It's hard to say what came first, traveling or travel documenting. There are accounts of travelogues dating to the Song Dynasty in China (960-1279) through Medieval times and into recent history. The Italian poet Petrarch described in personal terms his experience of climbing Mount Ventoux in 1336. A few years later, Moroccan world traveller Ibn Battuta wrote ‘Rihla’ (The Journey), A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling. Source: The Travel Tester Ships logs, journals, diaries, journalism, and until recently, postcards and letters have served to carry compact, condensed perspectives of an individual’s travel experience to others, either loved ones or strangers.

When you travel it will more often than not be solo, certainly if you travel frequently, for business, or take a number of extended trips to different destinations in a year. You may have time on your hands in some of these places, but how much of that is used up working out details once you arrive? Travel article apps are a fun and pressure-free option for exploring intended locations in advance, as you prepare to go away or while you’re en route.

And while they will save you time by giving you directions, they will also enhance the pleasure of exploration and discovery. Like the places you visit, each individual guide has its own flavor, context or story. You can mix and match, and come away from even the most rushed stay in a new place feeling like you’ve actually connected with the destination. You’ll be both relaxed and enriched, because the time you’ve spent there was well spent.

There is always a single writer. Travel writing is by definition a solitary activity, much like the experience of travel itself. But it is an activity that strives to reach out and connect another person to that same very subjective and personal experience.

A GPS-guided travel article embeds GPS coordinates of locations mentioned in the article, along with a map guiding you from place to place. There are thousands of articles available from more than 700 cities at GPSmyCity that you can upload free of charge, to read at your leisure without wi-fi. There is a small fee to upgrade ($1.99) to access the GPS-guided article you would like to select for your trip. For just a few dollars, you can plan your entire downtime itinerary within minutes, according to your interests, without having to search any further than a few key words.

Located right next to the SkyWheel, classic competition can be had between friends, family or colleagues at Strike Rock N'Bowl, a 14-lane, 10-pin bowling facility. Features include high-definition audio-visual systems, LED lighting, touch screens, and adjustable bumper rails to set game levels for kids and novices. You can also play pool, pinball and other arcade games, and even ride a racing simulator.

If wax museums are your thing (and let’s face it, they aren’t everyone’s…), Niagara Falls is your place. Since 1983, the Ramunno family has been running a rock music souvenir store, while patriarch Pasquale perfected his sculpting technique. The resulting Rock Legends are not to be missed. You’ll discover a one-of-a-kind collection showcasing over 70 excessively famous and lesser-known rock stars, from Buddy Holly through Ozzy Osborne to Slipknot.

So too, on the outskirts of what is less a town than a motley collection of mismatched streets, you cannot help but be struck by the number of abandoned homes and businesses (700+ in fact), often standing alone in vacant lots against a backdrop of monster hotels. The cause is a 50% population drop since the 1960s, and the lack of a realistic recovery plan. You may wonder where the residents of the remaining shacks have gone. You won’t see them, and the people left over seem somewhat tired and worn, as if dependent on the next wave of seasonal visitors to wind them up again.

Niagara is an enigma, a place of paradox. She has dual citizenship, and on either side of the Canadian-American border the chasm between tourists and locals is about as deep as the gorge itself.

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At any given moment you can find all kinds of weird exhibits and activities to pass the time on Clifton Hill, from the famous Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum to the Moving Theater to limited engagements such as Wigan's Micro-miniatures, a display you can only see through a 400x microscope. How long each attraction holds your kids’ attention is subjective, so you may want to consider discounted flex combo packages. Wizards’ Golf is a climate-controlled, wheelchair-accessible miniature golf course – one of the largest in North America and one of the newest attractions in Niagara Falls. It’s also one of the best. A mystical, intriguing, glow-in-the-dark world of fantasy will enchant you, and no two holes are alike. If you enjoy a great challenge among good company (wizards, trolls, fairies, and dragons), you’ll get your money’s worth here.

