A paralyzed athlete pushes the limits of adventure sports, a prime grizzly-watching spot, monster mosquitoes, travel horror stories and more from our third-annual Travel Issue.
A Japanese fly-fishing art comes to life
Centuries-old tenkara is becoming a hit on streams in the American West.
Visiting the frosties of the Lost Sierra
The wonders of the classic roadside stands that still dish out soft-serve ice cream.
Mind over mountain
As adaptive adventure sports boom in the West, a paralyzed athlete pushes his limits.
Touring Indian Country via footrace
How to run in a reservation race that’s both sport and cultural tradition.
International Car Forest of the Last Church
For a strange trip, check out Nevada’s otherworldly Stonehenge of wildly painted abandoned vehicles.
Native American tourism quietly thrives
Even the customers seem to emerge from thin air.
Adventure travel vs. conservation
A conversation with outdoor entrepreneur Bill Bryan.
49 trout streams of southern Colorado
49 Trout Streams of Southern Colorado Mark D. Williams and W. Chad McPhail, 120 pages, softcover:$27.95. University of New Mexico Press. 2013. For southern Colorado anglers in search of plentiful, hard-fighting trout, getting to gold-medal waters is the easy part: there’s the Gunnison, the Frying Pan, and the Animas, to name a few. But as…
A brave and unusual conservationist turns 90
Ninety years ago, on April 12, 1924, Tom Bell was born in a house owned by the Union Pacific Railroad, in Winton, Wyo., a coal-mining camp. It was an inauspicious but appropriate beginning for the guy who would start both High Country News and Wyoming’s largest conservation group. Tom’s father, Lafe Bell, worked in the…
Backpacking with monster skeeters
An Alaska encounter with the fiercest of the 176 mosquito species that roam the U.S.
Houseboaters vs. river runners
Andrew Gulliford, a professor in Durango, Colo., spent five days last summer on a houseboat floating around Utah’s most famous party scene, Lake Powell – a reservoir on the Colorado River – and then another five running the Yampa and Green rivers on the Colorado-Utah border. Gulliford noticed sharp differences between the cultures of houseboating…
How to save your town from the interstate
Tourists flocked to Winslow, Ariz., back in the golden era of cross-country rail travel, and later along the classic two-lane highway, Route 66. But now the old Valentine Diner sits empty and rusting, having long given up on luring customers off Interstate 40, which sidestepped the town in the 1970s. It’s a symbol of all…
Savoring the horror stories
(This is the editor’s note for an April 2014 special issue of the HCN magazine devoted to travel in the West.) I’ll never forget the time I was hiking with my five-months-pregnant wife in Bryce Canyon National Park in remote rural Utah. An unexpected November snowstorm hit us, and Linda slipped on an icy path,…
Strange little museums and zoos enliven the region
British ColumbiaAs you wander the West, keep an eye out for the tiniest, quirkiest museums and zoos tucked in unexpected and obscure spaces. They often provide outsized amusement and – fair to say – unrivaled learning experiences. You can see, for instance, “Canada’s largest ant farm,” along with hulking tarantulas, Malaysian rainbow frog beetles and…
Best place to see a crowd of grizzlies
A few tourists get close to amazing numbers of bears catching salmon at Alaska’s McNeil River Falls.
How to travel the West on $5,000 per day
(NOTE this is part of the April 2014 special issue of the HCN magazine devoted to travel in the West.) Hermès Hiking BootsThe Paris company offers a “low boot in black oily calfskin” with a “palladium plated Albion buckle, orange lining … double leather sole and lugged rubber sole, water-resistant.” The Wall Street Journal praises…