Veterans and Military Ride Free on Hocking RR

To celebrate a record-breaking year hauling more than 35,000 passengers in 2009, the Hocking Valley Scenic Railway in Nelsonville, Ohio, is running a special free Memorial Day train for veterans or military personnel on May 31.

Any veteran or current member of the armed forces can ride for free on the 1:30 p.m. train on Memorial Day. Immediate family members living with them ride for free, too.

Can’t ride on Memorial Day? Veterans, current military and their families receive a discount all year long on any regular train departing at noon or 2:30 p.m. Call to reserve a seat on the train and show your military ID or DD214 at the depot when picking up tickets. Leave a message at 800-967-7834 or call the depot on the weekend at 740-753-9531.

Weekends from May to October, volunteers blast the whistle, ease the train out of the station and start a trip back in time. The non-profit Hocking Valley Scenic Railway has been chugging through the scenery of the Appalachian foothills for 35 years ago.

Publish Your Family Story with KY Workshop

Looking to publish your family’s story? The Kentucky Historical Society and the Kentucky Genealogical Society will host a free family-history workshop “Publishing Print and Electronic Family Histories” from 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. March 13 at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in downtown Frankfort.

Researcher/writers and book publishers will help you make the transition from research to interpretation to publishing. After the session at 1:45 p.m., the Kentucky Technology in Genealogy Users Group will offer a free program, “Finding Family Histories Online–What Has Been Printed, Where to Find Them and Whether the Books Are In or Out of Copyright.”

Reservations are required by noon March 12: 502-564-1792, ext. 4460 or RefDesk@ky.gov; a light lunch is available for $6. Free Family-History Workshops repeat each month.

CVG Airport Heats Up Winter Getaway Deals

Have you set your GPS for “anywhere warm”? Or looking for a ski bargain? Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) has some warm round-trip deals this week:

• Cancun, Mexico for $405

• Denver, Colo. for $196

• Miami, Fla. for $178

• New Orleans, La. for $168

• Phoenix, Az. for $228

• Punta Cana, Dominican Republic for $332

• San Antonio, Tex. for $178

• San Diego, Ca. for $278

• San Juan, Puerto Rico for $311

• Vail, Colo. for $278.

Toast Ohio Historical’s 125th with Free Party

The Ohio Historical Society will be throwing a big party for its 125th birthday on March 13, and everything’s free. During Happy Birthday, OHS! at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus, the parking and admission will be free, as well as family activities and birthday cake from 1:30 p.m.

• A display will highlight Ohio Historical Society milestones from 1885 to 2010. Uncommon Ohio tours will feature Ohio’s Garden Path at noon and 2 p.m., and Echoes in Time Theatre will present “Saints Preserve Us! The Irish in America” at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

• In the galleries with the permanent exhibitions, Nature of Ohio and Ohio: Centuries of Change, you can meet people from the society’s past played by costumed interpreters. Shake hands with archaeologist William C. Mills, who discovered the Adena pipe in 1901, and U.S. Ambassador to Egypt J. Morton Howell, who donated the mummy known as Nasi-Khonsou-Pa-Khrodou, familiarly known as Nibit-Pi, meaning “the Mistress of the House,” and her sarcophagus to the Ohio Historical Society collections.

Today, the Ohio Historical Society has 58 historic sites and museums around the state, including the headquarters at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus. Collections total more than 3 million items, and OHS has educational and historic preservation programs in all 88 counties.

Winter Carnival Fun for Families at Salt Fork

Salt Fork State Park Lodge in Cambridge, Ohio, will throw a Winter Carnival Family Fun night March 13, with games and special room rates starting at $79 per night plus taxes.

The games, from 7-10 p.m., will include Wii, a football throw, basketball and baseball toss, duck pond and bottle ring toss, putt-putt golf, face painting, balloon darts, trivia challenges, pop bottle target game and ping pong. Salt Fork also has a large indoor pool.

To book the $79 lodge rate and discounted cabin rates, enter the promotional code “CARNIVAL1” or call 1-800-282-7275.

Free Genealogy Workshop at Hayes Center

Are you using RootsMagic genealogy software to build your family tree? Then here’s a free chance to meet the software creator, Bruce Buzbee, and learn the latest tips and tricks.

The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, is leading a free workshop 1-4 p.m. April 25. The center uses RootsMagic to maintain the family history of 19th U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes.

Pre-registration is required: 419-332-2081 or by email to bhill@rbhayes.org.

Ashley the Bear Braves the Cookie Smack-Down

Ashley with Cookie Queen Leslie Laine, who wears the royal Cookie Queen tiara and sash and holds the Golden Spatula and star bouquet.

Ashley the SATW Traveling Teddy attended her first holiday cookie exchange this weekend, and got to pose with the once and future Cookie Queen, Leslie Laine. Leslie won the cookie smack-down last year, and repeated this year with double chocolate ginger cookies. Cookie competitors are members of the Ladies Discoursive and Digestive Society of Greater Cincinnati.

YUM! was Ashley’s verdict. The only thing that could have made them better was a big dollop of honey!

