Casper Star-Tribune from Casper, Wyoming • 76

Travel F4 Casper Star Tribune Features Editor Knsty Gray tan tie readied at (307) 266CJ6, 1 800 791 b002 or Kitty Grayinh.com Sunday, February 10, 2008 J. Tour of U.S. civil rights trail tv- -s- 3 I MM A mrLxtf. i irt it'i fkm a Greensboro News 1 Record file photo Stop in 'On the Road to Freedom' MARYLAND: The Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial at City Dock, Annapolis, was the arrival point for "Roots" author Haley's enslaved African ancestor, The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore features a replica of a slave ship. NORTH CAROLINA: The Woolworth's where the famed Greensboro sit-in took place no longer exists, but the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University campus has a statue of the four student protesters.

Four seats from the original Woolworth's can be seen at the Greensboro Historical Museum. Part of the Woolworth's counter is on display at the Smithsonian in Washington. SOUTH CAROLINA: The first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter in 1861. Important places in Charleston include the Old Slave Mart; Liberty Square, with its fountain memorializing an early civil rights activist, Septima Clark; and the home of Denmark Vesey, who planned an aborted slave insurrection in 1822. GEORGIA: Mulberry Grove Plantation, near Savannah, is where Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which made it easy to produce clean cotton but created a need for slave labor to pick cotton.

In Atlanta, at the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, you'll find a mural and tiles depicting civil rights events. Also in Atlanta, the Martin Luther King Jr, Historic Site and Preservation District includes his birthplace, church and gravesite. ALABAMA: A national historic trail on U.S. Highway 80 marks the route of a voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Marchers were beaten by state troopers on their first attempt to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge out of Selma, but they completed the 54-mile trek on a second march.

Today you can visit the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma and a memorial beneath the bridge. Montgomery sites include the Civil Rights Memorial Center and the Rosa Parks Museum. In Birmingham, a civil rights district includes the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four little girls were killed in a bombing; Kelly Ingram Park, where protesters gathered, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. MISSISSIPPI: Cobb notes that there is no marker at the spot in Philadelphia, where the bodies of James Cnaney, Michael Schwemer and Andrew Goodman were found in 1964, other than a "No Trespassing" sign on Highway 21 south near the Neshoba County Fairgrounds. But Cobb provides details that allow visitors to retrace the path of the three young civil rights activists.

In Jackson, the house where Medgar Evers lived, and in front of which he was assassinated, is a museum. 1 By BETH J.HARPAZ AP travel editor NEW YORK -If you drive six miles southwest of Annis-ton, you'll pass the spot where a bus was bombed in 1961 and the passengers civil rights activists known as Freedom Riders were beaten by a mob. There's no marker there, but it's one of 400 places in a new book called "On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail" (Algonquin Books, Many of the sites included in the book are well-known -like the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, now the National Civil Rights Museum. But Charles E.

Cobb who wrote "On the Road to Freedom," says he also wanted to include little-known places like the road near An-niston "for the person who has a real interest in the civil rights movement and is not necessarily your ordinary tourist." While "On the Road to Freedom" is a travel guide, organized by destination, with street addresses for historic sites, it is also full of stories. Some are known to every schoolchild like Rosa Parks' refusal to give her seat on the bus to a white passenger but others will be new to many readers, like a 1944 incident in which a black woman named Irene Morgan was jailed for refusing to yield her seat on a Greyhound bus headed from Virginia to Maryland. The conflict led the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down segregated seating on interstate travel. "I wanted to write a book people could actually use, and a travel book seemed to be the way to do it," said Cobb, who was a field secretary for the On the Net: www.algonquin.cem or http:tinyurl.comywdtt3.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the Mississippi Delta in the 1960s. "But while this is a travel book, I also consciously wrote it as a story I was trying to put things into the mix of the historical discussion, both in terms of place and in terms of people especially women who simply are virtually unknown." Cobb also notes that many familiar places have layers of connections to black history. "The U.S. Capitol and the White House were both built by slave labor," Cobb said in an interview. "It gets to the founding contradictions of our country all those eloquent expressions of freedom in the Declaration of Independence.

