How to Plan a Grand Canyon River Trip

Over six million people visited Grand Canyon National Park last year, and for most of them, their lasting impression of the park is the view from the top of the canyon looking down. From the rim, where thousands of people gather each day to gaze at its spender, the canyon looks bottomless; there are only a few viewpoints where you can glimpse the Colorado River: the reason the canyon exists in the first place.

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A Snowshoe Gear Checklist

Gearing up for a new activity can be a mystery, as snowshoeing was for us when we first started. The good news is: getting outfitted to enjoy a trek through the freshly fallen snow is not that complicated. In this post we list the basic items we take with us on our snowshoe trips. If you’ve done any outdoor activities in the past, you probably have many of these items, so getting into snowshoeing might be easier than you originally thought.

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Our December Adventure in a Forest Service Cabin

When I first told Matt my idea to rent a Forest Service Cabin in Montana in December, he was skeptical. After he found out that the cabin doesn’t have electricity or water—and would require a half-mile hike from our truck to get there—he thought I was crazy. It seemed to me, though, that an adventure in a cabin in the snowy winter wilderness might be a way to experience the magic of the holidays without all the tinsel and glitter.

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9 Things I Didn’t Know About Smokey Bear

On a trip to New Mexico, Karen and I visited one of those places that she fondly calls a hidden gem: the Smokey Bear Historical Park and Museum in Capitan. We were traveling through New Mexico for a week in May 2017 with our friends John and Lolly, visiting national park sites. As we made our way from White Sands National Monument to Carlsbad Caverns, we all agreed it would be worth a detour to Capitan to check it out.

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Your Guide to Havasu Falls

Hiking to the stunning blue waterfalls in Arizona’s Havasu Canyon is on a lot of people’s bucket list. Tens of thousands of visitors each year make the trek to see this natural wonder, set against the rocky backdrop of the Grand Canyon. Havasu Falls might be the most famous of these falls, but there are other equally beautiful waterfalls formed by Havasu Creek as it makes its way to the Colorado River, and together they create an oasis that’s nothing short of paradise.

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Your National Park-a-Month Guide

From tropical paradises to stunning deserts and alpine mountain ranges, every national park has an ideal season. In this article we suggest a park to visit each month, and it wasn’t an easy task narrowing our selections down to one per month. Truth be told, for each month there are many parks you could visit and have the time of your life; our selections should be merely a starting point for planning your next year of travel.

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