Booklet is guide to black heritage

Booklet is guideto black heritage
ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- There's a new guide to black heritage in Maryland -- from the slave auctions at City Dock in Annapolis to the Highland Beach home of abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
The booklet, "African-American Heritage in Annapolis & amp; Anne Arundel County," is available from the Annapolis & amp; Anne Arundel County Conference & amp; Visitors Bureau (www.visit-annapolis.org or [410] 280-0445).
It includes seven travel itineraries, maps, pictures and descriptions of tours, historical sites and local attractions, along with a 352-year time line highlighting significant events in the history of the local black population.
The guide also offers information about restaurants, walking tours and even the locations of public restrooms.
Science center rebuiltat Lake Champlain
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- The old Lake Champlain Basin Science Center has been rebuilt, renamed and revitalized into a modern aquarium known as ECHO -- Ecology, Culture, History and Opportunity.
The new center, which opened May 31, explores the ecological, geological, biological and cultural history of the Lake Champlain Basin. There is a maze, a walk-in replica of a shipwreck, a water-play space for kids to build dams and float boats, a Champlain Sea tide pool with snails, crabs, anemones and urchins, a high-tech underwater adventure game and a Discovery Place for young children. And of course, the center features examples of many indigenous watery critters, from trout and sturgeon to turtles and snakes, to frogs and sea stars.
ECHO -- at 1 College Street on the Burlington waterfront -- is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission: adults $9, children 3 and up $6, seniors and college students, $8.
Go fly a kite at the beach
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- What do most people do on their vacation? Hit the beach!
Ninety percent of the 2,200 respondents in an online survey conducted by National Geographic Traveler magazine and Yahoo! Travel said they will head for the beach on their vacations this year.
Coming in second in the survey was a trip to a city, with national parks and mountains third.
One interesting result of the survey found that cleanliness was the most important factor in picking which beach to go to, followed by scenery, climate and water temperature.
And swimming and playing in the sand are not the only activities that absorb beachgoers. More than a quarter of those who responded to the survey also said they plan to fly a kite while taking in the sun and the surf.
Combined dispatches