In warm weather, both the Canadian and American towns are over-run with sightseers and impossibly crowded. On the off-season, the streets are somewhat bleak, and despite the bright lights and gaudy painted frontage of popular attractions, there is a kind of faded grey emptiness to the in-between spaces. You get the impression that everyone who works at this great pantomime is either unnaturally young or significantly old: the absence of lifeblood in the middle range is striking.

Nevertheless, whatever the weather, there’s always action within the walls of the town’s two casinos. Casino Niagara is slotted into the Crowne Plaza-Sheraton hotel complex, while Fallsview sprawls the length of the downtown mall. With 150 tables and 4,500 slot machines between them, these vast adult arcades excite the senses, day and night. Clearly, cash runs through this town like water, but there is no reservoir. Rather, it rushes over the city like the cataract, and away again, down the river.

Nowadays, the congregation of St. Mungo's consists of a small, loyal group of caretakers and patrons who  succeeded in raising enough funds to supplement government grants and restore the exterior of the building, before moving on to the interior, which despite its age is remarkably intact.
       A gallery runs round three sides and the pews and pulpit are original. In its day, the church could easily accommodate three hundred people. Now, it is only opened two or three times a year for special services.
      Late in the 18th century, tracts of land in Chatham township were granted to veterans of the first battalion of the 84th Regiment of Foot, also known as the Royal Highland Emigrants, who fought in the American Revolution (1775-1783) and Seven Years War (1756-1763). Archibald McMillan, whose house still stands in Grenville village, brought some 450 Highlanders from Locharkaig, Scotland, to settle along the river in 1802.
      Built by the stonemasons who worked on the Ottawa River canals, St. Mungo's played an important role in uniting the vibrant Scottish pioneer community who helped develop western Québec in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. McMillan himself remarked that he had never heard more Gaelic spoken than he did along the Ottawa River Valley.

With some care, this old kirk may survive to see its 200th birthday. Built in 1836, it is a lesser known, if not unknown, estate belonging to the United Church of Canada (Pastoral Charge of Argenteuil), but it began life as a Presbyterian church.
     Its design is that of a typical Scottish country parish building, and it gets its somewhat offbeat designation from the patron saint and founder of Glasgow, Scotland, who can also boast a cathedral to his name. Located on a beautiful rural site along the Ottawa River, halfway between Grenville and Carillon, St. Mungo's resides in the town of Cushing, Brownsburg-Chatham municipality, Québec. All of this is important to its initial discovery, as well as the fact that the property is on Route 148.
    The drive along the north shore of the Ottawa River is spectacular. Here, local farms are interspersed with forest, and you get the impression that nothing much has changed during the past century. The highway and the occasional marina and campground are really the only modern reference points, until you reach the expansive and impressive Carillon Dam.
      St. Mungo's itself sits sedately back from the main road, about midway between a horse ranch and the water. The lawn spreads out about her like an expansive green skirt, and the few nearby properties keep their distance, not quite daring to climb onto her lap.
     St. Mungo's first pastor, the Reverend William Mair, came to Canada from Glasgow, Scotland, and took charge of the parish in 1833. However, burials can be traced to the grounds as far back as 1800. There are about a hundred graves in the cemetery, and no room for more. The last burial took place in the 1940s, if you do not count a recent minister's wife, who was laid to rest there in the 1990s.

Beginning a study of historic bridges is to embark on a journey that can literally take the traveller all over the world. Many fascinating adventures can be planned by researching and mapping the location of bridges you might wish to explore. When you find one, there is much to be discovered about the bridge itself, from background information about its construction, to its purpose and all of the details that make up its structure.
   Unfortunately, bridges that aren't protected by public institutions such as the National Register of Historic Places risk falling into disrepair, leading generally to demolition. Historic bridges are an endangered resource that require protection and funding for upkeep. Nevertheless, they constitute a surprisingly rich and interesting collection with a mystique that appeals to all generations. Best of all, they are accessible. You don't need a ticket to see a bridge, although you may sometimes have to pay a toll to get to the other side.

