Look how brave this patio lamp in Spider-Man: Miles Morales is | Doctor Curiosity
As any avid gamer knows, bugs and glitches are part of the deal. Sometimes they take gameplay to a whole other level, as seems to be the case with Spider Man: Miles Morales where players unexpectedly turned into inanimate objects, including a patio space heater (there’s a probably joke there about great power and great responsibility but we’re above puns at The Verge dot com) (spoiler: we totally are not).
Spider-Man game developer Insomniac Games acknowledged the bug on Twitter calling it “equally as embarrassing as it is heart-warming,” (get it?!) and Into the Spider-Verse producer Phil Lord suggested the bug should go into Spider-Verse 2 “if we have any self-respect at all.”
But plenty of fans replied to Insomniac’s tweet asking for the glitch to stay, it is quite funny, and unless it’s slowing down or interfering with gameplay, why not? After all, there are no other games (that we know of, anyway) where a patio heater might end up saving New York City. Give it a chance!
Garmin’s Tactix Delta is the latest in its lineup of rugged smartwatches built to military standards. New for the Tactix’s fourth generation is a big 1.4-inch display similar to what we saw on the Fenix 6 last year, as well as a power manager feature, which gives you battery life predictions based on which settings you turn on and off.
New for this version of the Tactix is stealth mode, which completely disables storing and sharing of your information, and a kill switch that can be set to erase all device memory. These aren’t entirely new features — they individually appeared in the Instinct Tactical Edition and Marq Commander watches respectively — but considering the security risks GPS tracking in particular can sometimes have, it makes sense for Garmin to also include them in this military-focused range.
Available now for $899.99
Along with the new privacy features, Garmin included a range of “tactical features” that are making a return from its previous Tactix smartwatches. There’s Jumpmaster mode, which is designed to help guide skydivers to their objective, and dual-position GPS, which can display two sets of coordinate systems on a single screen.
There’s also a more typical set of smartwatch features included. The Garmin Tactix Delta can store up to 2,000 songs, supports Garmin Pay, and can be set to receive notifications from a paired smartwatch. Garmin says you’ll get 21 days of battery life when the device is in smartwatch mode, or 80 days in battery saver watch mode.
The Garmin Tactix Delta is available now for $899.99.
A handy Redditor has made a really cool Arduino-powered toy R/C car that can dip, move, and drift almost exactly like a real car. (And it’s decked out with an awesome-looking 1963 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 Wagon shell, to boot.)
Seriously, watch this thing take a few turns. I’ve never seen an R/C car move like this — it realistically leans into turns and drifts, almost like a stunt car driven in a movie. Most R/C cars don’t move with quite the same illusion of weight.
This next GIF is pretty cool, too, showing how the car can bounce side to side and “fire” up its exhaust pipes as if it was revving up. It also gives you a brief look of what’s under the hood, so to speak:
The maker of the car, Dimitar Tilev, says that this realistic movement is possible due to an accelerometer and four servo motors connected to an Arduino programmable circuit board that create an active suspension system. An active suspension system can actively adjust itself, usually to keep the car as stable as possible, but in this case, the system actively raises and lowers each of the wheels in ways that simulate the movements and weight of a full-size car.
If someone floors it in a real car, for example, it can feel as if the car’s nose rises up a bit and you get thrown back in your seat. Or if someone takes a hard turn, you might feel the car lean into that turn. The system in the R/C car uses an accelerometer to replicate those movements, detecting acceleration on the X and Y axes and sending that data to the Arduino. Depending on how the car is moving, the four servo motors at the wheels can extend different heights to simulate what a real car would look like in a similar situation.
Here’s the guts of the car — it’s got a lot of tech packed into it.
Image: Dimitar Tilev
If you want to know more about what makes the car go, you should read all of the nitty-gritty details on Tilev’s blog. And if you want to buy something like it, you might be able to someday. Tilev says he plans to find a way to sell something similar to this first design, though with some changes, and if you want to follow the progress of that, he says he’ll share updates on this Facebook page.
Wacom is launching its $399 Wacom One creative pen display at CES, its most affordable tablet to date. The 13-inch display works with macOS and Windows devices, in addition to an unexpected new compatibility: Android devices.
Wacom says there are no plans to add iPhone compatibility yet, but at that point, wouldn’t you just get an iPad? The same argument could go for Android tablets. However, the Wacom One could come in handy for people who have Android phones, but not laptops. There are illustration apps like Autodesk SketchBook that could give artists the flexibility to work while connected to their phones, too. Either way, it’s nice to have an additional option, despite the dongle situation presented above. Unfortunately, the Wacom One still uses the three-port HDMI / USB / power cable with no support for USB-C, so you’ll need a dongle to connect to newer MacBooks or Android devices.
The Wacom One has a 1920 x 1080 HD display with 72 percent NTSC color, and a nice matte display with an anti-glare film that feels great to draw on. Wacom says the One was created with “creative beginners, social content creators and visual thinkers” in mind, gearing the tablet toward entry-level artists. The Wacom One is about the size of an iPad, but chunkier in width, so it feels sturdy in a way that you could trust young kids to draw on it. In my opinion, it’s the first Wacom pen display that’s truly portable, practical, and small enough that it wouldn’t look out of place if you took it to work at a cafe.
The Wacom One is available now on the Wacom website for $399, as well as other retailers like Amazon and Best Buy.
Search and rescue personnel evacuated a Texas man from the Grand Canyon on Friday, nearly two weeks after he was reported missing to officials. A park service helicopter carried out 58-year-old Martin Edward O'Connor around 10 a.m., according to a press release.
A group of hikers spotted O'Connor yesterday on the New Hance Trail, a difficult 6.5-mile path located about 20 miles east of Grand Canyon Village. According to the park service, the trail is unmaintained and considered one of the most difficult trails on the South Rim. A park service description of the trail states that it requires "route finding skills" and is "recommended only for highly experienced canyon hikers." O'Connor's experience or the circumstances of his disappearance are unknown at this point.
O'Connor was reported missing on December 22 and was last seen at the Yavapai Lodge, where he was staying. Temperatures in Grand Canyon National Park have stayed below freezing over the past few weeks, and an inch of snow fell on Wednesday night.
The details of O'Connor's disappearance and current condition are still unclear.
WWE has one of the most popular YouTube channels in the world and has become a social media force, and today (as reported by Variety) the company officially joined TikTok. There’s a WWE TikTok channel, sure, but more important to wrestling fans and meme creators is that WWE’s arrival brings with it a slew of licensed entrance music for some of the company’s most recognizable performers past and present.
You can now add “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s theme music to your TikTok uploads. Same for The Undertaker, John Cena, or Becky Lynch. And yes, The Rock’s music is available as well. Music for over 30 superstars can now be included in TikTok videos globally. The songs are not yet available for use in Instagram stories, so this is a decent get for TikTok.
“By offering WWE’s iconic entrances for TikTok users to play off of and make their own unique videos, the partnership provides fans a new way to engage with their favorite superstars,” the company wrote in a press release. You can search for particular theme songs via TikTok’s music selector. As for what else it has planned for TikTok, WWE said:
From WWE’s thrilling in-ring matches to unforgettable backstage action, the TikTok community will receive unprecedented access to their favorite WWE moments as the company begins a new chapter on the platform.
Similar to its output on other platforms, WWE plans to post content to TikTok daily. Recently, the company launched a new, in-studio live series called The Bump that streams across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and its own WWE Network subscription service.
TikTok continues to face scrutiny from US lawmakers over whether the wildly popular app poses a security risk with all the data it’s collecting. Earlier this month, TikTok parent company ByteDance reached a settlement with a group of parents who sued the company for failing to adequately protect the data of younger users.
The highest-graded copy of the very first Marvel issue, this copy of Marvel Comics No. 1 recently became the most expensive Marvel comic ever sold at public auction. Rated a...
If you’ve experienced the mild horror of losing, or even momentarily thinking you may have lost, an AirPod, then beware these fake AirPod stickers. In a genius prank, Pablo Rochat made these incredibly realistic stickers of AirPods and placed them on sidewalks. They’re even the right size. When stuck to the ground, they look just like actual AirPods — so much so that you might check your pocket (or your ears) to make sure you didn’t drop yours by accident.
I made life-size AirPod stickers and stuck them on the ground, all over the city pic.twitter.com/hIrZD0wfom
Now, you can pull this prank, too. Rochat has templates of the stickers for both the original AirPods and AirPods Pro available for free downloads on his website. Rogue fake AirPods could soon take over your streets.
A movie’s logo is often one of the first things that fans see, whether it’s on posters or in a trailer, so it’s not uncommon for studios to spend large amounts of money creating them to build excitement. There’s a lot at stake, and there are entire agencies that specialize in logo creation, with logos passing through the hands of multiple stakeholders and going through several revisions before the public sees them.
That’s why I was so surprised when I discovered that the logo for the DC film Joker was created by one designer, Chad Danieley, with wood type letterpress. In a Reddit post, Danieley explained how going analog captured the film’s tone and feel better than a digitally created logo would have. I reached out to Danieley to learn more about the logo creation process, his influences, and personal projects.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Chad Danieley in his garage.
To kick things off, want to tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
I studied graphic design / motion graphics at ArtCenter [College of Design] in Pasadena. They had a great letterpress studio that was like my second home. In my final two terms at ArtCenter, I interned with [graphic designer] Pablo Ferro (The Thomas Crown Affair, Dr. Strangelove). I would scan his work into the computer for his archives, which would always include hours of stories about his process.
For his signature style in Dr. Strangelove, he would draw over fonts for the main title, which is a unique approach. I would try the same sample sheets, and they would look nothing like his. Same with letterpress. If another person used the same wood type, it would have a different feeling for someone else. The personality comes through in the beat-up / dented faces of the type as well as the inking style and how much packing the artist adds or takes away that makes it interesting. Ferro had a strong impact on my career and my process early on.
After graduation, I freelanced at a few motion studios for five years, then went to staff at NBC’s on-air department for eight years. For the last three years, I have returned to freelancing.
How did you join this project?
I was freelancing at Elastic on logos for the show See, and the Joker project came in, and they needed help with pitching logos for Joker. I spent two days on the computer making a bunch of logos in Illustrator, but in the end, it was the first one I did that is the “JOKER” logo as you see it today, “as is” with no changes asked, definitely a first for me.
Can you talk us through the creative process for this logo and letterpress in general?
Very little information was given for me to go off. All that was said is that it’s much darker and more visceral than the usual DC Jokers. “Think Taxi Driver.”
I have an HD full of letterpress-printed sample sheets, and within each print run, I’ll print several states. For this project, I did aggressive / transparency / scraping / noise of that one typeface, then scanned and cataloged each of them. I am not a “purist,” but I have always needed to bring my work outside of the computer by printing it out and adding some of myself into it. Physical objects, like wood type or Letraset, rub down type and help me perceive space in a different way. I don’t always need to work this way, but it does help.
It’s great to see that this was made using a letterpress. It might be all in my head, but something about it just feels textile and real as opposed to, say, a digitally created design. Was there any post-work done, or is this pretty accurate to the original?
Yes, even after the logo was selected, we tried to make a version that was done in Illustrator, but it just didn’t feel right. The wood type is structurally warped, and I think that’s what makes it what it is. Regarding post-work, not much was done to the original presented logo. WB added slight color to the logo for each poster. The original scan of the print I used was a little transparent, so I just bumped up the levels in Photoshop. But other than that, it’s very accurate to the original print.
What font did you use? I actually can’t make it out!
It’s an unnamed Gothic. I tend to gravitate toward Gothic digital fonts as well as Gothic wood type as workhorses. They don’t have a lot of style baggage attached to them, which allows me to prod and scrape at them to really turn them into what I’m looking for. When I start adding a lot of texture, I need the typeface to not have a loud voice. Gothic gives me that.
Are there any alts out there? Did it take some experimenting to land on one that felt right?
No wood type alternates, just the one. I did submit 16 logos that were done in Illustrator, though.
I really enjoy the collages you have on your Instagram. Are they primarily personal?
Thank you! Yes, the collages and letterpress are both me needing to do something for my own creative output, not just for jobs. Of course, I always bring those explorations into my day work, though.
What else are you working on right now? Anything coming up that you’re excited about?
I’m starting to digitize some of my wood type to make some fonts. I’m also doing some Joker-themed letterpress prints, and at Elastic, I’m still working on Joker graphics for WB!
