artful nomad

Off-the-beaten-path guidebooks and marketplace designed for the independent traveler

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Sensitive Cultural Artifacts: On Sale!

All museum reproductions are 20% off. Our featured artifact is a reproduction of the Mask of Death and Rebirth. The Maya belief in the never-ending cycle of life and afterlife is illustrated in this sculpture, with each layered face representing a specific stage of life. The original is from the ruins of Tikal in Guatemala and dates to about 900 AD.

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Artful Nomad Co. Names ShelliusMax "Best Person Ever"

“Assuming she is a real person,” says ANC Editor Dave Berg. Berg is referring to ShelliusMax’s recent blog on belizeforum.com, an excellent forum for info about traveling in Belize.

According to ShelliusMax (not her real name):

“Thanks Steve, the book came on Monday already. It looks fantastic! What I have read so far is very useful and your writing is also funny in places which is great. Terrific photos too. I’m really glad I ordered it.”

Shellius will retain the BPE title and accompanying notoriety until the ANC sees fit to award a new Best Person Ever at a future date.

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St. Paul Pioneer Press

— Staff Report

On the virtual highway
With a good travel book, you’re into an armchair and on your way.
BY BETH GAUPER
Pioneer Press

Northwoods Whitewater, a Paddler’s Guide to Whitewater of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ontario & Michigan, by Jim Rada (SangFroid Press, $24.95).

For two decades, Jim Rada of Stillwater had been compiling a loose-leaf binder full of stories and descriptions about the stretches of whitewater he loved to paddle on the rivers around Lake Superior.

“We’d been bugging him: ‘Man, this would make a nice book,’ ‘’ says publisher Mark Stratman, whose brother, Steve, was a friend of Rada’s. “He’d sell Xerox copies that he had in his truck and say, ‘Give me $20 when you can.’ ‘’

In May 2003, Rada, 52, died of a massive heart attack while trying to paddle out of a Class V drop in Michigan’s Presque Isle, his favorite river. Now, his friends have published his book, adding action photos from Doug Nelson and others and lovely maps and design from Steve Stratman.

At first glance, the average reader will conclude Rada and his friends are nuts. There’s Rada going over 45-foot Illgen Falls on the Baptism River. There’s Paul Everson, who wrote the book’s foreword, going over 22-foot Manabezho Falls on the Presque Isle, where a sign reads, “Beautiful but dangerous … wading or swimming could end your vacation.’‘

But Rada’s descriptions are compelling, even to those of us who never will wade through snow to run a freezing-cold Class IV river roaring with spring melt. We won’t — but we can marvel about the people who do.

He does include information on a few rivers for novice and intermediate paddlers — the St. Croix, “a nice spot, and no doubt the place to learn how to play the river’‘; the Kinnickinnic, “a gentle, fun-loving spirit’‘; the Wolf in Wisconsin. And the cautious paddler can read the book, note the rivers and water levels Rada thinks are great — and avoid them.

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