Hiking the Badlands
Autumn is one of the best times to visit Badlands National Park. This scenic strip of land on the Great Plains provides a surreal backdrop for hiking, camping and exploring.
Entrance to the park is only $14 per vehicle and camping is free in the backcountry and at primitive campgrounds. September/October is a relatively quiet time for this National Park, so chances are you’ll have it pretty much to yourself.
Gray skies, sub-zero temps, and a down jacket that hasn’t seen any closet time—man, winter can be a drag. Especially if you live in Vermont and all these epic winter storms keep hitting NYC. Screw that. It’s time escape the mid-winter doldrums and replenish your Vitamin-D in the Caribbean.
St. John in the US Virgin Islands provides just the cure for escaping the freezer. This tiny island on the northern edge of the Caribbean boasts pristine beaches, great snorkeling, and countless miles of trails. And if you’re a US citizen, you don’t even need a passport to get there. Read More …
The summer months in southern Utah bring dry, hot weather, sunny skies, and hordes of RVs, tour buses, and camera-toting tourists. Bryce Canyon National Park remains a mandatory stopover on the summer road-tripping circuit, but in the winter, the park’s towering hoodoos, miles of trails, and epic views see only a handful of people per day.
A pair of snowshoes or cross country skis might seem like a useless tool in what is normally an arid desert landscape, but with deep snow that provides a stark contrast to the surrounding red and orange walls, they can be your ticket to total solitude. Miles of ski trails line the rim of Bryce Canyon, and the park’s entire network of summer trails remains open to snowshoers. Read More …
In a remote corner of southwest Texas, in a large crook formed by the meandering Rio Grande, the Chisos Mountains rise from the rolling desert scrub and soar to nearly 8,000 feet. Surrounded by vast and often unforgiving terrain that stretches endlessly into the horizon, the majority of this massive expanse (over 800,000 acres to be exact) forms Big Bend National Park, one of the least visited parks in the United States. Read More …
For much of the road-tripping summer tourist crowd, the Tetons are but a bonus stop on the way to the geysers and wildlife traffic jams of Yellowstone—but for backcountry travelers in the know, the Teton Crest Trail trek up the spine of America’s youngest and craggiest range hosts some of the most epic alpine terrain and scenery this side of the Alps. Read More …