It was Valentine’s Day 2019 on the Pacific Crest Trail in Southern California, just a few dozen miles north of the Mexican border. This stretch of the PCT runs through the Laguna Mountains, 6,000 feet above sea level, and the high-desert scrub that spreads in every direction was blanketed with snow. Pretty much nobody was thru-hiking it this early in the year, but 33-year-old Cory McDonald was already underway. As he trudged along on a thin layer of frost, weighed down by a backpack, he heard a voice behind him say, “Hey, Second Chance!”
Cory froze. He turned to see an older man he didn’t recognize, who somehow knew his trail name. “I saw you on YouTube,” the man said.
The stranger, standing trailside, didn’t look like a thru-hiker. Of course, people thought Cory didn’t either—thanks to his shaved head, baby face, and a weight of nearly 400 pounds. But at least Cory had a backpack. This man wasn’t carrying one, and he made Cory very uneasy when he said, “I followed your footsteps through the snow.”
This wasn’t the first instance of somebody tracking Cory down in the wilderness. Don’t murder me, he thought as the man came closer. How many more times is this going to happen?
Cory’s decision to attempt the PCT dated back to March 2018. He was living by himself in Fort Myers, Florida, definitely not loving his existence. He’d recently given up trying to make a living as a day trader, which was stressful and volatile. Before that he’d quit a job selling soft drinks to gas stations, and before that he’d worked at Target and Pizza Hut. He was bored. He also doubted that he’d ever find love.
“I was very depressed, very unhappy, miserable with everything,” Cory told me when I first interviewed him by phone last summer. “My life wasn’t going in the direction I wanted. I couldn’t get a girlfriend. I was very lonely, and I kept sitting around, dreaming that one day I’d have this awesome life.”
Cory blamed his weight. “I tried different diet plans, but none of them were working,” he recalled. “I kept gaining weight every year.” Heart disease runs in his family, so he visited a cardiologist, who studied the results of an echocardiogram and told Cory his heart looked mostly healthy. But the doctor scared him with stories about former patients who had dropped dead from a heart attack in their late thirties.
“That was a big eye-opener,” Cory said. “I just felt like I hit rock bottom.”
Not long after, while surfing YouTube on his couch, Cory came across a channel called Homemade Wanderlust, where he discovered a series of hiking videos made by a woman named Jessica Mills, a 33-year-old from Alabama who used the trail nickname Dixie. Dixie was a vision: charming, fun, outdoorsy, and doing a solo long-distance hike on a trail that Cory knew little about, the PCT. It was far away from Florida, in the romantic-sounding West.
One video led to another, and Cory soon discovered an entire ecosystem of thru-hikers who were vlogging about their adventures. They shot videos as they went, releasing episodes on their YouTube channels maybe once a week. Cory and thousands of others could vicariously experience a thru-hiker’s journey as the hikers lived it.
“I was blown away by Dixie, Darwin, Jay Wanders Out, Whimsical Woman, all the YouTube hikers,” said Cory, ticking off the names of other thru-hiking stars. “I started binge-watching them and said, ‘I want to do this, too. I want to go hiking.’”
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Cory had some experience camping and hiking in Missouri and Florida, and he researched what he needed to know about taking on the PCT. He didn’t train, but he spent more than a hundred hours rounding up equipment. “It was next to impossible to find gear that would fit me, ultralight or otherwise,” he said. In November, he sold his house. Cory knew he’d be slower than most thru-hikers, so he booked a ticket to San Diego for the end of January 2019, months before anybody else would begin the northbound transit.
As for YouTube, Cory was interested in becoming a star himself—but not until after his thru-hike, when he’d lost some weight. He decided to bring a GoPro with him anyway, for practice. Before long, a friend in Florida encouraged him to go ahead and start making episodes, sending her his footage so she could edit and upload it. He gave in, and episode one on the Second Chance Hiker channel debuted on February 6. In it you watch Cory at home in Florida, stepping onto a scale. Then he’s on the jet ride to California, asking for a seat-belt extension. Finally, you see him standing next to the southern terminus of the PCT, goofily waving at Border Patrol agents as they drive past.
“I’m Second Chance Hiker, and I’m starting the Pacific Crest Trail on January 30 to drop 200 pounds,” Cory announces. It’s windy, and the sky is overcast, but he’s giggling and smiling. “I’m just trying to get my life back on track.”
Thousands of thru-hikers tackle the country’s longest trails every year. And hundreds of thousands, if not millions, watch them on screens. I watched some myself in early 2018, as I prepared for my own thru-hike of the PCT that summer.
In 30 minutes of recent searching, I found more than 60 YouTube channels devoted to thru-hiking. The most well-known belong to Dixie and a hiker called Darwin, who asked that I not share his real name. Both Dixie and Darwin have more than 200,000 subscribers. Dixie has posted nearly 350 videos, which have collectively gotten more than 31 million views. Rates vary, but for every thousand views a channel receives, its creator earns a few bucks through advertising. That can add up quickly, and it’s fair to say that YouTubers like Dixie are the biggest names in thru-hiking right now.
“YouTube’s influence is enormous,” said Scott Wilkinson, director of communications at the Pacific Crest Trail Association, which is based in Sacramento, California. “With good reason. People like Dixie and Darwin are so popular, because they are authentic and they care. There is nothing crass or commercial or enterprising about what they do.”
Not long ago, Wilkinson said, Cheryl Strayed was the biggest trail celebrity—her 2012 book Wild, along with the 2014 film adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon, brought more people to the PCT than ever before. But Wilkinson said that YouTube and social media may have surpassed Wild as “the leading drivers of growth on the trail.”
Dixie is the queen of the medium. Young, blonde, friendly, with an easy-listening accent and scraped-up limbs, she’s part southern belle and part hardcore adventurer. Her videos have the unusual ability to make thru-hiking seem both approachable and epic.
“I want to bring the experience to people’s living rooms,” Dixie told me. “If I’m freezing cold and miserable, how do I let other people feel that, without just telling them that I feel cold? How do I have somebody else get as close to that experience without doing it themselves?”
Alas, the online thru-hiking community is also rife with cyberbullies, trolls, and argumentative jerks, many of whom aren’t thru-hikers but seem to think they know all about it. Dixie has had some unsettling experiences. One time she blocked a man from her YouTube channel after he cursed out other viewers in the comments section. He found her email address and wrote: “I can’t wait to find you on the trail this year, where you can’t silence my voice.” After Dixie posted a video about whether thru-hikers should carry a gun on trail—she doesn’t think it’s necessary—one person commented, “I’m going to put a bullet in your skull.” Equally chilling, a few fans discovered her home address in Alabama and visited her house unprompted.
For Dixie and others who get targeted, the online vitriol comes in all forms: body shaming, gear shaming, charges of egotism and self-promotion. The most successful YouTube thru-hikers, like Dixie and Darwin, make enough money from their online presence to support what is basically a never-ending journey. Darwin, who hit the trail in 2015, says he can make anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000 a month off views of his YouTube videos—not a fortune, but enough to keep him going. Dixie says she makes twice as much from the crowdfunding platform Patreon as she does from YouTube; there, 900 monthly donors get access to private Q and A’s with her, and some use Dixie as a consultant to help them plan their own thru-hikes.
Darwin and Dixie both said that people's skepticism about their authenticity and motives can sting. Running a successful YouTube channel is harder work than it appears, and there are easier ways to make a living, but they do it anyway because they love it. Neither has been tracked down on the trail, but they don’t doubt it could happen.
“If people were willing to show up at my house uninvited,” Dixie said, “they’d absolutely be willing to find me on trail.”
Because of the exertion he put himself through on his first day, Cory ran out of water that night. There are few water sources along the initial stretch of the PCT—just a sea of muted-green, drought-tolerant shrubs stretching across khaki-colored mountains that characterize much of the first 700 miles. Fortunately, a storm rolled inland, and the next day Cory collected rainwater running off his tent.
By his fourth day, Cory had walked a total of 7.3 miles. Slow starts aren’t unusual, but most thru-hikers on the PCT aim to cover around 20 miles per day.
Still, Cory remained inexplicably, infectiously happy. He’d sing silly songs to the camera. He’d laugh like a little kid at his own jokes. Cory confides his thoughts and feelings to viewers, as if he’s speaking to good friends on FaceTime. It’s endearing, which is probably why his YouTube channel took off and people started watching and cheering him on. “I’m very proud of you for just getting out there and giving it a shot,” wrote a viewer. “Sending love and support from Australia,” wrote another. A fan group launched on Facebook; its members uploaded photos of themselves hiking. One of them posted watercolors he’d painted based on stills from Cory’s videos.
But not everybody approved of Cory’s quest, and some believed he shouldn’t have been attempting it because of his weight. He was a danger to himself and others, they said.
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“You need to take the black capsule,” one troll suggested, a reference to committing suicide. Another, writing on a popular forum for Appalachian Trail hikers called White Blaze, said: “If more people Fat Shamed others (which should probably be compulsory), then perhaps the 39.8% of obesity amongst the 99.3 million US adults could be seriously reduced and SAVE LIVES, instead of being concerned about ‘hurty feelings’!”
“You would think some of these park rangers would intervene ... and [put] a stop to this freak show,” someone else wrote on the same forum. “I did call the PCT assoc. when I first saw this clown and gave them a ear full about it. I think if more people did they can pull his permit.”
Cory tried to ignore the nasty comments, but then something truly unexpected happened: strangers, fans and haters alike, started searching for him on the trail.
In Southern California, the PCT roller-coasters up forested mountains and down into desert-valley passes, crossing highways and back roads several times a day. By watching Cory’s videos and approximating his mileage, people could home in on him. Early on, a woman from the Facebook fan group announced her intention to help “rescue” Cory and get him off the trail. Shortly after, strangers started driving to various segments of the PCT to look for him. They would park along the road and start hiking until they saw their quarry. One man who showed up was homeless, and he told Cory that he would follow and “take care” of him.
If people weren’t trying to rescue Cory, they were often trying to manipulate him. One stranger demanded that Cory hire him as a “manager.” In Agua Dulce, a small trail town outside Los Angeles that’s been used as a location for dozens of Hollywood films, a woman impersonated a journalist to get access to a home where Cory was staying overnight, claiming that she had an appointment to speak with him. She then tried to physically intimidate him into accepting her brand of drinking water as his official sponsor.
“She said it cures cancer and snakebites,” said Cory, who doesn’t remember her name but calls her Water Lady. Other hikers hid Cory in the back of the property, but Water Lady parked out front and refused to leave. Cory’s friends had to sneak him out.
Two incidents frightened Cory more than any others. On a February morning at 6:30, still too early in the year for other thru-hikers to be on the trail, Cory was lying in his sleeping bag when he heard a voice outside his tent.
“Second Chance, is that you in there?” a man asked. “I’ve been searching for you. I’m here to help.” Cory freaked out. He was alone in the woods, and he hadn’t asked for assistance. “It’s very scary, because you don’t know what their intentions are,” Cory said. “Some of them have it in their mind that they’re here to save me and I should be grateful and thankful.” Not long after, another stranger showed up, the one who tracked Cory’s footsteps through the snow. In both cases, he hid his fear, politely refused their help, and excused himself before hurriedly hiking away.
After encountering the “stalkers,” as Cory called them, he messaged Darwin on Instagram, looking for advice on what to do about such people. Darwin shared a strategy that he and Dixie had used for years: Delay your social media. Don’t post YouTube videos, Instagram posts, or anything else until weeks after you’ve hiked through an area.
Cory started publishing videos on a monthlong delay, and for the most part, it worked. Strangers stopped finding him; nobody tried to rescue him. By April, as more and more people began thru-hiking the PCT, Cory discovered that many of them had been watching his early videos as they prepared for their own hikes. If they happened to catch up with him, they were thrilled.
“One day ten people in a row wanted a selfie with me,” Cory said. “I felt like the nerdy kid in the high school movie who becomes super popular, and everybody wants to talk to you and get your picture.”
Life was looking up. Cory kept posting videos, gaining 25,000 followers. And he’d met a girl in Agua Dulce: Nessa Pepp, a fellow YouTube thru-hiker from Germany. “She’s the perfect girl,” Cory said. “She’s really sweet, and she sells honey in Germany. When we first met, she didn’t know who I was, and she actually didn’t think I was a hiker, because she thought I was too fat. I thought that was really funny.” They started hiking together a few days later and after a few weeks became a couple.