On the other hand, you have slavery." He added that Parks was the first woman to lie in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol after her death in 2005; and that opera star Marian Anderson gave a concert in 1939 at the Lincoln Memorial because the Daughters of the American Revolution would not allow black perfomers in a Washington auditorium they owned. Cobb's recommendations for attractions that can help engage older children and teenagers on the subject of civil rights include the Nashville Public Library's Civil Rights Room, "one of the few places where you can see actual films of nonviolent and the Cleveland Avenue Time Machine at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, where you get on a bus that takes you back in time to the start of Jim Crow. ABOVE: Black students wait in vain for food service at this F.W. Woolworth store In Greensboro, NC, in this April 20, 1960 file photo.

The Woolworth's lunch counter that became a symbol of the nation's civil rights movement in 1960 is part of an exhibit of national icons at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. RIGHT: Demonstrators, including Dr. Martin Luther King, stream over an Alabama River bridge at the city limits of Selma, in this March 10, 1965 photo, during a voter rights march. In 1 1 Ml AP file photo CD This photo released by the Smithsonian Institution shows the Woolworth's lunch counter from Greensboro, N.C that became a symbol of the nation's civil rights movement in 1960, when African American staged sit-ins at the counter after being refused service. Hugh Talman, AP Small hotels make Manhattan warm and cozy Wyoming's most diverse community fi'tfii oca.

ftts vT-juk i I yv-. xrsv -1 1 rnr I a sand dunes are northeast of Rock Springs. The area includes two wilderness study areas where you can hike and explore on foot. One is open to off-road vehicles. Take U.S.

Highway 191 north to County Road 4-17, the Tri-Territory Road, then head east to the area. Western Wyoming College Art Gallery Shows change several times each year. Free. Open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Mondays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays. 2500 College Drive. (307)382-1600.

Weidner Wildlife Exhibit A new museum showcasing wildlife mounts and artifacts. On the campus of Western Wyoming Community College, 2500 College Drive. Free. Open 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

on Mondays and Wednesdays and from 1 to 4 p.m. on Thursdays. (307) 382-1600. Western Wyoming Community College Natural History Museum Five lifesize replicas of dinosaurs are exhibited here, along with prehistoric pottery and other finds. Open daily from 9 a.m.

to 10 p.m. 2500 College Drive. (307)382-1665. Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area In the winter, it's an ice fishing haven. There are 90 miles of lakes and 375 miles of shoreline forming the recreation area.

(307)875-5711. By the Star-Tribune staff Rock Springs is perhaps Wyoming's most ethnically diverse community. Residents claim to represent 56 nationalities. The early diversity was created when workers came to help build the Union Pacific Railroad and later to work in coal mining operations. Things to see around Rock Springs Rock Springs Historical Museum The melting pot history of Rock Springs comes to life in this 1894 City Hall that has exhibits related to cowboys, outlaws, railroads, labor issues and coal mining.

Free. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. 201 St.

(307) 362-3138. Children's Discovery Station Kids love this place, which is filled with interactive and hands-on learning exhibits. Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays.

Appointments may be scheduled for other days. Free. 501 S. Main St. (307) 362-8306.

Community Fine Arts Center It includes the Halseth Gallery, which houses about 400 original pieces of artwork. Free. 400 St. (307) 362-6212. Klpecker Sand Dunes One of the largest active sand dunes in North America, the Photo for the Los Angeles Times by Leo Sorel Visitors who like small bites of the Big Apple might enjoy Blue Moon, a tenement-turned-hotel on the Lower East Side.

By JOHN HORN Los Angeles Times NEW YORK Some small hotels have lobby cats. The Lower East Side's Blue Moon Hotel presents a reception-area mom. "What kind of tea do you want? Is it in there?" Rita Set-tenbrino asks a guest. "If they don't have what you're looking for, they'll find it for you." It's understandable why Rita pampers the Blue Moon's guests: Her son, Randy Set-tenbrino, spent five years transforming the former Orchard Street tenement building into one of Manhattan's captivating new small hotels. Manhattan will always have mega-hotels.

