Daily Radar: 08.06.10

• Too cool for the pool? Well just in time for the last big swing of summer, the Huffington Post has put up a list of 7 Spectacular Swimming Holes in the United States, complete with photos. Some are easy access – like downtown Austin, Texas’ Barton Springs, a picturesque three acre natural spring whose year-round 68 degree water has delighted everyone from 4-year-old Robert Redford to hippies and 18th century Spanish friars. Others, like Caribbean blue Havasu Falls in Supai, Arizona, are only accessible by either helicopter or a 10 mile hike. For a little more speed, slide down Lane County, Oregon’s Lake Creek Falls, a 100-foot-long natural water slide made of obsidian volcanic rock. And if you’ve already used up your vacation days this summer – don’t fret! Plan for a day trip, using swimmingholes.org to find a freshwater oasis near you.

• With the ever-increasing popularity of Google maps’ street view, Google Earth, smart phone technology and Garmins galore, it is refreshing now and then to shake out a good, old-fashioned, hard-to-fold paper map. It is even more lovely when said map is a creation of architectural designer Karen O’Leary. O’Leary is redefining how to “travel light” from Baltimore to Singapore with her beautiful hand-cut city maps. By eliminating and simplifying small sections of a traditional map, she reveals the “information of city planning, the nature of the city block, and the importance of open space,” giving new character and identity to the town at hand. To read about some of our favorite city spaces, check out the “Top 5 Public Squares: Soul of the City” article in our September issue, now on newsstands.
  And to see more of Karen’s beautiful papercut city maps, look here, or visit her online shop on Etsy.

Photo: Robert Cranford