Before long, Cory and Nessa ran into a problem that had nothing to do with YouTube or his weight. After weaving through the desert mountains, the PCT ascends into the glacial-carved Sierra Nevada. But 2019 was a record-breaking snow season, and the range’s famous mountain passes—the trail reaches its highest point at the 13,000-foot Forester Pass in California, near Mount Whitney—were snowbound and dangerous. When Cory arrived in the southern Sierra, he assessed the situation, then chose to do what many PCT hikers do: skip the Sierra and get back on the trail far to the north, in Ashland, Oregon. The plan was to do the California portion later that year, once the snow melted.
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Though it was already June by this point, Oregon’s Cascades also hadn’t fully escaped the grasp of winter. On Devil’s Peak, not far north of Ashland, the trail disappeared beneath a sheet of snow. Faced with the option of pushing on or backtracking, Cory and Nessa decided to keep going. Cory strapped on his microspikes and followed a steep, trodden snow track that went down the mountain.
He didn’t get far. Nessa was filming when Cory started sliding out of control, grasping at the snow unsuccessfully. The images she shot, which can be seen near the end of episode 73 on YouTube, show him flailing and grunting loudly in discomfort.
In episode 74, Cory finally stops sliding, and he slowly makes his way back to the snow track and down the mountain. Shortly after, as the adrenaline rush fades, he stumbles and feels a sharp pain. Screaming and unable to get off the ground, Cory realizes that he’s badly hurt, and Nessa uses her InReach to call for emergency assistance. In due course, help arrives, and Cory is taken by helicopter and ambulance to Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls, Oregon.
Cory’s story—inspirational, defiant, feel-good—was suddenly overshadowed by an uncomfortable question. The online critics and haters had doubted his ability. Were they right?
When an adventurer negligently wanders into the wilderness, it’s not just their livelihood at stake. Search and rescue missions are expensive, often billed to the public, and can distract personnel from other emergencies. Sometimes volunteers get hurt or die in a rescue attempt, which happened in California earlier this year.
The consequences are far-reaching, and Cory is aware of that. But he thinks the public does a poor job of determining who has acted negligently and who is capable but simply got into a jam that could have happened to anyone. Cory told me about a number of hikers he met who were rescued at some point but faced no consequences or judgment. Cory begged Nessa not to hit the SOS button, because he knew what the critics would say about a guy like him getting rescued.
“I went up there with all the right gear, I didn’t cross my limits,” Cory said. Accidents happen all the time, but there’s a double standard. “If you are attractive, they assume you know what you’re doing. But I’m a big fat guy, so I get judged much more harshly.”
Cory was right about the flak he’d get after posting the video of his rescue. “Pathetic,” one commenter said. “People like them should not be allowed in the mountains.”
“I swear you act like you’re so hurt to get … attention and sympathy,” wrote another.
“I tried to watch the rescue video, but it was too painful,” Cory said. “I didn’t like that day at all. It was an awful day.”
As Cory recuperated in a hospital bed in Klamath Falls, he learned that he’d likely sustained tissue and nerve damage in his back. His doctor said he would recover, but he had to stop hiking for at least three weeks. It’s not uncommon for thru-hikers to end their hike because of injuries, but Cory didn’t want that to be the end of his story.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he said on YouTube. “I’m out here to accomplish something, and I haven’t accomplished it yet.” A hiker and fan living in Bend, Oregon, opened up his house to Cory, who rested, recovered, and plotted his return. Progress was slow—at first his back couldn’t even bear the weight of his pack. He decided to spend time hiking and camping in Oregon forests around the PCT, slowly building up his strength. But before he left for the woods, a surprise visitor showed up.
It was Dixie. Turns out Cory’s original inspiration to hike the PCT was a fan of his channel.
“I was completely blown away to meet Dixie,” Cory said. “Meeting her has been one of the greatest highlights of my hike.” The two had a long conversation, and Dixie helped Cory get back on the trail, carrying some of the gear to the campsite where Cory would spend the next five days.
After seven weeks of recovery, Cory got going again in August. The PCT in Washington is not as high as the Sierra, but it’s steeper and wetter, and winter can dump snow on the Cascades as early as mid-September. With his back still healing, Cory hiked sections of trail without a pack, occasionally skipping ahead by car so he could keep up with Nessa. They weren’t just racing the weather; they were racing Nessa’s six-month visa, which was set to expire on September 27. But they were determined to make it to Canada in time.
By this point, Cory had hiked significantly farther than his critics expected, but he would keep hearing hateful comments from people who doubted him. “You shouldn’t be hiking until you deal with your food addiction first,” a stranger in Washington told him on the trail. Cory had noticed a consistent pattern. “It’s always older white guys,” Cory told me. “Every time.”
But Cory didn’t care about any of that anymore. His back had healed and he was backpacking again. He didn’t care that he wasn’t a “purist” thru-hiker, choosing to cherry-pick the sections of trail he wanted to hike the most, meeting up with Nessa when he could. He hiked Washington’s Goat Rocks Wilderness twice, where the razor-thin crest of the Cascades dramatically slices through the alpine air, just because he found the scenery so moving. He had lost nearly a hundred pounds and felt healthier than he had in 10 or 15 years. His shaved head had grown wild with hair, his unruly beard a thru-hiking badge of honor. And Cory kept churning out YouTube videos, where fans loved him just as much as he loved them.
In his last video from the PCT, people who had watched his hike jammed the comment section with their affection. “I have followed you from day one and worried, laughed, cried, cheered with you in every video,” one wrote. “I’m so proud and happy for you, and deeply inspired,” said another.
Reinvigorated, Cory told me he is newly determined to keep hiking, to run toward life rather than hide from it. “The PCT has been a complete reset of my life,” he said. Not to mention, Cory reminded me, he found love. Nessa managed to renew her visa, and they’re now figuring out their future.
On September 20, Cory arrived at the northern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. In the final moments of his nine-month journey, he and Nessa slowly danced on the border of Canada.
Adobe’s Creative Cloud desktop app, once just a drop-down tab for downloading and updating Adobe apps, is getting turned into an assets library. The new desktop experience will feature tutorials for all apps in one hub. It basically looks like the current Creative Cloud website, but now in a desktop app form.
The app works pretty much the same, but it’s been organized into a full-screen experience. Adobe wants it to be a one-stop shop for everything Creative Cloud, so users can access it whenever they need to update apps, or to find assets like brushes, fonts, and stock images. Creative Cloud Libraries let users access assets from anywhere (an important feature as the company continues releasing iPad and Android apps like Fresco) and share those libraries with teammates.
It’s a little surprising that the Creative Cloud app wasn’t a full-screen desktop experience before. With Adobe developing the upcoming Photoshop on iPad and the AR app Project Aero, it makes sense to create a consolidated creative hub for the ever-growing number of Adobe apps.
The redesign starts rolling out in France and Germany today, Japan tomorrow, and will roll out globally to the US and other regions the following week. You can read more about the redesign at Adobe’s blog here.
Yep, starting to roll out an entirely reimagined “Creative Cloud” desktop app to some customers. You’ll find a new way to manage and discover apps, learning resources, central management for your libraries, and more coming. Feedback welcome. @creativecloudhttps://t.co/BvhICGm2GT
Adobe’s newest painting and illustration app for the iPad, Fresco, is launching on the App Store today. The app is free for Creative Cloud subscribers, and non-subscribers can download a free version that has most of the same features, but lacks some brushes and limits the file export size to iPad screen resolution (so that means no high-res files). There’s also an option to buy a standalone version of the app for $9.99 a month, which comes with the first six months for free if you purchase before December 31st, 2019. However, any new features added to the app later will only be available to users with a Creative Cloud plan.
The blog post announcing the release is written by artist Kyle T. Webster, whose custom Photoshop brushes were so indispensable that Adobe hired him and incorporated his brushes as part of a Creative Cloud membership. Webster runs through the various kinds of art you can create with different brushes — starting with Live Brushes, which are the oil and watercolor brushes that use Adobe’s AI platform, Sensei, to recreate lifelike brush strokes. If you’re using oil paints, depending on the amount of pressure you put on your Apple Pencil, the app can display the texture of the canvas showing through the paint, or show the brush marks and definition of the amount of paint applied. For watercolors, the colors can bloom and bleed into one another.
Fresco will also let users import Photoshop brushes, which is a feature that rival illustration app Procreate (notably a one-time purchase of $10) has announced it will bring to an upcoming version. However, the two apps each have core features the other does not: Adobe Fresco will have a leg up on Procreate with its vector brush, which can create infinitely scalable drawings and allow artists the freedom to continue working on the same file in Illustrator. Meanwhile, Procreate has a Text tool and animation features that only make it a more attractive, on-the-go option for designers, cartoonists, and animators. But whatever app artists end up choosing as their main iPad illustration app, it’s clear that the options are looking better than ever.
From Alaska’s remote bush to downtown Cleveland, our national parks provide us with millions of acres of public land to explore. We compiled a list of the best hikes in each park, according to the wilderness guides, park rangers, and hikers who know them.
Acadia
(Photo: PictureLake/iStock)
Maine
The Expert: Pat Johnson, Maine Outdoor Adventure Club trip leader The Hike: Penobscot and Sargent Mountain Loop
Summit two of the park’s highest peaks on this 9.5-mile loop through thick spruce forest that eventually gives way to pink-tinted granite crags. The route offers access to three carriage-road bridges, relics from John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s philanthropic work—consider detouring less than a half mile to the 230-foot-long Cliffside Bridge.
Arches
(Photo: johnnya123/iStock)
Utah
The Expert: John Tillison, former Washington State park ranger The Hike: Devils Garden Loop
You’ll see eight of the park’s stunning rock formations on this 7.9-mile tour through Devils Garden. It’s an easy stroll to the longest arch in North America, Landscape Arch, but then the gentle trail transitions to narrow ledges that involve some scrambling to reach Double O, Navajo, and Partition Arches.
Badlands
(Photo: SharonDay/iStock)
South Dakota
The Expert: Kelsy Koerlin, Rapid City, South Dakota, hiker The Hike: Notch Trail
An easy 1.5-mile round-trip, this trail tours the best of the Badlands’ otherworldly assortment of eroded rock and clay, splashed with a brilliant array of red, white, and black. Ascend a log ladder to a bird’s-eye view of the rugged terrain and distant prairie of White River Valley.
Big Bend
Camping and hiking (Photo: Maxine Weiss/iStock)
Texas
The Expert: Courtney Lyons-Garcia, Big Bend Conservancy executive director The Hike: Lost Mine Trail
Soak in the solitude through the heart of the Chisos Mountains for 4.8 miles round-trip, past alligator junipers and piñon pines. The views of the Sierra del Carmen mountains in Mexico are spectacular. Visit in November or March to avoid the summer heat.
Biscayne
(Photo: jtstewartphoto/iStock)
Florida
The Expert: Sandra Friend, author of 'TheFlorida Trail Guide' The Hike: Spite Highway Trail
Only accessible by boat, Elliot Key is the largest island in the park, home to the “Spite Highway,” a seven-mile sliver of forest that in the 1960s was flattened in opposition to a national-monument designation. It’s the park’s only hiking trail, and on it you’ll be immersed in tropical forests, even as Miami looms to the north.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison
(Photo: dschnarrs/iStock)
Colorado
The Expert: Elaine Brett, North Fork Valley, Colorado, hiker The Hike: North Vista Trail
At Exclamation Point, snag the best view of the park’s namesake canyon from 900 feet above the rim. Continue to Green Mountain for a panoramic vista of the San Juan Mountains and Grand Mesa, a seven-mile round-trip.
Bryce Canyon
(Photo: Tom Mendola/iStock)
Utah
The Expert: Charlie Neumann, owner of Willow Canyon Outdoor, in Kanab, Utah The Hike: Under the Rim Trail
At 23 miles one-way, Under the Rim Trail is the longest in Bryce. Take two days to experience the best of the Paunsaugant Plateau’s hoodoo rock spires. Tackle most of the 5,000 feet in elevation change early by starting at Rainbow Point—you can arrange a shuttle there with the Park Service, free with your entry fee.
The Expert: Cort Wright, Moab Adventure Center guide The Hike: Grand View Point
Although only a two-mile round-trip, the trail leading to Grand View Point isn’t short on views—you’ll gawk at the maze of basins, dozens of canyons, and the La Sal Mountains in the distance. Arrive before dawn (and the crowds) to watch the sun cast the desert in an amber hue.
