The best holiday destinations and travel ideas!
Bear attacks are frightening and unexpected. This author shares her bear encounter with the hiking community. by Anne O’Regan | 2015-10-14As thru-hikers and backpackers, we think about bears. At one time or another we study them, or at least learn their habits. Years ago when I lived in Yosemite, I got an up-front…
Ask me to name the first Italian meals that come to mind and I’ll list off pizza, pasta, and risotto. Maybe veal parmigiana if you insist I include some meat in there. But bresaola? I had no idea what that was until I arrived in the town of Chiavenna. When I hopped on the train bound for the Italian Alps, all I knew was that there would be a food festival taking place. What kind of food? I wasn’t entirely sure. It wasn’t…
Hartwell Carson has a lot of stories. Stories about boats falling off of cars. Stories about standup paddle boarders too hungover to stand on their boards. Stories about farmers pulling guns on the riverbank. Stories about sneaking upriver in the middle of the night to sample bacteria levels. He’s telling me about a guy, a sales rep from Sierra Nevada…
Designed for remote lakes and streams, the PackLite Kayak is well-suited for those environments and is a lightweight complement to your backpacking adventures. by Eric Vann | 2015-10-14My friend Scott and I tested the PackLite Kayak on the Gallatin River in Southwest Montana. The stretch we paddled was about 3.5 miles long and dominated by Class II whitewater with a few rapids rated at Class III-. It took us about two hours…
I already shared my 1 week itinerary for a road trip across Ireland and Northern Ireland, but now the big question: How much did it actually cost? I recently got a message from a reader asking if I could start doing more budget breakdowns for the destinations I visit so that people can have a better idea of what it’…
Photo by Dillan Forsey It’s a good thing Kelsey and Connor Scott paid attention during high school Home Ec. The brothers moved to Chattanooga to be closer to the climbing and bouldering and quickly decided they needed to build a better chalk bag. Using their mom’s sewing machine, some scrap fabric, and the minimal…
Photo by Chad Blotner I learned to kayak from men, paddled with men, received a rope-bag-to-the-face from men. It’s a fact: men dominate the world of whitewater. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, ultimately, most accomplished female athletes in any adventure sport tend to get overlooked. Meet four adventure pioneers, and two up-and-coming forces, who push the limits and kick ass, all with the grace of a woman. The Paddler Anna Levesque, 41 Founder, Girls at Play Asheville, N.C. Photo by Anna Wagner STARTED PADDLING: while working in the kitchen …
Once again, it is Thanksgiving here in Canada. Or Turkey Day as some of as call it. Along with eating ham and turkey and stuffing and then more stuffing and pie, comes the opportunity to reflect on what you are thankful for in your life. As we sat around the …
“I ate 20 bananas today.” My friend Shane Robinson made this proclamation as we were sitting at his dining room table, packing our gear for an adventurous hike we were undertaking the next day. I had questioned his choice of food for the hike, which as far as I could tell consisted of a bag of apricots and a bag of…
I have travelled the world now for 15 years, with dozens of countries on almost every continent under my belt. It is safe to say I’m an experienced traveller. Yet in all that time, with all those countries, I have never really been on a holiday. Find out what happened when I accepted the…
I took a couple of side trips during my recent visit to Milan and one of those was to Bergamo, a city that sits at the foothills of the Bergamasque Alps and is only a 1 hour train ride away. The charming city – which feels a lot more like a town! – made an immediate impression upon me. Just a few minutes into my walk of the Old Town, I was already fawning over the warm pastel walls, the weathered shutters, and the clay coloured roof tiles. It’s as picturesque an Italian town as you…
Nestled in Virginia’s Western Highlands, the County of Bath is home to the George Washington National Forest, Douthat State Park, Lake Moomaw, The Nature Conservancy’s Warm Springs Mountain Preserve, Dominion Back Creek, the Cowpasture and Jackson Rivers. The area offers stunning vistas, dark starlit skies, clear, cold streams and a wide range of recreational opportunities. Expect to see white tail deer, wild turkey, black bear and other game animals within our vast woodlands. Known for our fly fishing, …
There’s a lot to learn from big cities with active crowds and busy intersections. Hiding underneath all that hustle and bustle, though, lies yet another lifetime of information on places that only exist as shadows of their former glory. Ghost towns are civilizations that thrived in a different era, but met their match somewhere along the way. Most of the time, these places haven’t disappeared completely; instead they…
