America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza
America’s 63 national parks preserve over 52 million acres of uniquely beautiful and genuinely awe-inspiring places in nature, and the payoff for our country’s foresight in protecting them is a lifetime’s worth of unforgettable experiences—many of them entirely feasible, safe, and really fun for families with kids of all ages. Best of all, you’ll find that sharing these adventures will create your best times together as a family, as they have for mine.
By Michael Lanza
Under a hot February sun and cloudless sky, we launch our kayaks from a tiny spot of sandy beach into the perfectly still, dark-chocolate waters of the East River in South Florida’s Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. Within minutes, flocks of snowy egrets fly in close formation overhead. White ibises, black anhingas, tri-colored herons, and brown pelicans flap above the wide river and the green walls of forest on both sides. Great blue herons lift off effortlessly and glide on wings whose span equals an average human’s height.
By Michael Lanza
I confess: Everglades National Park was not near the top of my to-do list before I went there the first time, during an all-day layover in Miami waiting for a flight to Chile to trek in Patagonia. After a short hike in the park, I knew I had to return with my kids. My family spent our first day there paddling through a series of long mangrove tunnels on the East River (lead photo above), watching scores of exotic birds fly just overhead: snowy egrets, white ibises, black anhingas, tri-colored herons, brown pelicans, great blue herons (everything that flies here seems to have a color in its name). And we saw alligators—several of them, up to 12 feet long—floating listlessly on the river’s surface.