Capitol Reef
(Photo: silvermanmediaservices/iStock)
Utah
The Expert: Andrew Wojtanik, former Capitol Reef interpretive ranger The Hike: Halls Creek Narrows
The beauty of the Halls Creek Narrows, a slot canyon with towering cliffs, is often compared to the famous Narrows of Zion, yet this 22.4-mile round-trip hike is much more remote and rugged. The unmarked route requires a topographic map and compass to navigate. Plan to spend two nights in the backcountry and to get wet through several creek crossings.
Carlsbad Caverns
(Photo: Elisabeth Bender/iStock)
New Mexico
The Expert: Colin Walfield, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, employee The Hike: Big Room Trail
It takes about an hour and a half to encircle the Big Room—the largest chamber within Carlsbad Caverns and the largest single cave chamber by volume in North America. This 1.25-mile walk twists among giant stalagmites on a paved trail with handrails. A ranger-guided tour provides insight into the geologic history of the cave system.
Channel Islands
(Photo: benedek/iStock)
California
The Expert: David Begun, Channel Islands park ranger The Hike: Lobo Canyon Trail
This 5.2-mile loop is marked by its ecological diversity—more than a dozen rare plants grow in the park. You’ll start in grassland bluffs, with sweeping views of the Pacific, before dropping into a canyon harboring native plants like the canyon sunflower. When you reach the coastline, look out for peregrine falcons and bald eagles.
Congaree
(Photo: TheBigMK/iStock)
South Carolina
The Expert: Barbie Smrekar, Columbia Outdoor Adventure Network organizer The Hike: River Trail
Tour this park’s namesake river on a 10.4-mile trail through bottomland and bald cypress forest, home to whitetail deer, otters, and feral hogs. In periods of low water, lounge near the river on exposed sandbars—but keep an eye out for alligators.
The Expert: Erik Fernandez, Oregon Wild wilderness-program manager The Hike: Garfield Peak Trail
Starting from the Crater Lake Lodge, at an elevation of about 7,000 feet, climb another thousand feet in 1.7 miles to Garfield Peak. From here you’ll have a view of the lake’s crystal-blue water, the deepest in the country at almost 2,000 feet. Go in July for peak wildflower viewing and early in the morning to miss the crowds.
Cuyahoga Valley
(Photo: lipika/iStock)
Ohio
The Expert: Erik Baldwin, Cleveland Hiking Club member The Hike: Buckeye Trail
You’ll be hard-pressed to find another park quite like Cuyahoga Valley, nestled in the middle of Cleveland. This one’s for the trail runners and the hardcore hikers: a 12.6-mile section of the statewide 1,400-mile Buckeye Trail from Station Road Bridge to the historic village of Boston. Pass waterfalls and old homesteads dotting densely forested hills before looping back.
The Expert: Alan Gegax, VegasHikers trip organizer The Hike: Panamint City Ghost Town
Panamint City was a mining town founded by outlaws in 1873 that quickly garnered a rough reputation, but it was leveled a few years later in a flash flood. Hike to its ruins from Chris Wicht’s Camp, five miles via Surprise Canyon, and admire its flowing water and lush vegetation—rarities in Death Valley.
Denali
(Photo: Melissa Kopka/iStock)
Alaska
The Expert: Amy Eckert, travel writer The Hike: Savage Alpine Trail
Few trails exist in Denali National Park, but among the handful that do, Savage Alpine offers a lot in only eight miles round-trip. Wind over tundra and past Dall sheep before climbing a ridge that on a clear day offers a view of 20,310-foot Denali, North America’s highest peak.
Dry Tortugas
(Photo: ToddSm66/iStock)
Florida
The Expert: Sandra Friend, author of 'The Florida Trail Guide' The Hike: Fort Jefferson Loop
You won’t find any wilderness hiking trails in Dry Tortugas, an island 70 miles west of Key West. The main attraction here is Fort Jefferson, the largest masonry structure in the Western Hemisphere. A half-mile loop around the island is a great tour of the fort and overlooks the Caribbean’s crystal waters.
Everglades
(Photo: Onnes/iStock)
Florida
The Expert: Sandra Friend, author of 'The Florida Trail Guide' The Hike:Snake Bight Trail
The Everglades are better known for swampy boat tours than hiking. But the best trail here is Snake Bight, 1.6 miles one-way through tropical forests. The terminus is a boardwalk that offers bird-watching near a bay—look for pink flamingos.
Gates of the Arctic
(Photo: Chrapuscule/iStock)
Alaska
The Expert: Carl Donohue, Expeditions Alaska guide The Hike: Koyukuk River Route
Take a plane to a gravel bar on the North Fork of the Koyukuk River, which snakes for more than 100 miles between glacial valleys. Spend a week and follow three creeks—Kachwona, Wolf, and Fish—up to 40 miles deep into the backcountry of the Brooks Range.
Gateway Arch
(Photo: amolson7/iStock)
Missouri
At just 91 acres, Gateway Arch is the smallest National Park. There's not really any hiking, per se, but you should stroll the Mississippi River waterfront and then take the elevator to the top of the Arch.
Glacier
(Photo: Hotaik Sung/iStock)
Montana
The Expert: Grete Gansauer, Montana Wilderness Association northwest Montana field director The Hike: Hidden Lake Trail
Hikers habitually gawk at bears and bighorn sheep along this alpine 5.4-mile out-and-back. In summer you’ll be surrounded by wildflowers as you gaze at Glacier’s jagged peaks. Descend to Hidden Lake via switchbacks to lounge on the beach, with Bearhat and Reynolds Mountains just over your shoulder.
Glacier Bay
(Photo: urbanglimpses/iStock)
Alaska
The Expert: Adam DiPietro, former Glacier Bay trail-crew member The Hike: Gustavus Plane-Crash Site
This park is celebrated for whale-watching and towering glaciers, and those are definitely must-do’s, but so is this half-mile hike to a Douglas C-47 crash site—in 1957, the crew went down after clipping a tall tree. The trail takes you through woods smattered with mosses, like old man’s beard, and you’ll likely have it to yourself.
Grand Canyon
(Photo: Wildnerdpix/iStock)
Arizona
The Expert: Melanie Radzicki McManus, Arizona Trail thru-hiker The Hike: South Kaibab and Bright Angel Trails
The best hike in the Grand Canyon combines two trails, which traverse the mile-deep canyon, and takes two days. From the South Kaibab Trailhead, descend seven miles via ridges and spend the night next to the Colorado River at the Bright Angel Campground. The next day, huff back up the canyon on the Bright Angel Trail for 9.5 miles.
The Expert: Amy Eckert, travel writer The Hike: Lake Solitude
From Jenny Lake, follow the crowds to Inspiration Point, which offers views of the Gros Ventre Mountains. As you enter Cascade Canyon, the masses dwindle as the Tetons’ jagged peaks flank the trail. Pass berry patches and boulder fields before reaching Lake Solitude at mile ten for a secluded night in the backcountry, then trek back the next day.
Great Basin
(Photo: AvatarKnowmad/iStock)
Nevada
The Expert: Nichole Andler, Great Basin National Park chief of interpretation The Hike: Timber Creek–Baker Creek Loop Trail
You’ll have this 5.1-mile trail to yourself virtually any time of year, starting from 8,000 feet and walking uphill via Timber Creek, with expansive views of Snake Valley below. Climb another 1,600 feet or so to aspen groves and a meadow, with 11,926-foot Pyramid Peak just overhead.
Great Sand Dunes
(Photo: marekuliasz/iStock)
Colorado
The Expert: Ryan Kempfer, Salida Mountain Sports employee The Hike: Sand Ramp Trail
Much more than sand dunes, this hike includes creek crossings, wildlife viewing, and stunning shots of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Skirt the eastern edge of the dunes across undulating terrain for 11 miles one-way. Camp near Sand Creek’s cottonwoods before backtracking the next day.
Great Smoky Mountains
(Photo: groveb/iStock)
North Carolina and Tennessee
The Expert: Diane Petrilla, Smoky Mountains Hiking Club vice president The Hike: Ramsey Cascades Trail
This patch of woods in the Smokies was never logged, so it’s full of giant trees—some tulip poplars reach seven feet in diameter. Through a jungle of rhododendrons, you’ll ascend more than 2,000 feet over four miles to the tallest waterfall in the park, 100-foot Ramsey Cascades.
The Expert: Cameron Hall, North Texas hiker The Hike: McKittrick Canyon Trail
McKittrick Canyon is often hailed as the most beautiful spot in Texas. It’s secluded, and in the fall, foliage bursts red and yellow. This 14.8-mile out-and-back takes you to Pratt Cabin and then to a small cave with stalagmites. You’ll ascend McKittrick Ridge on the steepest section of trail in the park, looking down on the canyon.
Haleakala
(Photo: SMJoness/iStock)
Hawaii
The Expert: Joani Morris, Friends of HaleakalaNational Park hike leader The Hike: Sliding Sands Trail
Towering over Maui at 10,023 feet above sea level, the dormant Haleakala volcano resembles the surface of Mars. For a tour of the caldron, start at the Keoneheehee Trailhead, trekking across the crater’s floor. People flock to the summit to witness a spectacular sunrise (reservations are needed).
Hawaii Volcanoes
(Photo: 35007/iStock)
Hawaii
The Expert: Barnard Griggs, member of the Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Corp. board of directors The Hike: Napau Trail
On this 14-mile round-trip, you’ll explore rainforests and recent lava flows to reach Napau Crater. In the distance, you’ll see the Puu Oo volcano, which had been continuously erupting since 1983, quieting only last year.
Hot Springs
(Photo: Jeremy Janus/iStock)
Arkansas
The Expert: Don Jackson, owner of Ouachita Outdoor Outfitters The Hike: West Mountain–Mountain Top Trails
From Whittington Park, ascend more than 400 feet on the Mountain Top Trail before connecting with the West Mountain Trail, which loops around a ridge—you’ll have great views of downtown Hot Springs. Afterward, soak at the Buckstaff Bathhouse, in operation since 1912.
Indiana Dunes
(Photo: stockphoto52/iStock)
Indiana
The Expert: Jean-Pierre Anderson, Indiana Dunes National Park ranger The Hike: West Beach Three-Loop Trail
The best hike in America’s newest national park combines three loops totaling 3.4 miles. Start among the dunes on the Dune Succession Trail, also touring an oak savannah and wetlands. Connect with the West Beach Trail and then the Long Lake Loop Trail, where you’ll encounter more undulating dunes.
The Expert: Amy Eckert, Greenstone Ridge Trail thru-hiker The Hike: Greenstone Ridge Trail
Isle Royale can only be reached by boat, guaranteeing solitude on this remote 42-mile trail that spans the island. You’ll be immersed in boreal forest home to moose and wolves, occasionally topping a bald ridge offering views of the island and Lake Superior.
Joshua Tree
(Photo: jenifoto/iStock)
California
The Expert: Tim Liddell, Hi-Desert Hiking Club trip leader The Hike: Maze Loop
Combine the Maze, North View, and Window Trails for an eight-mile walk through mature desert vegetation like California juniper, yucca, and the park’s namesake Joshua trees. While trail signage has improved in recent years, navigation can still be difficult, so carry a map.
The Expert: Dan Oberlatz, Alaska Alpine Adventures owner and guide The Hike: Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes
In 1912, the Novarupta volcano erupted and destroyed 40 square miles of Alaska’s backcountry. Today the valley resembles the desert Southwest, with red mineral deposits covering sections of exposed rock. From the Three Forks Visitor Center, circumvent the valley floor, ascending nearby Broken, Baked, Cerberus, and Falling Mountains. You’ll trek more than 50 miles off-trail and spend over a week in the backcountry. Advanced navigation skills are a must.
Kenai Fjords
(Photo: hlsnow/iStock)
Alaska
The Expert: Kyle McDowell, Kenai Backcountry Adventures guide The Hike: Exit Glacier
From the Exit Glacier Nature Center, hike two miles to Marmot Meadows and descend a quarter mile to the edge of Exit Glacier—with proper trekking equipment, you can walk among its many crevasses and ice caves. A great alternative is the 8.2-mile Harding Icefield Trail.
Kings Canyon
(Photo: pniesen/iStock)
California
The Expert: Benjamin Cumbie, Sequoia Parks Conservancy, philanthropy and membership manager The Hike: Redwood Mountain Grove
Tour the largest intact grove of giant sequoias in the world on this 9.9-mile loop, which combines the Hart Tree and Sugar Bowl Trails. The Sierra Nevada is visible as you stroll past flower-filled meadows, and the lonely dirt road leading to the Redwood Canyon Trailhead deters throngs of visitors.
