It's not often you get to return to a place so promptly, but as luck has it the schedule calls for another trip out west to the Mile High City. I will fly out on Friday and spend a few days in Denver before moving over to Boulder later next week.

Last time, I stayed in one of the more interesting rooms in recent memory at a bed and breakfast, hiked the infamous Red Rocks concert venue, and found a pleasant speakeasy to cap off the trip with some cocktails. The outdoors will be the focus this time around, specifically an introduction to rock climbing. I'll cover the trip on the blog, but I'll also be writing a newspaper feature about my climbing experience.

The feature will be routed to five Midwest daily newspapers (all part of Small Newspaper Group) for a combined print circulation of 149,604: The Daily Journal, Kankakee, IL, Moline Dispatch, Moline, IL, Rock Island Argus, Rock Island, IL, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, MN, Ottawa Times, Ottawa, IL.

This will be my first travel piece for a newspaper, and the first time I've freelanced for one since I stepped back from news coverage a little over a year ago.

I'll be staying and climbing near Chautauqua Park. Here's a photo I took on a hike when I made a day trip from Denver back in early April:

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has cleared SpaceShipTwo, a commercial six-passenger spacecraft owned by Virgin Galactic, to begin rocket-powered suborbital test flights, the company said on Wednesday. SpaceShipTwo manufacturer Scaled Composites of Mojave, California, received a one-year experimental launch permit on May 23 for test flights beyond the atmosphere, FAA spokesman Hank Price said.

The six-passenger, two-pilot spacecraft is based on the prototype SpaceShipOne, also built by Scaled, which clinched the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004 for the first privately funded human space flights. SpaceShipOne made three suborbital hops beyond the atmosphere, each with a solo pilot aboard, ultimately reaching an altitude of nearly 70 miles above Earth.

SpaceShipOne is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Virgin Galactic is owned by British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Aabar Investments PJS. Branson hired SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan, who has since retired from Scaled, to create a fleet of spaceships for commercial use. Virgin Galactic has taken deposits from more than 500 people for rides, which cost $200,000.

Participants will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curve of Earth set against the black sky of space. NASA's first two manned space flights in 1961, by Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil "Gus" Grissom were suborbital flights. Like SpaceShipOne, Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo will be flown into the air beneath a carrier jet and released.

Once separated, the spaceship's rocket engine will fire to blast it into the sky. SpaceShipTwo has completed 16 free flight tests. The FAA permit will enable Scaled, now wholly owned by Northrop Grumman, to move on to rocket-powered flights, the first of which is expected toward the end of the year, Virgin Galactic said in a statement.

Company President George Whitesides called the permit an “important milestone " that positions the company “a major step closer to bringing our customers to space." In addition to flying wealthy tourists, Scaled has signed contracts to fly researchers and science experiments. The experimental permit allows Scaled to fly only its own test pilots, not passengers, Price said. A date for the start of Virgin Galactic's commercial space flights has not yet been set.