Last week, Geogad released its Mobile Tour of Victoria, BC to conincide with Canada Day, which is basically the birthday of the formation of the Dominion of Canada.

Of course, since Geogad remembered the Canadian birthday celebration, then it could hardly ignore the birthday of the United States. In that spirit, Geogad has added its latest professionally created audio tour to its collection of Mobile Tours in time for the July 4th holiday. This latest tour covers Philadelphia’s Independence National Historic Park, the most historic square mile of the United States.

If you have never been to Independence Park, it is really a great place to realize how small and tiny the United States was and the determination that it took for the founders of the American Revolution to stand up to Great Britain. Geogad’s tour is great for first time travelers who may be overwhelmed by all that there is to see and do in the park. This tour gives travelers an easy-to-follow overview of the top attractions in the park so they can decide what they might like to spend more time on. For busy travelers who have a small amount of time, they can focus on what they can and let Geogad fill in the blanks as they travel from site to site. It is also a great tour for armchair travelers to feel as if they are touring the park being lead by a knowledgeable tour guide.

The tour begins at the Independence Park Visitor Center, which has knowledgeable volunteers that can provide visitors with the latest opening times of the park attractions. The opening times and days vary depending on the season. The center also is a convenient place to park if you bring your own car. After the traveler is armed with all of the advice that the volunteers can give, this tour guides the traveler through the heart of the park by visiting the Liberty Bell Center and then Independence Hall, perhaps the most important building in the colonial history of the United States. After exploring the people who fought for the freedom of this country to determine its own destiny, the most amazing part of the story is that a bunch of well educated and, in many cases, wealthy men formed a government in which power was transferred from leader to leader based on what the people voted, a bizarre, radical form of government that had not been tried in over 2000 years. These ideal young revolutionaries paid a heavy price as we learn at the next tour stop that was a mass grave for American Revolutionary War soldiers. The next few tour stops focus on one of the most prolific of these revolutionaries, Benjamin Franklin, from his work and home to his devotion to science and state and even the mundane things in life like forming institutions to protect Philadelphians from fire. Other tour stops focus on how the people of the early US lived and fought for their freedoms.

Whether you are just touring Phiadelphia while taking this Geogad mobile tour on your favorite mobile device or if you are just exploring Philadelphia from your armchair, do enjoy your tour and let us know what you think.

Geogad has just released a full length audio tour of Cambodia’s, Angkor Wat.  Starting at the Exterior of Angkor Wat, travelers are taken through the temples of Ta Prohm, Ta Keo, and the Baphuon.  Travelers will get a unique sense of the roles these temples played in the life of the Khmer kings, and the people.

“Rediscovered by Westerners in 1860, the Angkor Wat Temple Complex is what remains of the Khmer Empire, which was one of the greatest empires that the world had ever seen. It is a testament to the power of the Khmer kings and the ingenuity of its people. This tour explores the religious beliefs that formed the temples and the personalities that drove the kings to build even bigger temples than their predecessors. Ancient history and modern politics is merged to explain what life was like in the Khmer Empire and how Angkor Wat is bringing Cambodia a new future.”

Watch the Angkor Wat Tour

At the turn of the century, Lorrin Thurston, publisher and owner of the Honolulu Pacific Advertiser, and majority investor in the Volcano House, spent many of his days exploring the area of Kīlauea volcano.  One of his discoveries was a giant lava tube.  Lava tubes are formed when rivers of lava cool and crust over.  The still molten lava in the interior continues to flow down hill.  Eventually the lava drains out of the tube leaving a cave like shell.  Some of these tubes can be up to ten miles long and quite large in the interior.  Some have been measured from twenty to fifty feet from floor to top and twenty to thirty feet wide. They are indicative of the great volume of lava which has passed through them. What is most interesting geologically about the Thurston Lava Tube is where did the lava come from which formed this tube.  The lava tube is above the summits of Kilauea Iki and Kīlauea. The answer to this puzzle is that Thurston lava tube is of great age. It was created well over ten thousand years ago when the summit of Kīlauea was much higher than it is today. Geologists call this ancient Kīlauea, `Ailau (pronounced: “eye-lau”), meaning “to eat much.”  The summit of `Ailau was located where Kīlauea Iki is today and disappeared in a massive summit explosion over ten thousand years ago, leaving behind the only evidence of its existence in the Thurston Lava Tube.   