The Expert: Nick Allen, Alaska Alpine Adventures guide The Hike: Great Kobuk Sand Dunes
This remote part of the Arctic Circle has no maintained trails, so you’ll be route-finding in the Alaskan bush. Boreal forest gives way to tundra along the Kobuk River, where you’ll find 25 square miles of sand dunes. Getting there requires a bush plane.
The Expert: Dan Oberlatz, Alaska Alpine Adventures owner and guide The Hike: Telaquana Route
This ten-day, roughly 40-mile trek from Telaquana Lake to Upper Twin Lake is only for those willing to bushwhack. Sole access to the backcountry is via floatplane to Telaquana Lake, and then you’ll be route-finding with a compass and topo map. Pass glaciers, ford rivers, and navigate seemingly endless miles of remote forest and tundra until you reach Proenneke’s Cabin, a log structure built largely by hand in the sixties by Richard Proenneke.
The Expert: Sabrina Jurisich, Redding, California hiker The Hike: Kings Creek Falls Trail
Walk along Lower Kings Creek Meadow past California red firs that are permanently bowed from heavy snow in the winter (yearly snowpack can be as deep as 15 feet). The end of this 2.3-mile loop has an overlook of Kings Creek Falls, cascading 30 feet down.
Mammoth Cave
(Photo: ColorPlayer/iStock)
Kentucky
The Expert: Michael Bunch,manager ofNat’s Outdoor Sports in Bowling Green, Kentucky
More than 400 miles of Mammoth Cave have been explored, and the labyrinth boasts the title of world’s longest cave system. The best way to see it is on the three-mile Violet City Lantern Tour (tickets are required to enter the cave), where you’ll re-create the experience of bygone explorers by walking with only the light from a lantern as a guide.
Mesa Verde
(Photo: YinYang/iStock)
Colorado
The Expert: Betsy Fitzpatrick, Trails 2000 member The Hike: Petroglyph Point Trail
From the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum, pass the Spruce Tree House cliff dwelling, constructed before 1278 A.D. with 130 rooms and eight ceremonial chambers. At 1.4 miles, you’ll see the petroglyph panel that researchers believe depicts two Native American clans returning to the place of their origin. Complete the 2.4-mile loop on the mesa top.
Mount Rainier
(Photo: Justin Krickovich/iStock)
Washington
The Expert: Diann Sheldon, Discover Nature guide The Hike: High Lakes Loop
The Wonderland Trail will take you to Reflection Lake, Mount Rainier glimmering on its surface. Veer onto the Lower Lakes Trail through wildflower meadows before hopping on the High Lakes Trail and then the Mazama Ridge Trail. Reconnect with Wonderland to complete the 2.5-mile loop.
The Expert: Sarah Barmeyer, National Parks Conservation Association, senior managing director for conservation programs The Hike: Tuafanua Trail
From Vatia village, climb up switchbacks to a ridgetop through tropical rainforest that’s home to fruit bats. You’ll descend via ladders and ropes to a rocky beach scattered with coconut crabs that climb trees and weigh up to nine pounds. You’ll spot Pola Island offshore before returning 1.1 miles to the trailhead.
North Cascades
(Photo: Gfed/iStock)
Washington
The Expert: Anna Roth, Washington Trails Association hiking-content manager The Hike: Thunder Creek–Park Creek Pass
Start this 55.2-mile out-and-back at the Colonial Creek Campground, and tour old-growth forest over the five-day trek to Park Creek Pass and back. You’ll have fantastic views of the Cascade Mountains among meadows, with sporadic scrambling required in some sections.
The Expert: Anna Roth, Washington Trails Association hiking-content manager The Hike: Heather Peak
Begin on the Heather PeakTrail in a second-growth forest of mountain hemlock adorned with bearded lichen. You’ll be climbing steadily via switchbacks over five miles toward 5,740-foot Heather Peak. Scramble along a rocky ridge to the peak, then trek another quarter mile to a saddle that affords stunning views to the south before returning.
Petrified Forest
(Photo: zrfphoto/iStock)
Arizona
The Expert: Patrick Fuchs, Arizona Trailblazers Hiking Club member The Hike: Blue Mesa Trail
This one-mile loop will take you past the multicolored sedimentary rock layers of Blue Mesa. Hike at sunrise to witness the serrated edges of the mesa glow. Along the way, you’ll pass numerous petrified trees with a geologic backdrop that resembles the moon.
The Expert: Dave Wachtel, Monterey Bay Area Hiking Club organizer The Hike: Chaparral Trailhead
On this nine-mile loop, start on the Juniper Canyon Trail from the Chaparral Trailhead, then detour to the Tunnel Trail, which brings you to the High Peaks Trail, where you’ll have a chance to spot California condors. You’ll connect with the Rim Trail, which meanders to Bear Gulch Cave, a maze of building-size boulders. From there, head west on the Bench Trail and connect with the Old Pinnacles Trail, which circles back to the trailhead.
Redwood
(Photo: Stewart Watson/iStock)
California
The Expert: David Baselt, Redwood Hikes creator The Hike: Boy Scout Tree Trail
You’ll be immersed in a large tract of coastal redwood forest on this 5.6-mile out-and-back. In Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park (managed jointly with the National Park Service), start early in the morning from the Boy Scout Tree Trailhead. At mile 2.5, you’ll encounter the Boy Scout Tree, a massive double redwood discovered by a local troop leader. The hike ends at Fern Falls.
Rocky Mountain
(Photo: MichaelSchmitz/iStock)
Colorado
The Expert: Steve Bonowski, Colorado Mountain Club trip leader The Hike: Crystal Lakes
From the Lawn Lake Trailhead, ascend toward the Mummy Range through aspens and pines. You’ll be following the Roaring River for a stretch and will eventually break tree line, with views of 13,425-foot Mummy Mountain. Check out Lawn Lake at mile 6.2 before continuing another 1.2 miles to Little Crystal and Big Crystal Lakes.
Saguaro
(Photo: JeffGoulden/iStock)
Arizona
The Expert: Jocasta Houldsworth, Tucson, Arizona, hiker The Hike: Garwood Dam Loop
Totaling 6.4 miles, this hike starts from the Douglas Spring Trailhead on the Garwood Trail. You’ll quickly enter a saguaro cactus forest. Keep an eye out for a rare crested saguaro and its fan-shaped tip—there are only 25 in the park. You’ll pass Garwood Dam, built in the 1950s, and swinging a left onto the Carrillo Trail will lead to views of the Santa Catalina Mountains.
The Expert: Benjamin Cumbie, Sequoia Parks Conservancy membership manager The Hike: High Sierra Trail
A great alternative to the John Muir Trail, this 49-mile wilderness route snakes through high mountain passes in the Sierra Nevada. Highlights include swimming in Hamilton and Precipice Lakes and Kern Hot Springs. Tack an extra 13 miles on the JMT to hit the summit of Mount Whitney.
The Expert: David Bennick, Potomac Appalachian Trail Club’s Southern Shenandoah Valley Chapter president The Hike: Jones Run and Doyles River Trails
From the Browns Gap parking area, take the Appalachian Trail as it traces a ridge for 1.4 miles. A left on the Jones Run Trail switchbacks downhill to cascading Jones Run Falls. Take the Doyles River Trail past two more waterfalls back to the parking lot, completing a 6.5-mile loop.
Theodore Roosevelt
(Photo: Paul Schmidt/iStock)
North Dakota
The Expert: Nick Ybarra, Watford City, North Dakota, adventure guide The Hike: Maah Daah Hey Trail
The 144-mile Maah Daah Hey Trail, which cuts through the heart of the Badlands, is the longest singletrack mountain-biking route in the country. And it’s great for hiking, too. You’ll go through three units of the park, including the remote Elkhorn Ranch, where Theodore Roosevelt had a cabin, and the Little Missouri National Grasslands. Expect solitude among swaying prairie grass and forests of juniper trees.
Virgin Islands
(Photo: Joesboy/iStock)
U.S. Virgin Islands
The Expert: Kim Powell, Friends of the Virgin Islands National Park The Hike: Reef Bay Trail
Tour some of the tallest and oldest trees on the island on this roughly six-mile out-and-back. On the way to Reef Bay, you’ll see ruins of Danish sugar plantations, remnants of cattle ranches, and pre-Colombian Taino rock carvings.
The Expert: Sam Brueggeman, staff member at Trailfitters in Duluth, Minnesota The Hike: Cruiser Lake Trail
With more than 84,000 acres of water to explore, paddling is a great way to get around Voyageurs—but you can put your hiking boots to use on the Cruiser Lake Trail. Accessible via boat, the trail wends 9.5 miles one-way across wetlands and rocky cliffs.
Wind Cave
(Photo: Cheri Alguire/iStock)
South Dakota
The Expert: Tom Farrell, Wind Cave National Park chief of interpretation The Hike: Rankin Ridge Fire Tower
Wind Cave, nestled underneath the Black Hills of South Dakota, is one of the most complex cave systems in the world. But up above, miles of hiking trails zigzag across the prairie and hills. Trek to Rankin Ridge, the highest point in the park, where you’ll find the Rankin Ridge Fire Tower. At only one mile round-trip, this one is accessible for all skill levels.
Wrangell–St. Elias
(Photo: Z-lex/iStock)
Alaska
The Expert: Greg Fensterman, Trek Alaska guide The Hike: Seven Pass Route
Wrangell–St. Elias is the biggest national park in the United States—13.2 million acres—and one of the most remote. On this eight-day, 40-mile backpacking trip deep in the backcountry, you’ll start near Iceberg Lake, following a river to a glacier crossing. Expect to navigate more glaciers, along with high-ridge traverses, while you enjoy spectacular views of snowcapped mountains.
The Expert: Mike Rosekrans, Yellowstone Forever lead instructor The Hike: Clear Lake Loop
From the Wapiti Lake Trailhead, you’ll walk 6.7 miles past thermal-activity sites, with views of Mount Washburn. You’ll skirt Clear and Ribbon Lakes—near the latter, there’s a nice spur trail that’ll bring you to Silver Cord Cascade, a waterfall that plunges more than 1,000 feet into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
Yosemite
(Photo: Miune/iStock)
California
The Expert: Frank Dean, Yosemite Conservancy president The Hike: Valley Loop Trail
Yosemite’s trails are chocked with crowds, but you’ll have the Valley Loop Trail to yourself for 11.5 miles. From Lower Yosemite Fall, the trail traces old wagon roads through meadows, with views of El Capitan.
Zion
(Photo: bmswanson/iStock)
Utah
The Expert: Rachel Ross, Zion Adventure Company guide The Hike: Observation Point
You’ll gain 2,000 feet in elevation in four miles, climbing through canyons toward Observation Point. There you’ll have an excellent view of Zion Canyon, a few hundred feet higher than the busier Angel’s Landing viewpoint.
For 85 years, Joy Ryan had been grinding away at life—raising a family, working nonstop at a minimum-wage job, making ends meet, wrestling with the loss of family members—and rarely left her small hometown of Duncan Falls, Ohio. She’d never seen a mountain range before, just in the movies.
That all changed one night four years ago. Joy was on the phone with her grandson Brad, who was stressed over his veterinarian program at Ohio State and coping with news of a peer who’d just committed suicide. After some back and forth, Brad took her by surprise and suggested, “I think it’s time we go see some mountains.”
Joy agreed, so they started packing and that weekend drove through the night toward Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By the time they got there the next day, it was raining, and Joy held her pink umbrella over Brad as he put the tent together.
“That was the first night she’d ever been in a tent,” says Brad. “The sleeping pad deflated in the middle of the night. I heard a rumbling noise and just saw her legs sticking out from underneath the thing because she rolled right off of it.”
When the sun rose, Joy and Brad took in the view of the hazy ridgeline together and set out for the Alum Cave Trail, a five-mile out-and-back route which summits amonga line of bluffs. “It took me two hours to get up that mountain,” says Joy. “Brad kept saying we could goback, but I was getting to the top of that thing if it killed me. Never thought I’d do something like that at 85 years old. Mind over matter, I suppose.”
Then they went back to Ohio—back to their routines. Two years passed while Brad finished his degree, but during that time, he quietly crafted a master plan to visit every designated U.S. national park with Grandma Joy.
“National parks just bring out the best in people,” says Brad. “In the parks, you don’t talk about politics. You don’t talk about the things that cause us to wage war with each other. Parks bring us back to what’s important. You really do experience the best of America, not only the people you meet and the things you see, but also the way you feel.”
