Family Adventures

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, Yellowstone National Park.

Photo Gallery: Celebrating the National Park Service Centennial

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By Michael Lanza

When the National Park Service turns 100 on Aug. 25, it will mark not just the diamond anniversary of what writer and historian Wallace Stegner famously called “the best idea we ever had”—it marks the evolution and growth of that idea from a handful of parks created in the early days to a system in many ways without parallel, that protects 52 million acres of mountain ranges, canyons, rivers, deserts, prairies, caves, islands, bays, fjords, badlands, natural arches, and seashores in 59 parks. Without that protection, these places that draw visitors from around the world would otherwise almost certainly have been exploited and destroyed.

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Hiking the Gunsight Pass Trail, Glacier National Park.

Video: Backpacking Glacier’s Gunsight Pass Trail

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By Michael Lanza

On a cool August morning under clear Rocky Mountains skies, we hiked steadily uphill toward Gunsight Pass in Glacier National Park. Cliffs rose steeply up to a small glacier on our left, and dropped off precipitously on our right a thousand feet down to the clear, emerald waters of Gunsight Lake. Shortly before reaching the 6,900-foot pass, we ran into the sort of wild obstruction that occurs with some regularity in this park: a mountain goat in the trail.

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Hiking to Strawberry Point, Olympic coast, Washington.

Photo Gallery: Backpacking the Wild Olympic Coast

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By Michael Lanza

You can’t order fried seafood or buy a T-shirt anywhere along the 73 miles of seashore of Olympic National Park. What you will find is the longest strip of wilderness coastline in the contiguous United States, home to seals, sea lions, sea otters, bald eagles, tufted puffins, and many seabirds, and humpback, gray, minke, and blue whales. Salmon spawn in wild rivers. Up and down the coast, scores of stone pinnacles—called sea stacks—rise as much as 200 feet out of the ocean. It’s one of the few remaining pieces of ocean-view real estate in the Lower 48 that Lewis and Clark or Capt. George Vancouver would recognize.

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High Sierra Trail above Middle Fork Kaweah River, Sequoia National Park.

Ask Me: Backpacking in Sequoia National Park

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Hello Michael.

While researching for a summer backpacking trip with my wife, I came across your excellent website for the first time. Thank you for setting such a high bar in quality images and narrative. My daughter is a writer and would appreciate your style. Two questions about your article on the 6-day, 38-mile Sequoia National Park loop: If you were hiking that loop without your children, would you have still been content with the daily mileage, or would you have done something different? (We are physically fit and 60, so we do have limitations.) Secondly, you mention the mosquito population. Our trip would have to be in that mid-to-late July timeframe. Do you know if most hikers experience such a thickness of mosquitos that the experience is negatively affected to a great extent?

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A teenage boy dayhiking up Mount Washington in the Presidential Range, White Mountains, N.H.

Big Hearts, Big Day: A 17-Mile Hike With Teens in the Presidential Range

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By Michael Lanza

Like two spooked deer, Marco and Liam bound ahead of us on the trail, pause to wait for us to catch up, and then sprint ahead again. Powered by the blindly stratospheric self-confidence of athletic teenage boys, they do this repeatedly as we hike a trail paved with rocks the size of bowling balls and dorm-room refrigerators. We are in the early hours of a marathon dayhike over the four peaks of New Hampshire’s Northern Presidential Range, but they are treating it like a short, interval-training workout.

Something tells me this strategy won’t carry them through our long day. But I say nothing. I’m just curious to see how long a pair of fit young bucks can keep this up.

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