to grow, especially if we nurture it a little bit,” said Dawn Thilmany, a professor in Colorado State University’s Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics. “We’re not leading-edge in Colorado, but we’re ahead of the curve.”

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Mark Ovenden’s new book, Transit Maps of the World, a is vibrant 144-page tip of the hat to the world’s urban train systems. From the unusual Hamburg diagram, which lacks curves, to the pitchfork prongs of Buenos Aires, Oveden navigates the history of maps as they have evolved over time. After paging through the lovely volume, we tapped his expertise with a few questions of our own.

What is your favorite transit map?

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Here at Traveler, we do a lot of reading: in addition to the upcoming magazine copy, we’re constantly perusing newspapers, blogs, and websites all day. But we know there’s nothing quite like escaping away into a good book, which is why we’re thrilled to announce the arrival of Don George’s “Trip Lit” to our new columnist cadre.

Don is a legendary travel writer and editor who has won numerous awards for his work. He has been travel editor at the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle, founded and edited the Wanderlust section of Salon.com, and most recently was Global Travel Editor at Lonely Planet Publications. He is the author of� The Lonely Planet Guide to Travel Writing and the editor of six literary travel anthologies, including The Kindness of Strangers, Tales from Nowhere, and By the Seat of My Pants.

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Now that we have your attention, some eyebrow-lifting news that we feel merits a bit of, well, exposure: Travelodge recently released a new report on the rise in male hotel guests sleepwalking in their birthday suits.

The budget chain’s annual “sleepwalker audit” revealed a seven-fold increase in the number of sleepwalking guests at 310 hotels in the UK. Men in the buff accounted for a whopping 95 percent of the sleepwalkers. One unfortunate gentleman guest even managed to get himself locked out of the hotel and later arrested.To deal with the growing predicament, Travelodge has asked its receptionists to keep an extra stock of towels behind the desk in order “to preserve a nude sleepwalker’s dignity.”

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In our continuing coverage of all things mystic, spooky, and supernatural, we wanted to share a finding from our all-star researcher Marilyn Terrell. She uncovered a list of international libraries where spooks can be found in between the stacks.

Morelia Public Library, Michoacán, Mexico. Library staff say that a “nun in blue” has haunted the 16th-century premises for many years. Director Rigoberto Cornejo said in Monterrey’s El Norte newspaper, “When I leave the building, I feel the sensation of someone following me. In fact, I can even hear the footsteps.”

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Returning to the Wanderlust in 1980 on a dhoni ‘manned’ by boys.�

We are very pleased to see that last week, the editors over at the New York Times added another great blog to their mix: Dot Earth, which will focus on sustainability and climate change and is written by science reporter Andrew C. Revkin. In his introductory slide show, Revkin describes how much of his reporting has been informed by his varied travels, so we decided to ask him to delve a bit deeper about the place where travel and sustainability collide.
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Oft-overlooked Bonaire, a tiny “flapjack flat” island ringed by coral reefs in the Dutch Caribbean, revealed plans earlier this year to climb aboard the eco-mania bandwagon and become a carbon-neutral island. And they’re not just blowing hot air: The substance behind Bonaire’s claims stem from a new wind/diesel project designed to provide the entire island with wind-powered electricity by the end of 2008.

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Despite a new European law to prevent airlines from discriminating against disabled people, planning a holiday can be a fraught exercise for a wheelchair user.
A question which simultaneously evokes pangs of excitement and trepidation is “where are we going for our holidays?”

The answer for most families is often a careful balance between their dreams of exotic palm tree-lined beaches and the realities of a holiday budget that may stretch little further than the newly-formed lake that is the British countryside.

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In case you missed the post from a couple of days ago about the Wicked Adventure Rally you should go read it now. If you’d like to visit the website we made especially for the event, kindly follow the link below:

The Wicked Adventure Rally, a Wicked Cannonball Run down the East Coast of Australia

What is the Wicked Cannonball Run?

Wicked Cannonball Run is in fact the Wicked Adventure Rally. Wicked Cannonball Run was the working title we used to describe the event before we settled on the name, Wicked Adventure Rally.

What is a Cannonball Run?

You may or may not have heard of the 1981 movie “The Cannonball Run”

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