family hiking

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, Idaho.

Photo Gallery: Idaho’s Craters of the Moon

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By Michael Lanza

Few places bear a name as simultaneously hyperbolic and yet as descriptively true as Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in south-central Idaho. Over the past 15,000 years, eight distinct lava flows erupting from fissures in the earth have created the largest lava field of its kind in the continental United States, made up of about 60 flows and 25 cones and sprawling over more than 600 square miles. Explore the place with young kids and they just may believe you’ve transported them to the moon.

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Hike it Baby

Hike It Baby Gets Families Hiking, One City at a Time

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By Michael Lanza

Shanti and Mark Hodges took their son, Mason, on his first hike when he was nine days old, walking a flat, quarter-mile trail at Oswald State Park on the Oregon coast. That was in July 2013. Then Mark, 35, an avid hiker, started carrying Mason on regular walks in the woods—just the two of them. Shanti worried about that.

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Hikers on the Chesler Park Trail, Needles District, Canyonlands National Park, Utah.

No Straight Lines: Backpacking and Hiking in Canyonlands and Arches National Parks

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By Michael Lanza

We follow a zigzagging line of stone cairns over waves of slickrock in the backcountry of the Needles District of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. Cliffs and 300-foot-tall sandstone candlesticks tower around us, in more shades of red than Crayola has yet replicated, glowing in the warm afternoon sunshine of late March. Five adults and four kids from three families, we traverse slabs, scramble in single file up the smooth, dry bottom of a narrow water runnel, and pump out calf muscles walking straight up steep ramps. In the desert Southwest, trails haven’t learned the axiom of Euclidian geometry that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. We’re navigating a maze without walls.

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Ponytail Falls, Columbia Gorge.

Nature In Your Face: Hiking the Columbia Gorge

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By Michael Lanza

Horsetail Falls slices a thin, glowing white, 176-foot-tall incision down a cliff of black rock wallpapered with moss and ferns, crashing into a shallow, chilly wading pool at its base. To see it, today’s first waterfall, we had to hike all the way across the road from the parking lot.

My son, Nate, and daughter, Alex, give Horsetail the once-over without much comment or enthusiasm. It’s not easy to impress elementary-school-age kids with nature, not even when it roars louder and looms larger than their favorite video games. I understand why: To kids, nature’s no good if it’s no better than a picture on the wall—they want to immerse themselves in it, get dirty and wet and throw stuff. And that water’s too chilly on this overcast, cool, June day to wade into that pool. But I know they’ll be more impressed with the next falls awaiting us. And sure enough, a little while later, when we turn a corner on the trail through dense, dripping rainforest and see Ponytail Falls, they pick up the pace and gush, “That’s cool!”

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