America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza The natural beauty, variety, pristine quality, and scale of America’s National Park System have no parallel in the world. Still, a handful of flagship parks rise above the rest—including, unquestionably, Yosemite. Created in 1890, our third national park harbors some of the most breathtaking and inspiring wild lands in the entire parks system. And best of all, …
By Michael Lanza Hiking toward a mountain pass named Furcela dia Roa, on the first day of my family’s weeklong, hut-to-hut trek on the Alta Via 2 in northern Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, we stopped in an open meadow of grass and wildflowers overlooking a deep, verdant valley in Puez-Odle Natural Park. Across the valley loomed a wall of cliffs topped by …
Read onHike the World’s Most Beautiful Trail: The Alta Via 2 in the Dolomites
By Michael Lanza The three bighorn sheep lifted their heavily horned heads to gaze at us, but never budged from their beds of grass amid boulders on a mountainside above the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park. The mountain goats we saw on various occasions gave us little more attention than that. And fortunately, the grizzly bear sow with two …
By Michael Lanza From natural arches, hoodoos, and hanging gardens to balanced rocks and towering mesas, slot canyons and vast chasms, the desert Southwest holds in its dry, searing, lonely open spaces some of America’s most fascinating and inspiring geology. The writer “Cactus Ed” Abbey no doubt had this region in mind when he said there “are some places so …
By Michael Lanza Are you looking for great trip ideas for your personal “bucket list?” Well, you’ve clicked to the right place. This freshly updated list spotlights 10 of the best adventures in the U.S.—from Yosemite, Glacier, Zion, Sequoia, Glacier Bay, and Yellowstone (photo above) to the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier, Wind River Range, and some adventures that may …