The history of bridge building in the world has always been characterized by the quest for better design and strength. The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, opened in 1883, was the first suspension bridge to use steel wire cables instead of iron. Sailors accustomed to high rigging were hired to string the 1,500 suspenders for the deck.
   The risk above the bridge was matched by the danger below. To build the two giant stone towers, timber caissons were sunk deep into the riverbed and filled with concrete by crews of men in air-locked dungeons. Digging until they reached bedrock, some of the workers (dubbed “sand hogs”) were ultimately afflicted by decompression sickness, the same hazard risked by deep-water divers when rising to the surface too quickly. The condition disabled Brooklyn’s engineer, Washington A. Roebling, resulting in the completion of the work by proxy through his wife Emily, also a trained engineer. All told, at least 20 people lost their lives in the 14 years it took to build the Brooklyn Bridge.

POLAROID TRANSFER PRINTS  

Polaroid image transfers are created by migrating the dyes in the emulsion of a peel apart print to a receptor surface such as watercolour paper. The resulting one-of-a-kind image looks like a combination of photography and painting.

Capturing the moment is the photographer’s interest, but mainstream photography has usually focussed on the subject and its treatment. Film isn’t the most tactile or flexible medium. Processing requires planning and the results depend largely on a rather distant manipulation of the elements, literally fumbling around in the dark with tongs and hypersensitive chemicals.
   With the emergence of digital photography, the potential for image altering and editing becomes infinite. In some ways, this plethora of options could be interpreted as freedom from the limitations imposed by more archaic methods, but it also adds such complexity that a single vision becomes difficult to achieve. Push against this medium and it doesn’t push back – it adapts and expands. Only the artist can decide which moment out of a million is worth preserving.

CYANOTYPE PRINTS

In her work, photographer Jane Linders revisits the relationship between subject, medium, and process. The cyanotype of the Brooklyn Bridge below is printed on a page torn from a 1939 Sheet Metal Handbook. Cyanotype prints are a crude photographic process during which an absorbent surface is soaked in a solution of water, potassium ferricyanide, and ferric ammonium citrate to render it photosensitive. Objects or negatives are placed on this surface and exposed to light (traditionally sunlight) and then the material is rinsed with water. The result is a white print on a blue background. The process was widely used for copying architectural plans, the origin of the term blue print, and adds an additional layer of interest to Linders' series of architecturally themed images.

You would be hard pressed to find any structure more metaphorical than a bridge: building bridges unites people, burning them creates division. There’s a bridge over troubled water, and water under the bridge. The same bridge that links a city to its homeland today may also cut it off tomorrow. Time is the bridge between now and then. And so it goes.

Indeed, the design and construction of a bridge is both a snapshot of a moment in architectural history and a view into the preoccupations and priorities of the society that built it. The need for a bridge and the will to erect, maintain, and repair it over time often mobilized entire communities. Utica Mills began life as a two span bridge over one river, but after the Johnstown Flood washed it away in 1889, it was resurrected as a single span bridge over Fishing Creek. Loys Station was almost completely destroyed when someone set a pickup truck on fire on its deck as part of an insurance fraud scheme.

Naturally, there are many types of bridges in existence, some created by geography, others constructed by people. The appeal of accessing an island or any remote area otherwise cut off by water seems to be universal. Bridges also serve to mend great tears in the landscape, spanning canyons, valleys, and existing roadways.
     The Industrial Revolution inspired major advances in bridge technology in Europe and in America. In the US, engineers experimented with different models, beginning in the 1850s and leading to established standards by the 1890s. Early bridge designs, often prototypes for later projects, capture specific moments in history.
     Historic bridges in the United States are defined by their eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, established in 1966. Near Frederick, Maryland, you can visit several charming covered bridges, all built around the same time (1846-1856), and all registered since 1978.