From the category archives:

Camping

Never Boring in Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Story and photos by Lynn DeBruin
The tiny flashlight was pointed downward as I deftly negotiated the dirt and pebble-strewn path toward the hot springs. But my eyes kept drifting high above the trees, at a mesmerizing sky ablaze with a million stars.
It was so dark – and yet so bright – on this moonless night [...]

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Camping Connection – It’s a Tent…It’s a Cabin…No, It’s a…Yurt?

Story and photos by Bill Steiden
Perhaps the best way to describe a yurt, for the uninitiated, is as the halfway point between a tent and a house.
Appropriately, it was invented by people who needed a home but had no permanent dwelling place.
They were Central Asian herders following their animals across arid grasslands to seasonal pastures. [...]

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Muscle Shoals, Alabama: Offers Everything for the Music Lover, Plus More

Story and photos by Bobby L. Hickman
Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers
And they’ve been known to pick a song or two
Lord they get me off so much
They pick me up when I’m feeling blue
Now how about you?
—“Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd

When the Euchee Indians dwelled in northwest Alabama, they called the portion of [...]

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Camping Connection – From Natural Disasters to Natural Beauties

By Bill Steiden
A vast, open field at a mile’s elevation in North Carolina, bisected by a tumbling river and surrounded by green peaks.
A languid lake filled with the drowned corpses of a great cypress forest in a lonely corner of northwestern Tennessee.
Another lake, like a giant azure eye, winking from its high cauldron at the [...]

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Free Admission During National Park Week!

April 16, 2010 – Earth Day is April 22 and the National Parks Service is taking a whole week to celebrate. Starting tomorrow through April 25, 2010 admission to all the U.S. National Parks is FREE. Access any of the 392 parks in the system this week and enjoy the great outdoors. Most parks do [...]

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A Texan In Botswana – Part Two

Story and photos by John Griffin
When you go on safari, your body has to get used to a new timetable – and not just because of any jet lag you may experience. In the camps throughout the Okavango Delta and northern Botswana, day begins well before dawn. At 5:15 a.m., we would receive a [...]

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Camping Connection – Time for the Eastern and Western Flower Shows

By Bill Steiden
An old saying has it that love is like wildflowers, often found in the most unlikely places. The truth behind that truism is illustrated by two classic camping spots on opposite sides of the country that, in their respective seasons, reward outdoor lovers with what are among the best flower shows on the [...]

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A Texan In Botswana – Part One

By John Griffin
Planning a safari takes time. You have to research the camp options available as well as the best time of year to travel. Most of all you have to decide the reasons you are going. Is it for the animals? The thrill of the kill?
I did none of these. I left it all [...]

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Camping Connection – Florida’s Flatwater

By Bill Steiden
The popular image of canoeing is eternally linked with 1972’s Deliverance – four men shooting deadly Class V rapids on a wild, remote river in wooden canoes. And that wasn’t the riskiest part of their adventure.

But nowadays, the backwoods folks are in the tourist trade, and they’ll tell you that kind of river-running [...]

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Camping Connection – Small & Stylish, Teardrops Are Worth a Look

By Bill Steiden
There’s a good reason Elkhart, Ind., is the epicenter of U.S. unemployment. It’s the capital of recreational vehicle manufacturing at a time when spending on luxury items, such as RVs, is declining fast, and fuel prices are in flux after reaching record levels in 2008.
Yet as the RV industry’s teardrops fall, they’re on [...]

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