(Photo: Courtesy Brad Ryan)
Today, four years after visiting the Smokies, Joy and Brad have checked off 29 national parks and monuments over five different road trips. They’ve driven more than 25,000 miles through 38 states. And they’ve gotten into a hell of a routine. Joy isn’t holding a pink umbrella over Brad as he sets up the tent anymore. These days she’s the primary tent architect, pitching it every night and tearing it down every morning,while Brad shuttles the other camp gear in and out of their Ford Escape.
“I thought maybe this whole mission would be less satisfying, because I wouldn’t be able to go climb the Tetons and that kind of thing,” says Brad, an avid outdoorsman who has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and summitted Kilmanjaro. “But watching somebody see these things through a lens, knowing they’re probably not going to be back—that’s really special.”
One of the most memorable experiences for Brad occurred at Glacier National Park, on the edge of McDonald Lake. “I wanted Grandma Joy to just have that moment in life next to this pristine lake and just stare at it,” he says. “I stepped away from her, walked away, and watched from down the shoreline. I wanted her to think about her life. Nature. Stillness. I wanted her to have that solitude and one-on-one time with nature.”
Joy would have been perfectly happy spending the rest of her days in Duncan Falls. She likes it there and says she hasnever needed much—people with fancy pearls and diamonds “probably have a whole lot of debt anyways.” But hitting the road, sleeping in a tent for weeks on end, and seeing these parks has helped her appreciate life even more.
“I feel pretty lucky,” the now 89-year-old says. “I don’t have anything wrong with me really. I take a few pills a day. I could use some hearing aids, but I can’t spend $5,000 on those, so I just learned to read lips, I guess. I’m going to just keep going as long as I can.”
Polaroid Originals announced its first Polaroid printer today — the Polaroid Lab — allowing you to print photos taken on your phone.
The Lab, an update to Impossible Project’s Instant Lab from seven years ago, has a camera inside with three lenses that, essentially, take a photo of a photo that’s on a user’s phone. It then optimizes the image for film and prints it out. It’s supposed to work with the iPhone 6 and up and “most” Android devices. It charges over Micro USB, with Polaroid saying one charge should last a month. It’ll cost $100 when it’s eventually released later this year, and it accepts any film, except the SX-70.
The Lab requires users to have the Polaroid Originals app installed on their phone, from which they can tinker with settings, like exposure and color correction. In the beta app, those settings aren’t visually represented, so you’re just playing with a setting without knowing how it’ll affect the actual print. (It’s unclear if this will change when the Lab is released.) You can also break one image up into a collage spread across up to nine prints, however that collage isn’t seamless and the big white borders around each print take up a lot of image real estate.
Polaroid included other, more tech-oriented features that are already built into other photo printers, like the ability to assign a video to a photo. That feature lets you hold the Polaroid Originals app over the print to make a video show up. It’s gimmicky and requires whoever has the print to actually download the app.
I tested the new device with mixed results. I always struggled to find the perfect place for the phone to sit over the Lab, even with the app providing guidance. Once I did find the right spot, the print quality varied. My phone photos, even on my nearly four-year-old iPhone 6S, are detailed and colorful. When translated to film, some of the details disappear, and the colors feel totally off — and not in a charming way.
I printed the same photo of a lake with geese in it three times, and every one looks different and unappealing. I gave Verge video director Alix Diaconis a print of a photo of her, and she said, “That’s bad.”
Polaroid says you have to leave all prints either in the Lab’s roller or flipped over for at least 15 minutes to properly expose them. When I did this, the prints developed properly, but the results didn’t wow me.
The idea of printing my smartphone photos is neat, but the reality is that taking a photo of a photo on a screen likely isn’t the best way to go about it. The magic of Polaroid is the spontaneity of snapping a photo and not knowing how it’ll turn out. When you already have a clear, perfect photo, you don’t want to muck it up with unpredictable film.
Spotify is adding the ability to share whatever it is you’re listening to with a snap on Snapchat — long after other platforms like Instagram already got this same type of integration. So long as Snapchat is installed on the same device you’re using Spotify on, you’ll now see it appear in Spotify’s share menu.
When chosen, Snapchat will automatically create a snap that includes song info and album art for the currently playing track. This can then be sent to your individual Snapchat friends or to your story. You can share individual songs, albums, playlists, or podcasts.
If you receive a Spotify share on Snapchat, you can just swipe up to start listening to whatever song was just sent your way. Direct sharing, which has become hugely popular on Instagram, was late in coming to Facebook Stories as well; the feature launched just last month. Snapchat sharing is rolling out “soon” for Spotify on Android and iPhone.
Aside from clearly not being a top priority for Spotify, Snapchat will also soon face new competition beyond Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook is working on a new app called Threads that’s focused on sharing with close friends instead of a wider audience of online followers.
Android 10 brought a handy feature that displays a media progress bar directly in the notification bar, which various apps can benefit from. Unfortunately, Spotify didn't implement this feature fully, as it didn’t initially allow users to interact with the progress bar. However, the company fixed it, as the bar is now seekable, letting you jump to your favorite part directly from your notifications.
As you can see on the first screenshot above the progress bar would only fill as the song played but there was no way to tap or scroll it to jump to a specific time.
The Fenix 6 series of multi-sport GPS watches. | Image: Garmin
Garmin’s new Fenix 6 series of multi-sport GPS watches is here. The lineup features the first Garmin watch with a transparent solar charging lens, larger 1.4-inch sunlight readable displays, and new features that can extend battery life and more accurately track your performance. These are the watches you buy when outdoor fitness is your priority, money is no object, and adaptability to everyday life indoors is still important.
The Fenix 6X Pro Solar is the flagship device. Its “Power Glass” solar lens not only extends the watch’s 21-day battery life (in smartwatch mode) by up to three days, its display is also 36-percent larger than the largest display available in the Fenix 5 series. The solar option is only available with the larger 51mm case, however. Battery life on the 6X Pro Solar model plummets when used in always-on GPS mode, of course, dropping to about 15 hours with solar extending life by another hour or so. Life can be extended to 80 days in the battery-saver watch mode, with the solar lens adding another 40 days for a 120 day lifespan before needing a recharge.
The Fenix 6 (47mm) and 6X (51mm) models claim a trimmer and more comfortable fit from previous generations, while also offering scratch-resistant sapphire glass options and a larger 1.4-inch display on the 6X. The Fenix 6S model is a followup to the excellent Fenix 5S — Garmin’s model with a smaller 1.2-inch display and 42mm watchface that targets women and anyone desiring a less obnoxious bulge on their wrist without skimping on features.
Garmin is also introducing new QuickFit nylon bands and silicone colors with the launch of the Fenix 6 series.
On the software side, the two biggest changes since the Fenix 5 series are a new PacePro feature and more customizable power management. Garmin calls PacePro a first-of-its-kind feature that adapts for elevation changes to keep a runner’s pacing on track. The new Power Manager provides insight into how different settings and sensors affect the power draw, allowing users to disable certain features on-the-fly to maximize battery life.
On the music side, the Fenix 6 series can be configured with 32GB of on-device storage that can hold up to 2,000 songs, that’s up from 500 songs on the Fenix 5. You can also opt for Wi-Fi connectivity to enable streaming music support for Spotify, Amazon Music, and Deezer services which you can listen to over Bluetooth headphones.
All the watches feature topographic maps for trails, slopes, and golf courses; the ability to record running, cycling, swimming, hiking, and golfing sessions, among other sports; a heart-rate sensor with VO2 Max calculations; Bluetooth and ANT+ accessory connectivity; access to GPS, GLONASS and Galileo satellite systems; sleep monitoring; contactless Garmin Pay; and the ability to receive notification alerts from your iOS or Android smartphone, although Android integration is deeper.
Pricing for the new Garmin wearables starts at $599.99 for the Fenix 6 and smaller Fenix 6S. It quickly climbs to $1,149.99 for the Fenix 6X Pro Solar which is only available with the 51mm watch face and without sapphire glass, apparently — making us wonder just how scratch resistant this expensive timepiece will be. The Fenix 6S Pro Sapphire Edition with 42mm watch face costs $799.99. All but the solar watches ship immediately, with the 6X Pro Solar showing delivery in five to eight weeks.
Hasbro, the maker of Mr. Potato Head, Twister, G.I. Joe, and the aforementioned board game designed as a "critique of American greed," is now the proud owner of Death Row Records. Yes, you read that correctly.
So reports Rolling Stone, which details the circuitous route by which the toymaker came to own a record label associated with Dr. Dre and Tupac. Hasbro, it seems, purchased an entertainment company by the name of Entertainment One earlier this week. That company just so happened to have acquired Death Row Records' catalog in 2013 for around $280 million. Read more...
Bay Area designer and engineer Jordan Vincent took his design skills and applied them to the national parks. In an extremely useful data visualization project, Vincent explores overnight stays at all US national parks and uncovers surprising patterns to help you decided when is the best time to visit.
As overnight stays data is made available to the public by the US National Park Service, Vincent took a look at the average monthly stays for the 2013–2018 period. He then plotted the number of nights spent per month in each park. Nightly stays are separated into four categories of accommodation–lodging, RV, tent, and backcountry–as each accommodation type comes with their own characteristics which determine their popularity over time.
Any parks with missing data was removed. Those parks include American Samoa, Wrangell-St. Elias, Gateway Arch, Pinnacles, Carlsbad Caverns, Petrified Forest, and Congaree.
Climate data from the National Center for Environmental Information (NOAA) was then overlaid on top of the nightly stays data to see how different lodging is affected by the weather. Vincent used temperature normals for the 1981–2010 period from the nearest weather station for each national park.
The result is a series of circular graphs that show you at a glance the most popular months for visitation and the average temperatures you are likely to encounter. For those of us that like to visit the national parks with as little people as possible and are willing to put up with cold weather, the graphs provide tons of ideas.
For example, if I want Yosemite all to myself it looks like late January to early February is the time to go. But if I want to do some backcountry camping, perhaps October is a better bet before the snows hit at the higher elevations and limit my options.
You can view all the graphs in detail over on Vincent’s website. He is also selling posters of all the data visualization for $25.
THX’s long-running “bwonnnnnnnnnnnnnng” Deep Tone sound that plays before movies just got a lavish new update.
It’s still recognizable to cinephiles, but the version heard in the trailer above is much crisper than the original tone that played before Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi in 1983. There have been more than 20 remixed versions of the tone since then, including special versions made for The Simpsons and Shrek. Everyone knows it! It’s a meme! People remix the tone into their songs because it’s universally understood.
As the company got older and the industry changed from digital to film — from VHS to DVD and beyond — the Deep Tone has managed to stay relevant. The newest iteration is here to celebrate the 4K era. We’re living in an age of astoundingly beautiful nature documentaries, stunning live sports events, and crystal clear close-ups of Hollywood’s beautiful elite. THX’s new trailer not only introduces the redone “bwonnnnnnnnnnnnnng,” but it also pairs it with ridiculously beautiful footage.
Look, maybe it’s a little silly to get hyped about a new THX sound, but this is where we’re at as a society. YouTubers are making compilation videos like this one, which just collects sounds from the early 2000s and appeals to people’s nostalgia. The THX Deep Tone is like that. It gives me goosebumps just listening to it — especially the Shrek version if I’m being honest.
The next time you’re watching a THX-certified movie, keep an ear out for the newer tone. Let it wash over you — or, as The Simpsons pointed out, let it blow you away.
Despite the apparent complexity of modern exercise programs, you really have only two options if you want to get fitter: you can train harder than you’re currently training, or you can train more. Those two variables, intensity and volume, are the basic levers that all training plans fiddle with in various ways. But let’s be honest: two variables is still too many. We all secretly want to know which one is really the master switch that controls our fitness.
That’s the debate that showed up in a recent issue of the Journal of Physiology, in which two groups of researchers offered contrasting takes on the claim that “Exercise training intensity is more important than volume to promote increases in human skeletal muscle mitochondrial content.” The amount of mitochondria in your muscles is the most important adaptation that occurs in response to endurance training, so the debate was effectively about whether running faster or running longer is the best way to boost your endurance.
The group arguing in favor of intensity included Martin Gibala of McMaster University, who is well-known for his studies of high-intensity interval training, along with his doctoral student Lauren Skelly and his former post-doctoral trainee Martin MacInnis, who is now at the University of Calgary. In their article (which is freely available online), they make two main claims: first, that when you compare training programs where subjects do an equal amount of total work, those who train at a higher intensity and lower volume see the biggest gains in mitochondria; and second, that in the real world intensity is the most important variable because the vast majority of people are unwilling to spend long periods of time doing high-volume training anyway.
