Author Archives: Howie

Back in the old days, the only electronic intrusion on a Big Wild Adventure was represented by an occasional client with a transistor radio. Which we strongly discouraged. Nowadays, folks have access to cell phones, GPS units, i-pods,  i-pads, emergency locator beacons, twitters, kindles and goddess knows what else that’s fomenting in the technophiliac dreams [...]

Yellowstone National Park is not just a magnificent and unique wild landscape, but it also affords us humans the primeval opportunity to be incorporated into the food chain and travel through the digestive track of a grizzly. Or does it? The correct answer is, “barely”. If you try hard, or if you are an unlucky [...]

Camping in Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, is not just an iconic American experience, but if done right, it can be one of life’s most memorable and wondrous events. There are two approaches to Yellowstone camping. The most popular approach is to camp in an official national park campground, all of which are pretty [...]

Let’s cut right to the chase. Backpacking (wilderness trekking) requires a certain level of physical fitness, yet it is a very basic, natural activity. After all, we upright two-legged Hominids evolved in the wilderness, and our ancestors spent many millennia walking through almost every kind of wilderness imaginable. It has been noted that we humans [...]

The term “Adventure Travel” is popular nowadays, but its ever-expanding use has radically diminished its meaning. For example, hut to hut hiking in the tame, pastoral Alps may be fun, but isn’t really “adventure” in the truest sense. Same goes for van-supported bicycle trips on paved highways and for guided/outfitted river trips where the guide [...]