If you’ll be in the Sarasota, Florida, area, stop in to visit the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and Museum. It’s a fascinating look back on the early circus days. A popular new movie, “Water For Elephants”, is bringing more focus on the wonderful era before TV, when people actually took the whole family to see the clowns, tigers, trapese artists and elephants.

If you want to stay awhile, check out the Courtyard Marriott Ringling Museum. It offers a package that includes a room and two "Member For A Day" Ringling Museum passes, for prices ranging from $129 per night.

The downtown luxury hotel in Atlanta GA has an extensive garden on the roof that provides seasonal fruit, vegetables and herbs for its Park 75 Restaurant. Hotel guests can enjoy their meals knowing they’re getting the absolutely freshest ingredients.

The garden is pollinated by bees housed right next to the vegetables and fruit growing on the roof. The hives provide honey to the hotel chefs for many desserts and other cooking menus.

In the mid-20th Century, the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves near Qumran, by the Dead Sea in Israel. There were more than 900 scrolls in the discovery, including texts said to have actually been written Biblical times.

The parchment scrolls were created by scholars in ancient times in several languages, including Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. More than 60 years after their discovery, modern-day scholars are still pore over the scrolls, and argue about whether the writings are authentic ancient history or creatively fictional religious sermons.

Most of the original scrolls are in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. If you plan to visit the area and want to see and find out more about the Dead Sea Scrolls and where they were found, go to www.deadseascrollsfoundation.com

If you’re an avid fan of the hit TV show, Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel, as we are, this experience can be for you. It’s called the Bering Sea Crab Fishermen’s Tour. It’s a four-hour tour out of Ketchikan, Alaska, scheduled during the relatively mild weather of May through September.

Even in those quiet months, the Bering Sea trip is not for sissies. The crabbing boat, Aleutian Ballard, takes up to 149 hardy passengers on each sailing to get a taste of what the real sailors go through in their tough jobs.

If you’re interested in this great experience, and you plan to be on an Inside Passage cruise or will just be in Ketchican for the day, check out this tour.

For more information, go to 56degreesnorth.com.