In response, David Bishop and Javier Botella of Victoria University in Australia, along with their former colleague Cesare Granata, now at Monash University, cite a combined analysis of 56 studies that suggests a robust relationship between total training volume and mitochondrial changes. The same analysis didn’t find any significant relationship between training intensity and mitochondrial changes, suggesting that volume is really the key variable.
Eachgroup then posted a rebuttal, and the differences boil down to a few key points. One is a somewhat obscure methodological debate on how you measure mitochondrial changes. Gibala’s team argues that we should focus on human studies, and look for the presence of various molecules that indirectly suggest that mitochondrial content has increased. Bishop’s team, on the other hand, argues that indirect measures of mitochondria can be misleading, so we should give more weight to studies with direct measures (using a transmission electron microscope, for example), even if those studies are done in rodents rather than humans.
That’s an important point for researchers to wrestle over, of course. For the rest of us, the more interesting tussle is over what “more important” means. Bishop and his colleagues are willing to concede that higher-intensity exercise will give you a greater mitochondrial response per minute of exercise. To Gibala, this is a crucial point: in a time-pressed world, getting more fitness per minute spent working out is important to enable more people to meet their fitness goals.
But to Bishop, efficiency and effectiveness are two different things. In the context of competitive sports, the contest is to see who is fastest, not who spent the least amount of time training. Moreover, the per-minute comparison can be somewhat misleading: the “one-minute workout” that gave Gibala the title of his book is actually three times 20 seconds of hard cycling with recovery periods of two minutes of easy cycling, preceded by a warm-up and followed by a cool-down. And in a general fitness context, others have questioned whether lack of time is really a significant barrier, or whether it’s just a convenient excuse for avoiding something perceived as unpleasant.
In practice, I think the urge to crown one single variable as the most important probably isn’t very useful. It reminds of me an an example Mayo Clinic physiologist Michael Joyner sometimes cites: the final of the men’s 5,000 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The race was won by Bob Schul, who trained pretty much exclusively with twice-a-day interval workouts. The runner-up was Harald Norpoth, who relied on well over 100 miles a week of long, slow distance. Bronze went to Bill Dellinger, who later coached at the University of Oregon and did a mix of intervals and longer, slower runs. Exactly one second separated the three men. As a bonus, also in the race was Ron Clarke, who did mostly medium-paced runs that we would now call threshold training.
One lesson to take from that race is that there are many roads leading to the same podium. Gibala’s and Bishop’s groups agree that intensity and volume are both effective at triggering mitochondrial adaptations and improving endurance. Which one you see as most important probably depends on your goals (winning races, improving health) and personal preferences. Some people love long, relaxed runs, rides, or hikes; others love the adrenaline of pushing hard, or simply want to get it over with. At the high end, if you push either intensity or volume to sufficient extremes, Joyner suggests, you can probably more or less max out the physiological adaptations you’re capable of getting with either approach.
To me, it’s telling that the athlete from that 1964 race whose training most resembles what modern athletes have chosen to do is Dellinger, who did a bit of everything. As the Gibala-Bishop debate illustrates, there are physiological arguments supporting both volume and intensity. But doing the same thing over and over again will eventually produce diminishing returns—or drive you nuts. If you’re going to look beyond studies that last only a few weeks or months and ask what training variable is the most important for sustaining a lifelong commitment to fitness, then I’d put in a vote for “all of the above.”
The Matrix is headed back to theaters for one week to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the sci-fi classic. Specifically, it’ll be screened in the 135 Dolby Cinema AMC theaters around the country, from August 30th to September 5th.
Technically, AMC is a few months late here — the film, which was written and directed by sibling duo Lana and Lilly Wachowski, was released on March 31st, 1999 — but given that the film came out so long ago, there are likely plenty of fans who never had the chance to see it properly in theaters.
Or, more cynically, given Keanu Reeves’ recent current run of pop-culture hype (specifically, the popularity of John Wick 3 and his viral “breathtaking” E3 appearance), it’s possible both Warner Bros. and AMC want to cash in on the moment with the limited release, which just coincidentally can be tied to the significant anniversary of the film as an excuse to extend the summer of Keanu.
As Morpheus would say, you can choose to “believe whatever you want to believe.”
Shelton Johnson’s life has been characterized by three awakenings—moments when the places where you live and sleep and eat play second fiddle to what the soul is singing. Without his third awakening, he wouldn’t be who he is now, at age 60: an award-winning, high-profile rangerin Yosemite who’s spoken about diversity in the national parks with Barack Obama, gotten Oprah to come camping next to California’s Merced River, and become one of the most visible activists for getting more people of color into the outdoors. But without the first awakening, he wouldn’t have gotten to the second, then to the third. So we have to start at the beginning.
The German town of Berchtesgaden sits in the Bavarian Alps, 2,297 feet above sea level. In 1963, at the outcrop of a 2,000-foot drop, here stood five-year-old Johnson on a family trip, holding his father’s left hand in his right, and his mother’s right in his left. Clouds floated below his feet, and their shadows were mottled maps of the sky in the valley below. All around him were snow-covered peaks, with banners of wind unfurling from their mountains, like a rug being snapped and shaken out. Johnson gripped his parents’ hands tighter, for fear he’d be scooped up and spit into the abyss, a brown boy vanishing into all that white.
On that day, the wind didn’t just blow around Johnson but through him, to a part of himself he previously didn’t know was there. He calls it a “baptism of spirit”: in that instant, he felt likehis molecules were taken out, swirled with the air, and rearranged so that he’d forever be aligned with these environments and yearn for them. “I had no idea at the time it was going to be the most significant moment in my childhood,” Johnson says.
The experience stayed with him when he returned from that vacation to the German village of Contwig, where his family lived for a year and a half while his father was in the Air Force. He would remember it after his family moved to London, in 1964; and when, in 1967, his father’s job brought them back to inner-city Detroit, where he would spend the remainder of his adolescence.
When Johnson, at age 25, arrived in Liberia to teach seventh-grade English in the Peace Corps in 1982, the country was in a period of transition following the 1980 overthrow of president William Tolbert. Johnson’s post was the village of Kakata, where he worked at the Booker Washington Institute, the country’s first agricultural and vocational school. At the time, the institute was smaller than it is now, with a few dormitory-style rooms and one main dining area. But what moved Johnson were the forests surrounding the village, green no matter which direction you threw a stone.
All around Johnson were birds for which he had no name, singing songs he’d never heard. There were spiders the size of a hand with outstretched fingers, which made him feel like he was in a big-bug science-fiction movie from the 1950s. Never before or since has Johnson ever experienced a place like it, a place where you could run your hand over a surface—a leaf slick with rain, a branch bruised by time—and leave with something that wasn’t there before. A living organism or two, sure, but more importantly, a feeling. Like something good is hitching a ride and you just don’t mind. “It was hot, humid, equatorial, and everything was alive,” he says of that period.
Johnson left Liberia months after he’d arrived, stricken by amoebic dysentery and malaria. But he still thinks of red Kakata sunsets and of this second immersion into wilderness. His second awakening.
Johnson first saw the splendor of the U.S. national parks as a child in Detroit, thumbing through issues of National Geographic at home, flipping from Yellowstone to Yosemite to the Grand Canyon and back again. Later, in his twenties, he’d click through slides of these parks on a View-Master, transported to places he could see but still had yet to visit.
One day in 1984, as a graduate student in poetry at the University of Michigan, Johnson took a break from writing and reading and thinking about Langston Hughes, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley and applied for a job that would change the arc of his life. What he signed up for—to be a dishwasher at Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Inn—was more grime than glamour. But it would bring him to the wide-open wilderness of the U.S., which he hadn’t yet experienced. When he first stepped off the bus in the park, there was that scene again: mountains covered in snow, and wind blowing off gusts and dusts. There was that feeling again, like when a chord is struck on an instrument and you feel the reverberations in your chest, blood, and bones.
Johnson calls this his third awakening. In that moment, he realized that Detroit, to some degree, had never been his home. It was where his family was, but the wilderness—when it’s quiet enough to hear the clouds drift by—was where he belonged. And since getting off the bus in Yellowstone, he’s never truly gotten back on again. He went back to Michigan to pack his things, yes, but he returned to the mountains and the wind, and he’s been there, figuratively, ever since.
Initially, Johnson didn’t think he was qualified to be a park ranger. He could do it, of course, but with a background in classical music, poetry, and literature, he puzzled over how to apply his formal training to everyday tasks. What would he say? “If I catch you speeding again, I’m going to read you one of Shakespeare’s sonnets—maybe one he got rid of,” he likes to joke. But George Robinson, chief of interpretation at Yellowstone from 1982 to 1992, when Johnson was there, recognized that people’s first entry point to parks was often via the written word or photos or paintings. So why not hire a poet?
And so, in 1987, Johnson began his life as a ranger, first at Yellowstone, then at Grand Teton, then at parks in the Washington, D.C., area, and then at Great Basin National Park. For the past 25 years, he’s worked at Yosemite, opening and closing the visitor center, leading nature walks, talking about the ecology of black bears, and helping people get closer to the heart of the place however they can. In March, he started focusing his efforts, full-time, on outreach to culturally diverse communities.
Years ago, Johnson was deep in the Yosemite archives when he discovered a faded black-and-white photograph from 1899 that showed five black U.S. Army infantry soldiers. He continued to research military and historical records, building his knowledge about these Buffalo Soldiers, African American troops who were also the original stewards of national parks like Yosemite and Sequoia at the turn of the 20th century, long before there were rangers in these spaces. In addition to evicting poachers and extinguishing forest fires, the Buffalo Soldiers were responsible for building the first road into Sequoia’s Giant Forest and constructing the first trail to the top of Mount Whitney, also in Sequoia National Park. “African Americans have a role here and have a history here,” he says.
Five U.S. Army soldiers of the 24th Mounted Infantry (NPS)
In Johnson’s mind, there’s no greater story in the national parks than that of the Buffalo Soldiers. This history became a fulcrum of his work in moving the deadweight of misperception, the idea that African Americans have no claim or connection to the national parks. It inspired him to write his 2011 novel Gloryland, which tells the story of a sharecropper’s son who becomes a Buffalo Soldier in the 1900s. In 2012, Johnson started a weekly narrativepodcast called A Buffalo Soldier Speaks, told from the perspective of Sergeant Elizy Boman, who served in Yosemite from 1903 to 1904. (The podcast is currently on hiatus.) Johnson, in character as Boman, still sometimes appears in Yosemite.
Behind these calls for engagement is a hope that people of color will seek out natural spaces and continue to be inspired by them to create. Where are the African American landscape photographers? Johnson wonders. Why don’t more African American poets and novelists set their stories in environments like this? “The history is there. But the modern-day equivalent of the extension of those stories and contributions is not here,” Johnson says. “And that really troubles me.”
Like John Muir before him, Johnson sees himself as carrying a torch—one that lets African Americans see that he’s there and celebrating the place, because he thinks these spaces are where disassociation from wildness can be remedied. He feels a responsibility, because only some 6 percent of all National Park Service employees are black, and because studies show that people of color visit the national parks much less frequently than white people. By staying put and speaking, leading, and welcoming, maybe he can help.
“Shelton is 100 percent accurate when he says that representation matters,” says Teresa Baker, who worked with Johnson to retrace the Buffalo Soldier Trail and founded the Facebook group African American Nature and Parks Experience in 2013. “Understanding that there’s someone there in the visitor center that looks like them or speaks their language, that will be a huge help in pushing visitation when it comes to communities of color in our parks.”
Decades after his dishwasher gig that summer in Yellowstone, Johnson is one of the park service’s most popular rangers, made more recognizable largely thanks to his turn in filmmaker Ken Burns’s six-episode 2009 series on PBS, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. Johnson appeared in every part of the 12-hour program, discussing everything from being greeted by bison upon his arrival in Yellowstone and the democracy of national parks.
According to Kara Stella, Yosemite’s deaf-services coordinator, who has worked with Johnson for more than 20 years and is currently his office mate: “Very often, his shift [in the field] will end but it will be quite a while before he ends up back in the office. And I’m pretty sure, when that happens, that he has been caught by someone who is starstruck and wants to take a photo, or a visitor that asks him a question. But he is so present to the visitor that’s there.” Ben Cunningham-Summerfield, another Yosemite ranger, says: “Shelton takes great joy in sharing that history and his experience with those who care to listen.”
