Author: H312ud1

Imagine stepping inside a cruise ship, but instead of ocean water, you’re surrounded by the Sonoran Desert.

We-Ko-Pa Casino Resort, about 30 miles northeast of central Phoenix on land owned by the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, is where this vision becomes reality as a reimagined one-stop vacation spot.

People who visited We-Ko-Pa before the pandemic will find a different, higher-end experience today, said Gail Manginelli, a spokeswoman for the resort.

“We have everything right here — fine dining, a casino, golf, outdoor activities and a spa,” she said. “And you feel like you’re away from it all, even though you’re close enough. All you see is desert.”

Coming soon:This famous Scottsdale resort is getting a luxurious upgrade

A reinvention and rebranding

The 166.341-square-foot casino resort, an AAA Four Diamond hotel, reinvented and rebranded itself upon the completion of a new, 100% smoke-free casino in October 2020. It replaced the

SAN DIEGO — Plans to build a resort and new homes around a wave lagoon cleared a key hurdle in Oceanside last week.

Ocean Camp would take over a 92-acre site at Mission Avenue and Foussat Road, near state Route 76, that was once used for swap meets and a drive-in theater.

Developers outlined their vision for the project at a July 25 Oceanside Planning Commission Meeting. Resort lodging would include a four-story hotel with 232 rooms, over a dozen more “villas” and “casitas,” and a series of Airstream trailers for guests on site.

The rooms will surround a 3.5-acre lagoon with artificial waves of various sizes for surfers. The technology is similar to that of Kelly Slater’s Surf Ranch in Lemoore, just south of Fresno.

You come to New York for Broadway, the Empire State Building, the Museum of Modern Art and soup dumplings in Chinatown. If you come for the golf, you … try to procure a precious tee time at Bethpage Black? Scan your phone contacts for members at Winged Foot?

The city that never sleeps can be an exhausting place for public-access golfers, and this from someone who called the place home for more than a decade. Traffic’s a bear, courses are crowded. Other parts of the country have plenty of top-of-mind topnotch resort stays. Out west, Bandon Dunes and Pebble Beach; Pinehurst and Sea Pines in the Southeast; Streamsong in Florida, and so on. Less so, no-brainers in the Northeast and particularly the New York City area — because Crystal

The US Forest Service is allowing Vail Resorts to continue building a new lift at Keystone after the company submitted a plan to repair tundra damaged by a temporary road that extended beyond permitting boundaries. But the monthlong delay in construction will prevent the resort from opening new terrain in Bergman Bowl by this winter.

White River National Forest supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams on Thursday said he accepted Vail Resorts’ cure for improperly grading 2.5 acres outside of approved construction boundaries, including 1.5 acres above treeline in the fragile alpine zone. The company’s construction crews also filled a wetland creek with logs and graded over it to create a road crossing and did not save topsoil and vegetation for replanting after construction, all of which the agency found “were not consistent with Forest Service expectations.”

Fitzwilliams rescinded his order of noncompliance and canceled the cease-and-desist order he issued last month after