The Thurston Lava Tube is a major attraction along the Crater Rim Drive. Thurston Lava Tube is located in the rain forest ecological zone. The abundant rainfall contributes to the lush growth of the forest canopy trees and the under storey vegetation one sees along the trail to the lava tube.  These forests are most characterized by the presence of large `ōhi`a trees and hapu`u (pronounced: “ha-poo-oo”), or the large tree ferns which dominate the forest here.  These tree sized ferns grow slowly, maybe only one inch per year, so some of the larger tree ferns here are over one hundred years old. The lush growth also attracts abundant native birds such as the `amakihi and `apapane which can be easily heard and seen in this area. Lava tubes have extremely interesting ecology and support rare live forms such as blind crickets and spiders which have adapted to these dark, cave like, structures.  The visit here consists of a short walk down a paved trail as it descends into a pit crater (the sides of which are hard to distinguish because they are covered with vegetation) and then through a short section of the lava tube itself.  The tube has interior lighting so you may be able to observe the drip line and features of the once liquid lava.  Tree roots dangle from the roof and water drip in the cool, dark, environment. Finally, the trail loops back to the starting point. 

Learn more about Hawaii National Park

The Presbytere and the Cabildo

The two similar looking buildings on either side of the St. Louis cathedral are the Presbytere to the right and the Cabildo to the left. Both buildings were built after the great fires. The Presbytere was originally designed to house the priests from the cathedral, but it never preformed this function, serving instead as a courthouse for both the Spanish and the Americans. Today it holds the Mardi Gras Museum of the Louisiana State Museum.

The Cabildo is the more historic of the two buildings. It was where the Spanish council, called Cabildo in Spanish, meaning to run the colony. The front room on the second floor was where the official transfer of the Louisiana Purchase from France to the United States was made. France had regained controlled over the Louisiana colony only 3 weeks before it was transferred to the United States. France’s disastrous loss of the French colony of Haiti from a slave uprising convinced France’s ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte, that Louisiana was not important to his empire. In addition, the Americans were getting frustrated with the government of New Orleans for restricting trade on the Mississippi River and confiscating their cargoes at the port of New Orleans. The American frustration had reached the point that some citizens of Kentucky were plotting to attack New Orleans. In an attempt to head off trouble and to improve trade for the interior United States, President Thomas Jefferson offered to buy the “island of New Orleans” from Napoleon for $3 million. Napoleon surprised Jefferson by offering to sell the entire Louisiana colony for $15 million. Napoleon needed the money to finance his war on England. The United States did not have enough money for the purchase. In an ironic twist, the United States borrowed the money from England to pay to Napoleon, who then used the money to attack England. After Louisiana was transferred to the United States, the Cabildo served as a city hall and Supreme Court for Louisiana before it was converted into a part of the Louisiana State Museum. Today it holds many historic objects from old Louisiana including the death mask of Napoleon.

Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop

There are so many tales about Jean Lafitte that it is hard to know what to believe. Some researchers claim that he was a pirate while others claim that he was a gentleman privateer. The difference between pirate and privateer is a matter of degrees. A pirate was a ruthless murderer that attacked ships and towns, murdering everyone for money and treasure. By definition, privateers sailed on armed ships that carried letters of marque from a nation at war, which gave them the legal right to attacked weaker commercial ships that sailed under enemy flags. The privateer could keep and sell any captured enemy vessel and its cargo. In reality, these “privateers” attacked any weaker ship, regardless of the flag it sailed under, murdered the crew, and sold the cargo. The small Louisiana town of Barataria, 60 miles south of New Orleans, was a favorite home for some of these pirates. The local merchants wanted to buy the very low priced, stolen goods, but they were afraid to deal with the dangerous pirates. Into this illegal mess came Lafitte to act as a middleman. Sometime in 1806 Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre established their blacksmith-shop on St. Philip St. as their “front” to sell the pirated goods. This building dating to around 1772 is one of the few that survived the two great fires of New Orleans in 1788 and 1794. It is also one of the few remaining buildings built by the earliest settlers using soft clay bricks from the Mississippi River. These soft clay bricks must be covered with timber to prevent them from quickly eroding away.

Lafitte was an efficient businessman who changed the pirates’ smuggling activities from unorganized crimes into a well-run criminal business. He had regularly scheduled auctions of the pirated goods in both New Orleans and even directly from the pirates’ warehouses in Barataria. He took customer service to the highest level by organizing his own fleet of barges that made regularly scheduled deliveries of the auctioned goods to their new owners. He profited handsomely from his illegal activities and had mansions both in New Orleans and in Barataria.

Madame John’s Legacy

The building known as “Madame John’s Legacy” was named after a character in a short story by George Washington Cable that described a wealthy Creole man named John who died and bequeathed a wooden home and his fortune to his African-American mistress. This building is very much like the type of Creole style house that would have been common to the French Quarter before the great fires of 1788 and 1794. This building was damaged in the fires but was rebuilt from the original plans. The large doors and windows combined with the building’s high ceiling would allow cooling breezes to flow through the interior rooms. The wide porch on the house would also shade the interior of the home to provide maximum cooling. The house also reflects the design of tropical homes in the West Indies.