INTERVIEW: Dereck and Beverly Joubert on Wildlife Conservation originally appeared on Green Global Travel. Dereck and Beverly Jouberton Wildlife Conservation in Botswana We want to be Dereck and Beverly Joubert when we grow up. Living and working side by side, these award-winning filmmakers, National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence and wildlife conservationists have been filming, researching and exploring Africa for over 30 years now. Together the Jouberts have made 25 films for National Geographic, published 11 books and half …
A lightweight kettle with a wide base. by Roger Caffin | 2015-09-16It’s a hard anodized aluminum kettle, 0.8 L capacity and 144 g in weight as delivered. It looks like the standard Trangia 200244 kettle, but the Trangia kettle holds 1.0 L and is 195 g in weight, on its home web site in Sweden, although some USA web sites list it as 0.9 L. The Trangia kettle is shiny aluminum rather than the …
Milan surprised me in so many ways. I think this is one of those cities that is often a little misunderstood and people dismiss it as boring (several friends had told me to skip it), and yet I ended up having a wonderful time there. I personally believe that the secret to a good time in Milan lies in its experiences rather…
Photo by David McClister As Patterson Hood sings the chorus in “The Righteous Path,” a hard-hitting standout from the Drive-By Truckers’ new sprawling 35-track live album, his gravelly voice sounds a little more weathered than usual. Not that the wear and tear hasn’t been well earned. Hood is now 51 and he’s been fronting the …
A few months ago, I read the book Visit Sunny Chernobyl by Andrew Blackwell, about the worst’s biggest garbage-ridden and polluted places. It’s like the anti-travel guide. It’s about all the places a traveler wouldn’t go, the ugly places we overlook. It was interesting to learn about these places that exist but never get any coverage. Smart, funny, and well written, this is one of my favorite books I read all year…
As a qualified nurse I get asked tons of travel health related questions every day. Some of these questions are very specific to the individual and based on personal medical histories so cannot be answered in a general way, but a great many of them are very common and get asked on a frequent basis. So in the interests of sharing information and helping as many people as possible, this article is devoted to answering just ten of your most common travel health questions. So let’s get started. Do I really need travel insurance? Short answer? Yes…
An interview with backpacker Douglas Malott who is passionate about the outdoors, and ensuring we are out there for the right reasons. by Jonathan Davis and Eric Vann | 2015-09-22I grew up in Spokane, Washington but I am currently living in Kent Washington. I started exploring the outdoors when I was old enough to go out into the backyard alone, with my parents, my siblings, or friends. I grew up without T…
The Blue Ridge Parkway near Boone overlooks some of the most dramatic—and dangerous—hiking adventures. Photo by Tommy Pennick My brother and I had a simple out-and-back planned in a remote section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We would hike up to one of the shelters scattered along the Appalachian Trail. After spending the night we’d head back down the mountain. The itinerary …
TANZANIA: Exploring Magical Tarangire National Park originally appeared on Green Global Travel. Exploring Tanzania’s MagicalTarangire National Park In Tanzania’s Tarangire National Park, it’s the Monkeys you have to watch out for. Sure, there’s a poisonous green Boomslang perfectly poised to strike in a tree by the restroom. There are massive piles of dung strewn about, suggesting that Elephants could stroll through at any minute. And the golden grass that surrounds the picnic area is tall enough that a hungry Lioness could jump out while…
Visiting Morocco has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. I’ve always wanted to ride a camel, see the desert, explore maze-like medinas, and drink tea with Berbers. As I stood overlooking the Sahara one morning, marveling at the rhythmic, undulating dunes of the desert, I realized that my dream had come true. For miles around, the dunes rolled like red-tinged waves in the sea. I had ridden a camel to the spot where …
Piatra Neamt in Romania is eastern Europe’s tourism equivalent of an undiscovered star, ready and eager to shine on a global stage and just on the verge of being discovered. Follow my adventures in this hidden part of the world and discover just how awesome Romania really is. Neamt County is about as off the beaten track as you can get from any mainstream tourist trail and almost proudly bears its status as one of Europe’s unknown hidden gems, but with…