But a number of New York innkeepers have decided in the past few years that some travelers might want something else. They have started building and opening more intimate properties for guests. A few are in off-the-beaten-path neighborhoods. Others are not. But they share things: You probably will be recognizee! at the front desk and you won't get lost trying to find your room.

Erected in 1879, the Blue Moon was boarded up from the 1930s to 2001, making it a time capsule from Depression-era Manhattan. As part of his renovation, Randy Settenbrino salvaged the tenement's fixtures and artifacts, scattering them and their likenesses throughout his cozy inn. The Blue Moon's repur-posed relics hit you as soon as you walk in: Lobby walls are adorned with etched-marble mantles, the elevator walls are covered with pieces from a tin ceiling and a cast-iron stove has been reworked into a serving table for breakfast (included in the room rates). In the hotel's 22 rooms, salvaged wood has been turned into mirror frames; the original door and window casings (with period hinges and knobs) have been incorporated into new double-glazed windows and doors. Using old Green Stamps, Randy Settenbrino assembled and hung framed collages organized around various themes.

One hallway collage features a young boy's elementary-school handwriting exercises and report cards; an- The Blue Moon Bars and restaraunts: The Settenbrinos hope to open a bar and restaurant on Blue Moon's ground floor in the coming months, but there are good food options nearby, including the fantastic ice cream shop II Laboratorio del Gelato, 95 Orchard (212) 343-9922, www.laboratoriodelgelato.com, across the street. Location, location: The Blue Moon's biggest selling point or, for others, perhaps its biggest downside is its location. For fans of downtown Manhattan, the Lower East Side holds historic and neighborhood appeal. There aren't throngs of tourists crowding the sidewalks and T-shirt shops are few and far between. Something to see: The Tenement Museum, 97 Orchard (212) 431-0233, www.tenement.org, offers informative walking tours and it's an easy stroll to Little Italy, Nolita (North of Little Italy), Chinatown and SoHo.

But if theater and Midtown museums are on your itinerary, you'll spend a lot of time in cabs and on the subway. Check it out Blue Moon Hotel, 100 Orchard New York, N.Y. 10002; (212) 553-9080, www.bluemoorHiyc.com. travelers whose toiletries are confiscated by the Transportation Security Administration. Many of the inn's rooms are not named after recognizable performers.

For several hundred dollars more a night, you can stay at the Molly Picon suite ($1,050 for the room named after the "Fiddler on the Roof" star) and take in great views of Wall Street, or the Mickey Katz ($950 for the room dedicated to the Jewish comedian), which looks over the Williamsburg Bridge. The Al Jolson penthouse room ($950) has commanding views of Brooklyn. A family ice fishes on Flaming Gorge Reservoir near Fire Hole Canyon south of Rock Springs. night stand, a desk, a small flat-screen TV and free wireless Internet access. The tiled bathroom even has two toothbrushes and toothpaste for fl wvff Coy i rr vii i Heart of Europe' other is loaded with sports memorabilia an ad for a $4 Babe Ruth baseball mitt, a newspaper clipping with Bill Tilden's 1920 Wimbledon tennis win.

Even the DVDs on loan at the front desk are period Westerns and Marx Brothers comedies. The same attention to history is apparent in the spacious guest rooms, all of which are named after early Hollywood stars. At $450 a night (one step up from the least-expensive accommodation), the Jimmy Durante room has a stately wrought-iron queen bed, a dresser, a table and chairs, a VQ-r'mv yHH-I 1 Star-Tribune Tfryf jf i I Correspondent 1 S-day tour of Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Men Xfd Italy, Switzerland (France by Image Tours $200 II 1 1 $2140 Savingt June 1 7, July 8, and August 5 departures Includes escort, hotels, 22 meals, and transportation in Eu'ope. per person, double occupancy. Pncew air from Caspr is $3890 air tax.

Book by 312oa. Call for a FREE brochure WORLD WIDE TRAVEL Casper Ph: 307-266-4550.