When one of your less adventurous group members says, “There’s this off-trail adventure in the middle of nowhere with a really cool cabin built by Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch Gang; we’ve got to go see if we can…
Climbing to the Golden Trout Lakes (North Fork)
The day before I hiked up to the famous Kearsarge Pass, I happened to have a few hours to burn. I didn’t feel like sitting around the parking area, and I really, really didn’t feel like hanging out in the…
Beautiful Blue Goat Lake
Goat Lake was probably the most beautiful lake I saw in the Sawtooth Mountains. Sawtooth Lake was also very nice (especially from the far end), but it lacked the deep blue color and sheer cliffs of its nearby counterpart. That…
Scrambling Up Dragon’s Tooth
When I talked with locals last summer about the possibility of hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, everyone told me about Dragon’s Tooth. Even the people who aren’t huge on hiking had done it and encouraged me to…
Colorful Desolation Canyon
If I were to be honest (and I try to be!), I like Desolation Canyon better than Golden Canyon in Death Valley National Park. There’s nothing wrong with Golden Canyon per se; I’ve hiked it several times. But Desolation Canyon…
The Rock Garden in Worlds End State Park
Before I headed out on the Canyon Vista Trail in Worlds End State Park, I noticed a sign across the road from the parking area (Loyalsock Canyon Vista) that pointed toward the Rock Garden. Curious, I walked over to see…
Castle Rock above Lake Tahoe
Castle Rock is a great view of Lake Tahoe on the border of California and Nevada. It’s a hot, forested hike on a summer day (guess when I hiked?), but the views at the end make it worth the effort…
Adventures on the Fossil Forest Route
The Fossil Forest is a hidden gem of Yellowstone National Park. Located in the Lamar Valley, it’s not marked, nor is it especially official. But I was able to follow a trail all of the way up, so I can’t…
Scrambling Daylight Peak
In my ramblings around the internet looking for cool hikes to add to my ever-growing site about Death Valley National Park, I ran across the fact that I could hike to the top of an unnamed mountain called Daylight Peak…
The Hike to Hanging Rock
One of the delights of visiting my cousin and cousin-in-law over Labor Day was when they took us up to Hanging Rock State Park in western North Carolina. We climbed to the official Hanging Rock, descended to the Upper Cascades…