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Traveler's View: National Parks Are Boring, Outside Magazine? Really???

Did you hear the news? National parks, those wondrous and scenic expanses of Nature's eye candy, those wild and rumpled landscapes that test your skills and will kill you if you're not careful and prepared, or maybe just in the wrong place at the wrong time, are boring. They've been transformed -- or, perhaps, kept since their creation -- as "drive-through museums."

Marking The Yosemite Grant That Helped Launch The National Parks Movement

While it's long been accepted that Yellowstone National Park is the world's first national park, there's significant weight to the statement that the wondrous Yosemite landscape helped launch the national parks movement with the signing of the Yosemite Grant by President Lincoln on June 30, 1864. That Grant set aside Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias for protection, establishing the very idea of today's national parks.

Exploring Mount Rainier National Park's Trails

The three kids—my 12-year-old son, Nate, and 10-year-old daughter, Alex, plus my 15-year-old nephew, Marco—are slightly less than enthusiastic about our plan to hike the Skyline Trail Loop above Paradise, on the south side of Mount Rainier National Park. My 76-year-old mom, Joanne, normally an eager hiker, shuffles along this morning, still recovering from a long, hard hike up Mount St. Helens two days ago.