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 […]

The Northern Forest Canoe Trail covers 740 miles of rivers, streams, lakes and portages (53 miles) across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Quebec.  For the most part it follows routes used by Native Americans from Old Forge, New York to Fort Kent, Maine.  Completing the entire trail is a major challenge, but there are […]

The mission of the non-profit U.S. National Whitewater Center is to build stronger communities by: Promoting healthy and active lifestyles Developing environmental stewardship Encouraging family and civic interaction The National Whitewater Center has a unique way of doing that.  It is located on 1,100 acres near Charlotte, North Carolina adjacent to the Catawba River and […]

The Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program of the National Park Service and the Healthy Community Design Initiative of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got together and produced a Parks, Trails and Health Workbook.  It is widely recognized that parks are critical to the health of communities and the people that live in them.  This […]

The Backbone Trail opened officially today, June 4, 2016.  The trail begins at Thornhill Broome Beach in Point Mugu State Park on the coast just west of Malibu, California.  It extends 67 miles up, into and through the length of  the Santa Monica Mountains to Will Rogers State Historic Park near Santa Monica, California. Decades of Development […]

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) takes care of what some consider to be the  land of the western U.S. that no one wanted.  The land isn’t usually of National Park caliber and typically doesn’t have enough forest to be managed as a National Forest.  Still, the BLM manages almost 250 million acres of pubic lands. The BLM […]

Our friends on the forum at Camping Babble, have a thread called “Wanna” see YOUR magnificent trails…  Participants are invited to post information and photos of their favorite trails.  Recently @NorthernDancer highlighted the Long Range Traverse located in Newfoundland.  The closest I’ve ever been to Newfoundland is the White Mountains of New Hampshire, but the description […]

Yosemite National Park offers a wide range of outdoor adventures, but something rare to see is the firefall. The Real Firefall It was the summer of 1962 when I first visited Yosemite National Park.  A highlight of the visit was the firefall.  Every summer evening a crew would start a large fire high above Curry Village at […]

There are a lot of state parks in the U.S. and every one of them offers some great excuses to get out and explore.  If you are new to an area it can sometimes be difficult to find nearby state parks and what they offer.  If your goal is to explore the U.S. the many […]

Last February I aimed you at Kerry “Cyndi Loppers” Stewart’s blog “Cat’s Don’t Camp“.  At that time she was planning to through-hike the Appalachian Trail.  If you have been following our weekly newsletter,  you saw a couple of updates on her hiking progress.  Well,  she successfully hiked the trail from Georgia to Maine (March 19 to […]