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The REI Labor Day Sale has some great deals on REI brand clothing you don’t want to miss. REI makes highly durable clothing that’s well-designed for hiking, backpacking, and other outdoor pursuits. I have a closet full of it, and it lasts …

The REI Labor Day Sale offers some amazing clothing, gear, and footwear deals you don’t want to miss. Here are the ones that we think are too good to pass up. Autumn is the best time of the year to hike and …

Getting over the fear of camping alone is a major rite of passage for many backpackers. I think we all get a little pensive about the noises we hear around our campsites at night. Here are 10 easy ways to put that …

You know you’re a hiker… when you look at a bar of chocolate in the store and put it back because it doesn’t have enough calories. when you measure everything in your life in liters and grams. when you can accurately judge …

Here’s a paragraph, yes it’s a long one, from the Complete Walker IV by Colin Fletcher.  I haven’t read any Fletcher for several years now although his books have a permanent spot on my bookshelf. On a whim, I opened one up …

“This has been the best year of my life”, I told Sam as we were climbing Wheeler Mountain in Maine. She replied, “You don’t hear many people saying that these days.” Isn’t that the truth? It’s been 5 years now since I …

The world is going to hell. The United States is going to hell. The government is going to raise our taxes, take away medicare, and push out the retirement age. Here’s my advice for how to get off the hamster wheel sooner …

My hiking and backpacking trips start well before I ever step foot on the trail. I like to plan out my route by reading maps and trail guides, figure out what gear I need to bring depending on the terrain or expected weather conditions, …

Some people feel like they lose part of themselves when they give away things they own. “I need to cut my monthly expenses”, said my Mom. “It’s costing me $150 a month to store my art books in the storage locker and …

On July 5, 2010, I walked into my manager’s office and quit. He never saw it coming. I’d just come back from a 3 week backpacking trip hiking coast-to-coast across Scotland. Going for a long walk helped me realize how unhappy I was …

The world became alarmingly smaller when I discovered I had cell phone service in Maine’s 100 Mile Wilderness. You have mail!  I immediately regretted turning my phone on. That was two summers ago. When I’d first hiked this remote section of the Appalachian …

This week I hiked the another 32 miles of the Appalachian Trail in Maine. This brings the total number of miles I’ve hiked on the AT to 840 of the 885  miles from the Mohican Outdoor Center in New Jersey all the …

Every time we drove by those cliffs overlooking the Colorado, Daddy would say “I’d like to climb those someday. I wonder what’s up there.” The cliffs towered above the river, a couple of hundred feet at least, disappearing downstream at a bend …

When I was a very young boy, maybe four or five years old, my parents and I went to the beach. I had a beach ball I loved to play with and it was blown into the ocean and began to drift …