Last week I offered some interesting places to explore as Halloween approaches.  This week, just before Halloween, I’d like to offer more. Goblins Goblins are small, grotesque and evil creatures from European folklore.  They really didn’t have much to do with Halloween until author Jack Prelutsky included a poem titled “The Goblin” in his 1977 children’s book […]

With Halloween around the corner, perhaps you’d like to try some adventures on that theme.  Here I list three places you might want to visit in your Halloween explorations: Haunted Lake, New Hampshire Just east of Francestown, New Hampshire, is 139-acre Haunted Lake (42˚ 58.979′ N  71˚ 46.002′ W). “Another tradition, and the one which without doubt […]

There is a national day for about everything, but the most recent invented day is for adventurers!  This national day is the brainchild of Men’s Journal and Victorinox (famed for Swiss army knives).  The National Day of Adventure, this year, is October 14, this coming Friday.  My first reaction to the date was the thought […]

Knowing about the area you are exploring helps you focus on the things (plants, animals and even rocks) you are most likely to find there.  One way scientists have been organizing areas uses the concept of the ecoregion.  An ecoregion is an ecologically and geographically defined area that covers a relatively large area of land or […]

As Halloween approaches, what better to talk about than ghost towns as a basis for outdoor recreation and our exploratory adventures.  There are ghost towns across the USA and around the world, but choose carefully.  For example, I don’t recommend exploring Pripyat, Ukraine, a city that became a ghost town after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  Instead locate and explore one […]

As I write this,  yellow leaves are beginning to mix with the green in the box elder trees , the tops of the cottonwoods are starting to fade to yellow and the European snowball viburnum is showing hints of red. Those are sure signs that the seasons are changing and it will soon be time to enjoy the full pallet […]

National Public Lands Day is September 24, 2016.  That day is the largest single-day volunteer opportunity in the U.S.  Local parks, state parks, National Parks, beaches and all kinds of public lands managers will be hosting volunteers to work on specific projects for that day. If you have a public lands project that needs volunteers […]

There is a Delorme Atlas and Gazetteer for every state in the U.S. and they cost around $20 each.  These are outstanding tools for developing plans for your adventures.  They include a series of topographic maps mostly 1:150,000 (2.4 miles per inch), although scales vary, with 300 foot contours. They are not as topographically detailed as […]

According to a press release provided by Karel Sabbe, he has completed the entire Pacific Crest Trail  in 52 days, 8 hours and 25 minutes.  This beats the record set by Joe Mcconaughey in 2014 by almost a day.  Here is what Sabbe had to say:   While we are not into high speed wilderness […]

A month or so ago we offered the first in this series of posts on Map Navigation.  That post addressed declination by providing some background information then presenting a video tutorial presented by Sierra Designs and Andrew Skurka.  They have now produced another video that discusses bearings and how to find a bearing in the field, […]