Family-Outdoors

Evening on Gulf of Maine from Acadia National Park Here we are three weeks into July, and with school starting earlier it seems every year, you might be thinking of one more outdoor excursion for the year...or maybe you are really ambitious and will get a few more in!  I am a high school math teacher, so even though my kids are grown, the school schedule still is a driver in our lives. One kind of cool thing is that even though our kids are grown, we still often have them with us on our adventures.  We took one big trip to the northeast just the two of us - Maine and the Adirondacks with a one day trip into NYC. It was our 30th anniversary trip, plus our unmarried son was deep into working at doing forest research down in the Missouri Ozarks before his final undergrad year as a forestry major at Mizzou. We have one more ace up our sleeve...a shorter trip of about 5 days to the Indian Peaks Wilderness area of Colorado.  Past trips we have gone further west - the Sa...

Lesser Prairie Chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endorsed the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies’ *Lesser Prairie-Chicken Range-Wide Conservation Plan*, a landmark, collaborative planning effort to conserve a species proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The range-wide plan (RWP) represents a dedicated effort by the five range states of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado to conserve the lesser prairie-chicken. After an extensive review, the Service found the plan is consistent with criteria proposed last May for conserving the species, which is proposed for listing under the ESA. The plan calls for providing financial incentives to landowners who voluntarily manage their lands to benefit the species. It also includes a framework for mitigating the potentially harmful effects to lesser prairie-chicken habitat from development activity throughout...

I do not know who lived here. Twenty-five years ago, when I was a college kid and had no idea I'd be living very close to this old place, I would hike around it, and sit in the woods, and wonder about the prior occupants. At that time, there was still the remnants of the old house and you could find pieces of the family's pottery. Whenever I am in a place like this, where people have come and gone, I wonder what the dreams of these people were. Were they like me? Did they ever wonder if years after they were gone, would someone traipse across their land and wonder about them? Did they figure their mark on the land would be more permanent - the start of something big? I left Missouri and went to Alaska and then Colorado with my wife. We had kids and built a life together and had some good adventures and plan to have more. A dozen years ago, we moved into the home that my wife's parents had built as a vacation getaway. It is perhaps 250 yards from the place y...

Image by 50%ChanceofRain via Flickr I sure don't want to present myself as the expert on this area. I have been to this park probably five or six times. Of the parks, I do enjoy it the most, especially when I can get there on a weekday. A week or so ago, I fished it with my younger son, he concentrating on the bait area while I stayed exclusively in the "fly area." I put fly area in quotes, because if you are not familiar with the park, spin fishing is also allowed here, but there are restrictions regarding terminal tackle allowed. Generally speaking, there is no negative interaction between spin and fly fishermen here as I have heard there can be in some places. Some of the spin fishermen here have shared pointers with me that even though I am using a fly rod, I have found very helpful. The caveat I will throw in is that there seems to often be a lack of stream etiquette in the parks. This lack of etiquette seems to be equally displayed by spin and fly fishermen. ...

I had never really thought much about the saying "let's clear the air" until last night. Of course I think I was in my thirties before I thought much about the saying "you can't have your cake and eat it too." I am not sure what the heck prompts me to finally get a meaning on silly stuff like this, and for that matter, my meaning might be vastly different than yours. All day long I had been watching the weather because there were thunderstorms forecast and my son had a track meet scheduled for the afternoon. It didn't look good for getting it in. The weather here over the last few days has been that high overcast or murky "clear sky" that seems to be the norm in the midwest. Image via Wikipedia The sky in Western Colorado is so different...blue skies are brilliant. The skies there are the ones where you can lay on your back in a field and watch wispy clouds go by on a brilliant blue canvas and the contrast is remarkable. I get tired of wh...

Let me be honest about something. I was born in Colorado and raised in Alaska - I should have been an outdoorsman already but I wasn't. Somewhere along the line my boys became enthralled with the idea of hunting and fishing - the outdoors in general. It was constant pressure to go here or there hunting or fishing, and oh heavens the money we have spent on rifles, fishing gear, tents, travel, guides,... I was gradually tiptoed down the path of becoming an outdoorsman because I had to be one. What a fiasco it has been at times. If I knew anything about hunting it sure wasn't anything about how it was done in the Ozarks of Missouri. If I knew anything about fishing, it was salmon, halibut, and trout. Ten years ago I couldn't tell you the difference between a smallmouth and a largemouth bass. Together, my boys and I, we have come quite a ways but I am certain there have been times when they wondered whether their fearless leader was ever going to lead them to harves...