hiking
In the midst of a world pandemic — and, in the United States, the culmination of a bitterly divided, exhausting election season — I can offer a few words of advice: Take a hike.
Hiking is an ideal way to get out of your cooped-up house into the fresh air and, certainly for less-crowded trails, is well suited to social distancing.
It’s a healthy activity and usually fun as well. (Some tougher trails aren’t always fun, but tackling — and conquering — them can be highly satisfying.)
But hiking right — meaning minimizing any risk of injury or other problem that may occur — requires adequate preparation and thought.
Guest writer Rebecca Brown lays out the key things to keep in mind for three different types of hikers: day hikers, overnighters, and multi-day hikers.
So lace up your boots, fill your water bottles, and don your backpack — but first,… Continue reading
Thanks to the hiking site Riders Trail for this informative and entertaining infographic on hiking safely with a dog.
Dogs need walking, of course, which provides exercise for both canine and human, but hiking with your dog can take the benefits of exercise to a new level, for baby boomers and younger generations alike.
Still, there are a number of considerations to keep in mind before you leash up your pet, and Riders Trail does a good job of highlighting them:
- Making sure your dog is suitable for hiking
- Finding dog-friendly hiking locations
- Preparing your dog for hiking
- Adhering to trail etiquette
- Carrying along the right supplies
- And dealing with potential threats
Plus, the dog pictures are downright cute. Even if you don’t have a dog, you may enjoy checking them out.
The Grand Canyon taught Mitch a hard-earned lesson in trail guiding.
One of our frequent contributors to clarknorton.com, my friend Mitch Stevens, is kicking off our occasional series of first-person pieces on how various baby boomers got started traveling for a living.
Mitch’s odyssey led him from summer camp in Pennsylvania to the depths of the Grand Canyon to college field trips in Wyoming and eventually to Tucson in the (mostly) sunny deserts of southern Arizona, where’s he’s been leading Sierra Club hikes for years and more recently founded his adventure travel company Southwest Discoveries.
Like the intrepid cyclists who compete in the 100-mile El Tour de Tucson race each fall, Mitch’s long-distance hikes through the canyons and across the mountains of the Southwest provide inspiration to me as I sit here at my computer giving my typing fingers a thorough workout.
So lace up your hiking boots, grab… Continue reading
Here’s a handy and enjoyable Outdoor Adventure Guide infographic from the folks at Dickies, a Canadian clothing company that features outerwear, work clothing, and other apparel for men, women, and kids.
The guide offers good reminders of what to bring on a camping trip, fishing trip, rock climbing trip, or when traveling abroad — including what to wear, of course, but also easy-to-overlook items like a universal power adapter for foreign travel and a headlamp for a camping trip.
As someone who once neglected to pack a coat for a cruise up the coast of Norway that traveled hundreds of miles above the Arctic Circle — brrrr — and once spent a few snowy days in Switzerland wearing only sandals on my feet — double brrr — I can appreciate reminders of what to wear in the outdoors as well.
Just in time to get out and enjoy that beautiful… Continue reading
Monticello, Thomas Jefferson”s home, is just outside Charlottesville and can be reached by a hiking trail. Photo by Clark Norton
Dear Readers,
While I’m traveling in Antarctica for a few weeks I’ll be reprising some of my most popular posts from the past three years. This one (now slightly updated) originally ran in October of 2014.
After my first visit to Charlottesville, Virginia, I wrote about ten things I learned about this lovely Virginia city where my daughter now lives.
And now, after a second visit, I’ve compiled a list of five more things I learned about “C’Ville.” So I guess I’m making progress. (Stay tuned next year for “One or Two More Things I Didn’t Know About Charlottesville.”)
You could call this the “sports and outdoor activities” edition of the things I didn’t know. It was warmer for this visit than the last, so… Continue reading
Saguaro cacti along a trail in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, Scottsdale. Photo by Sheldon Clark
Except for some brief stops at the Phoenix, Arizona, airport, I hadn’t been in the “Valley of the Sun” region for about 30 years until recently, when some friends invited us to spend a few days in their timeshare at the Sheraton Desert Oasis resort in Scottsdale, which lies north and east of Phoenix.
My memories of the area weren’t particularly positive. Our previous Phoenix visit — poorly timed for August, when it was 110 degrees in the shade — was spent futilely searching for the “there” there, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. If there was a downtown Phoenix, we couldn’t find it back then. It just seemed to be a mass of sprawl in the desert.
Because I had imagined Scottsdale to be just another Phoenix suburb, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of… Continue reading
Beavertail cacti bloom in Kanab Creek, Grand Canyon National Park. Photo by Mitch Stevens.
In the spirit of the holiday season — and getting into shape after indulging in all those holiday parties — I’m running a guest post from my fellow Tucson, Arizona, resident Mitch Stevens, founder of Southwest Discoveries.
Mitch or one of his trained guides at Southwest Discoveries will take you on a personalized hiking tour in the Tucson region or around Arizona, including the Grand Canyon and Sonoran Desert. His market is primarily baby boomers and multi-generational hiking groups, which is how Mitch and I originally connected.
Appropriately, Mitch writes about the benefits of going hiking (which I can now do in the winter, having recently relocated from upstate New York to sunny Tucson — following in the footsteps, as it were, of countless other baby boomers heading south and west).
So I’ll hand… Continue reading
Luxembourg is a land of medieval castles and forested hiking trails. Photo from Luxembourg National Tourist Office.
I always like to call attention to enterprising travel marketing ideas, and a group of five hotels in the Ardennes region of northern Luxembourg have banded together to come up with a good one.
If you stay in any of their hotels, you can walk, bike or ride a motorbike between them, and the hotels will transport your luggage for you — much like a guided group walking tour would do, except you do it on your own (at less expense).
The five hotels form a rough loop about seven to 13 miles (12 to 22 km.) apart, so you can easily put together a five-day walking plan or perhaps a three-day biking trip, using any combination of the five hotels. There are about 70 miles (120 km.) of hiking paths in the… Continue reading
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