National Park Adventures

Happy Holidays From The Big Outside

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Wishing you a happy holiday season with a view along the Navajo Loop-Queens Garden Loop, my favorite hike in Bryce Canyon National Park. Planning some adventures for next year? Find ideas at my All Trips page. —Michael Lanza  

Middle Fork Salmon River, Idaho.

Ask Me: Can You Recommend Rafting Outfitters and Trips?

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Hi Michael,

I just found your blog today after starting my research for a summer guided rafting tour for families. In my next life I’d like to come back as one of your offspring! My husband would like to take our eager son on a guided, overnight rafting trip this summer to celebrate his 10th birthday: father-son trip, but someone else does the heavy lifting so dad and son can focus on enjoyment of the river, campfires and overall one-on-one time. We live in the Bay Area but our son is keen to travel for this trip—Idaho, Utah, Oregon, or Colorado, to name a few suggestions. Can you point us toward some well-regarded guiding companies and provide any insight to consider when we comparison shop?

Kind regards,
Catherine
Lafayette, CA

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Lower Yellowstone Falls and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, Yellowstone National Park.

Giving Thanks For ‘The Best Idea We Ever Had’

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By Michael Lanza

From Lookout Point, along the North Rim Trail in Yellowstone National Park, you gaze down hundreds of feet into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, with its crumbling walls of golden, gray, and cream-colored rock and patches of evergreens framing the roaring river. Just upstream, 308-foot-tall Lower Yellowstone Falls explodes through a notch in the cliffs, sending a plume of water and mist shooting into the canyon. Every time I see it, as I did again earlier this fall, I feel the same sense of awe that I felt the first time I saw this view.

Big more than that, I think about the foresight behind the creation of America’s national parks—what the writer Wallace Stegner called “the best idea we ever had”—including the first one, Yellowstone. That’s one of the many things I’m thankful for on this Thanksgiving day.

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Above Olavsbu Hut, Jotunheimen National Park, Norway.

Video: Trekking Hut-to-Hut Across Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park

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By Michael Lanza

Take three minutes right now to daydream about hiking in a wild place half a world away, a rugged, Arctic-looking landscape vibrantly colorful with shrubs, mosses, and wildflowers, where cliffs and mountains look like they were chopped from the earth with an axe. A place where thick, crack-riddled glaciers pour off snow-plastered peaks like pancake batter that needs more water, and wild, braided rivers meander down mostly treeless valleys. Where reindeer are real (but don’t fly—sorry)—and you stay in supremely comfortable huts with excellent food.

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Sea kayakers in Milford Sound, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand.

Photo Gallery: Sea Kayaking New Zealand’s Milford Sound

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By Michael Lanza

A vast sea of liquid glass spread out before us as we aimed our kayaks out into Milford Sound, a 4,000-foot-deep fjord in Fiordland National Park, on the southwest coast of New Zealand’s South Island. A thick fur of rainforest clung to cliffs plunging straight into the sea. The sharp, rock-crowned arrowhead of Mitre Peak rose to 5,545 feet (1,690m) out of the ocean, slashing at the sky.

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