The animals in the Galapagos Islands come right up to you. A blue-footed booby perches calmly on a ledge as you walk past. A sea lion lies down for a nap near your towel. An iguana doesn’t move out of the way when you step closer. The experience is startling—birds, reptiles, and sea mammals, unafraid of people, tilt their heads curiously and pose for photographs. The Galapagos archipelago, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, was isolated from external influences {Read More}
National Park Week 2016 – National Parks in the U.S. West
April 18, 2016 by Leave a Comment
If there was ever a time to visit our nation’s parks, this is it. 2016 marks the centennial celebration of the National Parks System and from April 16-24th every park in the system is offering free admission in honor of National Park Week with special events taking place each day. There are currently 411 parks, trails, waterways, historic sites, recreation areas, monuments, and memorials that fall under the designation of the National Park Service. In honor of these national treasures, {Read More}
Québec’s P’tit Train du Nord – The Perfect Family Bike Trip
January 6, 2016 by 2 Comments
My husband has always loved a good bike trip. As a boy of 15, his dad drove him uptown to the George Washington Bridge from their Greenwich Village apartment to pedal from New York City to Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia lead only by a 20-something American Youth Hostels counselor. Several more trips followed, including a month-long cycling and camping tour through Italy. When we’d been dating about a year, my own two-wheeled initiation took place along the Pacific Coast {Read More}
5 Ways to Connect Your Kids with Nature
October 2, 2015 by Leave a Comment
The woods behind the house where I grew up went on forever and I knew every inch of them. A thick layer of amber-colored pine needles littered the woodland floor and I can easily conjure the warm, damp, composty smell of the spongy blackness I’d unearth by digging beneath the carpet. Through the trees, across the dirt road, was a swamp where we spent hours attempting to sail across in the old baby bathtub or upon makeshift plywood rafts. We’d {Read More}
Unplugged in the Smokies – 3 Days of Smoky Mountain Adventures
May 27, 2015 by 11 Comments
At over a half-million acres, the Great Smoky Mountain National Park offers families a cornucopia of opportunities to explore wilderness unspoiled. One of just 22 sites in the U.S. to have been placed on the distinguished UNESCO World Heritage List, the National Parks Service (NPS) recently spotlighted GSMNP in a their new, online itinerary. Travelers can hike to a secluded waterfall, investigate preserved historical structures, observe thousands of species of wildlife (including the elusive synchronous fireflies each spring), join a {Read More}
5 Destinations That Will Get Your Family Unplugged This Summer
April 28, 2015 by 5 Comments
The endless days of summer are right around the corner bringing with them family road trips, picnics by the shore and campfires under the stars. It’s also the ideal time of year to cast your electronics aside, connecting with nature, the great outdoors and each other. Here are five fantastic, unplugged destinations that will entice your family to do exactly that. St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands While most people head to a tropical island to escape winter’s wrath, the Caribbean {Read More}
Join the #KissColdAway Twitter Party – February 24, 9-10 pm
February 20, 2015 by 2 Comments
The northeast has been under winter’s siege since late January with above average snowfalls being recorded all over the country. Nearly 8 feet of snow has fallen on Boston alone in the past three weeks! This may be well and good for winter sports—our family has certainly taken advantage of the awesome conditions on the ski slopes and snowshoe trails of Vermont this season—but shoveling the driveway, dealing with power outages, and listening to repeat blizzard warnings have been far {Read More}
Stowe Mountain Lodge – Slope Side Luxury in Vermont
February 13, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Arriving in the tiny village of Stowe, Vermont feels like stepping into a Norman Rockwell painting—especially in the winter. Smoke curls from chimneys, icicles hang from eaves and the white steeple of the community church stands tall among the quaint shops on Main Street. This area also serves as the entry point to the Mountain Road, which leads visitors to the legendary Stowe Mountain Resort and Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak. Like most ski towns, Stowe is home to a {Read More}
Five Days in Yosemite – A Valley Primer
December 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment
“Too-tock-uh what?” my 8-year old asked, looking up at Yosemite’s El Capitan. The hiking guide said the word again: “Tutokanula—it means inchworm.” We had inched our way to the midpoint of our first hike in Yosemite National Park, and our guide Sam (that’s right, Yosemite Sam) explained that the Euro-American settlers and the native Miwok peoples who inhabited the valley had opposite ideas for naming the famous monolith. The newcomers called it The Captain, but the native name for it {Read More}
5 Reasons to Join (or Start!) a Family Nature Club
October 21, 2014 by 1 Comment
“What if parents, grandparents, and kids around the country were to band together to create nature clubs for families? What if this new form of social/nature networking were to spread as quickly as book clubs and Neighborhood Watches did in recent decades? We would be well on our way to true cultural change.” Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.” This past Saturday I had the pleasure of joining the Bronx Zoo {Read More}
