Sock Monkeys bring joy to our hearts. They bring out an inex­plic­a­ble desire to cud­dle them and love them. You just want to take every stray Sock Monkey home and give it a place to live.

I’m going on a week-long motor­cy­cle trip in June around Lake Michigan with friends and I’m going to doc­u­ment the prepa­ra­tions lead­ing up to the trip, as well as post daily entries from the road as the trip hap­pens! You can join me by fol­low­ing along.

The year-long cel­e­bra­tion of Elvis Presley’s 75th Birthday kicked into high gear on March 1 with the grand open­ing of “Elvis Presley: Fashion King,” at Graceland. The exhibit is the first of its kind at Elvis’ home in Memphis, and explores fash­ion trends ush­ered in by the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

As the home of Kings Island, Great Wolf Lodge, The Beach Waterpark and Ozone Zipline Adventures, Warren County is the ulti­mate fam­ily get­away — not far away. Located between Cincinnati and Dayton, Warren County has a num­ber of spring get­away pack­ages that are sure to make mom (and the kids) smile.

Amtrak intro­duced a new Web site designed to show trav­el­ers how con­ve­nient it is to travel by train to visit the country’s national parks.

With the theme “Parks in Your Backyard,” Amtraktoparks.com allows users to see the near­est Amtrak route to fea­tured national park sites, each of which can be reached using pub­lic trans­porta­tion from an Amtrak station.