Ashley travels for the third-grade class of Meredith Schroeder at St. Joseph Consolidated School in Hamilton, Ohio. Traveling Teddy is a geography outreach of the Society of American Travel Writers and Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Inn at Cedar Falls Package from $199

The Inn & Spa at Cedar Falls in Logan, Ohio, a member of Select Registry, is offering the Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire package. The $199 package provides one weekday night’s lodging for two in a guestroom with double whirlpool bath; gourmet candlelight dinner in the Inn’s restaurant, housed in an 1840’s log cabin; full country breakfast; and a holiday cookie tin filled with fresh-baked cookies. Valid Sundays-Thursdays through Dec. 24.

Halloween’s Horror-Rama Roundup

You can’t have too many frights for Halloween. Here are a few heart-pounding possibilities, as well as some gentle family events.

Winnipeg, Canada, has launched its first Ghost Walk, a 90-minute trail led by experienced ghost guides. What was found hidden in the walls of the old Masonic Temple? Where did the first executions in the province of Manitoba take place? How is the Burton Cummings Theatre connected to the worse maritime disaster in Canadian history? Find out Thursdays and Saturdays through Oct. 31.

• Ohio’s Hale Farm & Village in Bath will kick off a family-friendly Halloween with storytelling by candlelight at 6 p.m. Oct. 30. Adults and teens can try to conjure up spirits at 7 p.m. with “Western Reserve Paranormal.” This group, well attuned to “listening,” will lead a program and discussion on the art of discovering spiritual activity in homes and historic places. Then, a one-hour exploration of three Hale Farm historic buildings will try to uncover any lurking “activity.” This haunted lesson is for ages 16 and older. Reservations are required.

• Ohio’s Salt Fork State Park Resort in Cambridge will start with trick-or-treating from cottage to cottage in a traffic-free area at 6 p.m.  Oct. 31. Hay rides will leave from the lodge parking area, and families can warm up with hot chocolate. A costume-judging contest, along with games and crafts, will wrap up the evening at the lodge.

• Across the pond in Wales, spirits are stirring. It might be the long-dead souls at Llancaiaich Fawr Manor, a living history museum that’s set in 1645 and considered one of the 10 most haunted buildings in Britain. It’s said that eight former residents, including soldiers, children and a maid, roam the house and gardens. Or maybe it’s the sight of Robin Drwg, half man, half beast, at Maesmawr Hall in Powys. Or could it be Sir John Wynn on the spiral staircase at Gwydir Castle in North Wales? Plan your own ghost hunt here.

• England’s Alton Towers is celebrating Halloween Scarefest through Nov. 1, with indoor and outdoor scare attractions. The theme park will be open until 9 p.m. every night. A Superbreak package costs $327/£199 per family of four based on two adults and two children sharing a family room at the three-star North Stafford Hotel, including a full-day ticket to the park for all the family. Breakfast is included for the adults, children pay locally. Valid Friday to Sunday in October; Monday to Thursday costs from $391/£236.

• The National Trust of England, Wales and Northern Ireland and its American affiliate, Royal Oak Foundation, have gone ghost hunting in their own properties.

• Better than a pink elephant?

Lift a glass with your spectral friends at Belfast’s Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street in the city center. The pub was a stop for travelers on the Great Northern Railway years ago, and one visitor recalled sitting with three ghostly men and a woman in one of the famed booths—a snug– while waiting for her friends to arrive for cocktails.

• Kennel Club Fur-ever

Ham House in Surrey was just too nice a home for one King Charles spaniel, who refuses to leave. The dog’s portrait hangs in the gallery, and the four-legged ghost often wanders the halls. A recent investigation by the Ghost Club, a paranormal research organization based in London, concluded that there may be as many as fifteen ghosts living at the property.

• SOS

The medieval Old Post Office in Tintagel, Cornwall, now a converted manor house, is famous for its flickering lights. One clever researcher used the antique Spagnolli receiver, a precursor to Morse code, to decode the message: “Noah,” it said, over and over – the surname of a previous resident.

• Anne Boleyn in the hall

Blickling Hall in Norfolk has every right to be haunted. This was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, the husband who had the lady beheaded.

In one incident, two delivery men returned a painting to the home and when asked about the authorization, said, “Oh, the lady signed for it… the lady in the Dining Room.”

The house administrator was supposed to be the only person living in Blickling Hall at the time, so it’s assumed Anne wanted the painting returned.

She may wander at her leisure, of course, but it’s pretty certain that Anne appears on the anniversary of her death each year, May 19. The Grey Lady, her nickname because of her long grey dress with lace collar, has been spotted looking across the lake and riding up the drive in a coach drawn by a headless horseman.

Live! Instant Leaf-Peeping Reports

Leaf peepers unite!

Destinations are tracking the turning of every leaf:

Ohio Department of Natural Resources has added a new map on its Fall Foliage website,  and offers 32-pre-mapped routes and even places of solace.

The Indiana Office of Tourism Development sponsors Leaf Cam so travelers can watch current images at five locations: The Fort Golf Course at Fort Harrison State Park in Indianapolis; French Lick Resort in French Lick; Corydon Capitol State Historic Site in Corydon; Hilltop Cabins in Brown County; and Spring Mill State Park in Mitchell.

Gatlinburg, Tenn., posts leaf reports and a fall foliage page. Nearby, Pigeon Forge is running three fall festivals, the Pigeon Forge Rotary Club Crafts Festival through Oct. 30, Dollywood’s National Gospel and Harvest Festival through Oct. 31 and Pigeon Forge’s Harvestfest season through Oct. 31.

Michigan is tracking its Northern color across the state, and Traverse City has its own leaf-peeping patrol.