Coming up on its eighth year, the Great Salt Lake Bird Watching Festival is good get away for birders. Of course, a chance to visit Salt Lake City isn’t so bad either. Great Salt Lake Bird Watching Festival The Great Salt Lake Bird Watching Festival is both a mouthful and a great event. Close to […]

Held in Cordova, Alaska, the Copper River Delta Shorebirds Festival is a bird watcher’s dream come true. Hundreds of thousands birds migrate to the delta for your sighting pleasure. Copper River Delta Shorebirds Festival Held every May, the Copper River Delta Shorebirds Festival is the place to be if you want to view shorebirds. Literally […]

Survivorman is a television program about wilderness survival. It can be seen on the Discovery Channel (and others?). It’s all about one man against the elements, and the man in this case is Les Stroud. He is put in various environments to survive for seven days while filming himself. Having no camera crew may be […]

If you are in the mood for a hiking vacation then you will probably want to consider the many trails in either the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee or Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Of course there are many other parks and trails throughout the United States but these two destinations offer […]

Why survival tips for backpackers? Certainly backpacking may never become a matter of wilderness survival for you, especially if you are careful in your planning. Still, getting lost or twisting an ankle far from any road is always a possibility. In any case, learning a few new things from time to time is a great […]

Survival skills just for backpacking? Why not? For ultralight backpackers like myself, skills replace gear, and therefore weight. If you spend any time in the wilderness, it also just feels good to know you can deal with whatever comes up. Survival means staying warm and dry, hydrated, uninjured, and finding your way out of the […]

Survival foods are not the most important thing in most emergency situations in the wilderness. You survive weeks without eating if you have to, so it is usually more important to find shelter, water, and stay dry and uninjured. On the other hand, just knowing you can find food out there, and having something in […]

Alligators were the furthest thing from our minds as my wife Ana and I traveled along the coast of northern Florida. We had paid $23 to camp in our conversion van at a beautiful state park on the beach the night before. In the morning we saw a dolphin swimming near shore. Then we heard […]

I couldn’t believe it.  The big plan: stay in nice Bellingham, Washington motels, and alternate that with camping in the countryside slightly north of Bellingham.  We were off to the coast to visit our little girl going to college in Bellingham, Washington at Western Washington University.  We should have realized when we were getting camping […]

Maybe you don’t need to learn about survival clothing. Maybe you always hike with a spare jacket. Perhaps you never go out into the wilderness overnight, but just for day hikes. Or you bring lots of warm clothing when you do go backpacking. Nonetheless, hundreds of people die or come close to dying every year […]