Though Johnson is currently eligible to retire, he says he’s not quite ready. There are still communities he wants to reach and people he wants to speak with. But when it does happen, it will be a loss on a grand scale, say Johnson’s friends, coworkers, and peers, not only because he’s such a talent and person of good heart but also because no one else is doing the work he’s doing.
“He’s keeping alive a narrative that had widely been forgotten and untold for almost a century. To my knowledge, there’s no one being groomed to take his place. If he goes away, that could stop. And that would be tragic,” says journalist James Edward Mills, whose 2014 documentary An American Ascent was narrated by Johnson. “Shelton is a national treasure.”
For now, though he sometimes dreams of trips to France, Italy, and Spain, Johnson is happy where he is, in a place he first discovered decades ago and knew he belonged decades before that. “My home is where the mountains are, and that’s why I’m here,” he says. “What fires the imagination of my spirit are places like this.”
After launching the $649 Cintiq 16 earlier this year, Wacom is releasing a larger version of its entry-level tablet with the Cintiq 22. The tablet has a 21.5-inch screen with a 1920 x 1080 resolution, 72 percent NTSC color, and an anti-glare glass surface that has a paper-like feel to draw on. You can connect it to your Mac or Windows computer via HDMI and USB 2.0 cables.
Though the Cintiq 22 is just a larger version of the Cintiq 16 with the same specs, it costs nearly twice as much at $1,199. Compared to Wacom’s previous pen displays, the Cintiq 16 was the company’s most affordable and approachable device to date, but users will have to pay more for the screen space to draw “long strokes and sweeping styles.” Unlike the 16, which just has foldable legs, the Cintiq 22 does come with an adjustable stand. It also comes with Wacom’s latest stylus, the Pro Pen 2, which has 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity and tilt support, and never needs charging. However, it doesn’t come with other accessories like the $100 ExpressKey remote or a Bluetooth keyboard.
It’s easy to get confused between the Cintiq and the Cintiq Pro line, but the Cintiq line is specifically for students and “budding professionals” to use before graduating to the Pro stage. The Cintiq Pro line offers some higher-end features that the regular Cintiq line doesn’t have, like 4K resolution, more accurate colors, and better optical bonding, which reduces parallax, or the distance between the pen and the screen. The Cintiq Pro line is meant for animation studios and enterprise use, though, so the Cintiq 22 is still a solid choice for young artists and creative professionals.
The Cintiq 22 is available at Amazon, B&H, CDW, and Wacom’s site for $1,199.
The set designers had to rebuild an entire section of the mall from scratch
Ah, the shopping mall: It’s a dying beacon of ’80s consumerism, the inspiration for legions of ruin photography and films, and now, improbably, the star of a hit TV show.
In season three of Netflix’s Stranger Things, Hawkins, Indiana, gets a shiny new mall called the Starcourt, and it’s everything a kid with a $20 monthly allowance could ever hope for (Claire’s, Orange Julius, a six-screen cinema, etc.). The Starcourt, of course, isn’t real, but the mall where the scenes were filmed very much is.
This is amazing—Stranger Things 3's Starcourt Mall wasn't a sound stage. It was all built inside an actual dying mall in Georgia. And the set designers made more than simple storefronts—they made FULL INTERIORS, even for stores that were never seen on-screen… pic.twitter.com/v5RahFLPeR
In a totally satisfying bit of TV trivia, Stranger Things’ set designers have revealed that the fictional shopping relic isn’t a soundstage but a real, derelict mall on the outskirts of Atlanta called Gwinnett Place Mall. Built in 1984, the mall has since fallen on hard times, paving the way for Stranger Things production designer Chris Trujillo to swoop in and transform the space.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Trujillo and his team gutted a section of the mall and recreated more than 40 stores from scratch, including an accurate mall map. “It was “a real messy situation,” he told the LA Times. “Imagine a mall without stores and without decoration. We had to painstakingly re-create the facades, all of the signage, all of the storefront displays. In many cases we had to reconfigure the storefront architecture because it was in disrepair or it had been piecemeal remodeled through the years.”
The work paid off. The Starcourt look like it’s straight out of the 1980s, in all its neon-signed glory. Check out the full story on the creation of Starcourt Mall here and tour the Gwinnett Place Mall decked out for Stranger Things 3 in the fan video below.
All new models of electric cars sold in the European Union must now make artificial noise under certain conditions, reports BBC News. Acoustic Vehicle Alert Systems (aka, AVAS) will need to be installed in new models of hybrid and electric cars introduced from today onward, and all existing models by July 2021. With an AVAS installed, vehicles will need to make a sound while traveling under 12 mph, or while reversing.
Due to the absence of an internal combustion engine, electric vehicles can be a lot quieter than their gas-powered counterparts. However, this lack of noise can mean that they pose a danger to other road users, especially people who are blind or partially sighted. In a written submission to the British Parliament from November 2017, the charity Guide Dogs pointed to research that says electric and hybrid vehicles are 40 percent more likely to be involved in an accident which causes injury to a pedestrian.
The US is introducing similar laws next year
Different manufacturers will be able to decide exactly what their AVAS will sound like, but the EU’s legislation says that the sound should be similar to (and not louder than) a traditional combustion engine. It should also give pedestrians an idea of what the vehicle is doing by, for example, synchronizing with a vehicle’s speed. Jaguar has already revealed what its I-Pace will sound like, and Nissan announced a concept vehicle back in 2017 that “sings” as it drives.
The EU isn’t the only regulator that’s introducing fake noise rules around electric vehicles. In the US, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will require that all hybrid and electric vehicles emit artificial noise by September 2020, although they’ll have to emit the sounds up to the slightly faster speed of 18.6 mph.
If it wasn’t for his dad’s hatchet, Alex Woods might not be alive.
On June 26, Woods, a forest pathologist who works for the provincial government of British Columbia, was attacked by an adult black bear while walking alone in the bush not farfrom the small Gitxsan village of Gitanyow. He survived the encounter, and the bear didn’t. Yesterday afternoon, he told me the story over a few much-needed beers on the patio of his home near Smithers.
A lean 54-year-old with a close-cropped silver beard, Woods has been working in the backcountry for decades. He’s a whitewater paddler, hunter, and outdoorsman. Thoughtful and soft-spoken, he was still rattled as he ran through the details.
“I was going out to check for the presence of Armillaria root disease in an undeveloped piece of forest,” he says. “I’m a bit technologically challenged, but I had a GPS and the coordinates I needed to get to, so I was just taking a bearing and walking to that. As I was going in I saw freshly broken fireweed, so I knew there was probably an animal around, but there areanimals everywhere up here. And when I’m by myself I always make a point of yelling, so I was going ‘Yo, bear, yo bear.’”
About 700 feet into the forest, Woods came to a deep gully where a section of hemlock and balsam sloped down to a small creek.
“I could hear the creek at the bottom,” he says, “so I yelleven louder, because that’s a place where you could potentially surprise a bear. It was really steep, like 45 degrees, with mature timber that was freshly burnt from last year, so it was relatively open and the visibility was good. I was about three quarters of the way down the slope, and I’d noticed some morels that were coming up, so I picked a couple, but then made sure I was back on my bearing and kept yelling. And then I look up, and there’s this bear running at me—full speed, no sounds, just running at me as fast as it can go from 100 feet away, straight up the slope.
The forest at the top of the slope where Woods was attacked (Alex Woods)
“There was a charred tree about a foot in diameter right there, and a windfall tree across it, almost forming an ‘L’. So I steppedbehind that and reached for the bear spray that was in my vest, and I couldn’t get the frickin’ lid off it.
“And then the bear’s head came right in,” he says, gesturing to his midriff, “and I hauled off and kicked it as hard I could, and that connected with its jaw and knocked it back. I’m not a big guy, but because I was on such a steep slope, I was just big enough to get it. The bear fell back a bit, but then it came running around the tree and I kicked it hard again in the head, yelling as loud as I could the whole time. It took off and ran up another burned tree about eight feet away, still staring at me.”
For a split second, Woods may have thought the encounter was de-escalating. But it wasn’t. Fortunately, he had a hatchet with him, inherited from his father, the same one he always carries with him in the bush. Like his bear spray, he’d had it stashed in his cruiser vest, a multipocketed work vest that many foresters wear to carry tools on the job.
“I’ve always felt if anything really hit the fan,” he says, “I’d want to have a hatchet or an axe.”
“So then the bear dropped down from the tree,” he continues. “And as it was doing that, I’d reached into the back of my vest. The zipper’s broken, so I was able to get at my hatchet fast. But the bear was right back on me by then, so I just sank the hatchet into its head. I was lucky enough that it happened where those trees were, and on a such steep slope. I wouldn’t have been able to kick it otherwise, or get it on the head. Those trees slowed it down, and fortunately I didn’t struggle getting the hatchet out like I struggled with the bear spray. But also, if it wasn’t for those two charred trees, I’d probably be dead.”
After Woods struck the bear, it slumped away and rolled down the hill.
“It was lying on its back,” he says, “and it looked like it was still breathing, but I kept watching because I didn’t want to turn my back to climb the hill. And I didn’t want to leave the fort, such as it was, of those two logs, so I waited maybe three minutes, trying to see if it was going to get up or if it was dead. Then I decided to get the heck out of Dodge.”
The wounded bear on its back at the bottom of the slope (Alex Woods)
Woods backpedaled up the hill and then made a beeline to his truck, looking behind him the whole way, hoping the bear wouldn’t get up and come after him once more.
Back in Smithers, he told the B.C. Conservation Officer Service about the attack. Yesterday officers located the site and found the bear still alive, but mortally wounded, with its skull opened by the hatchet blow. The officers were armed and killed the bear.
“Afterward they called and told me it was a sow with cubs,” he says, “and that’s really f’d up. That’s not good at all. I’m still processing that. But before it happened, I did everything you’re supposed to do, and exactly what’s worked for me for 35 years. I yelled, I made lots of noise. A mother bear, if it was a normal situation, would have heard that, even though it was near a creek. The experts I’ve talked to today told me it was totally predatory behavior. There was no warning. They said that bear wanted you—and they’re right, it wanted me.”
Woods isn’t sure why it happened, though he notes river levels in the area are extremely low for this time of year, and he suspects the bear’s behavior may be a reflection of a drought-affected ecosystem. However, he says the bear looked “vital” and not weakened or starving. Today, conservation officers confirmed the bear was in good health and weighed somewhere between 150 and 200 pounds.
As for what we can all learn from his ordeal, Woods is adamant about having bear spray at the ready and being well practiced in its use—if he’d been quicker at getting the safety cap off, the bear might still be alive, too.
“It has to be totally accessible,” he says. “Because it all happens so fast. The whole process, between seeing the bear charging up the hill until I sunk the hatchet in its head, was maybe 15 seconds, including me kicking it twice in the head. It was so fast, there just wasn’t any time to mess around with the clip.”
Woods's hatchet (Malcolm Johnson)
Woods will be back in the bush again soon, but the battle with the bear is making him think harder about being out alone.
“It’s going to make hunting a little more challenging,” he says. “I’ve been successful moose hunting by myself, but I’m thinking that’s going to be pretty hard to do. I think this is going to be with me for the long haul.”
The route to being a national park ranger is hardly ever a direct one, and for Jessie Snow, it definitely wasn't. But if you like spending time outside and teaching others about nature, it may just be for you. This video, from filmmaker Jessica Plance, profiles Snow and her journey into our national parks system.
See more of the country when you upgrade your adventure ride.
To get a taste of what it means to be an American, you have to hit the road.Fortunately, you’re never too young or too old to take the interstate beyond the life you know. Whether it’s a gap year, a retirement trip, or a sabbatical, everyone deserves to take a period of time for themselves and claim their slice of the American Dream. Here’s why RVing is the best way to do it.
1. Experience true freedom.
When you’re living on the road, you choose the direction you want each day to go, whether that’s exploring a side-road or camping an extra day in a place you’ve fallen in love with. Make enough of those small decisions, and you’ll realize just how much freedom and power you have to choose the kind of life you want. And that’s what the promise of the United States is all about.
2. See more in the time you have.
We have a lot of respect for pedestrian-only adventure, but the United States is wonderfully diverse, both in its people and its landscapes. Of all the adventure options out there, an RV is purpose-built for seeing more trails, more backcountry, and more local communities than any other mode of transportation—even thru-hiking or bikepacking. Go highpointing, see all 50 states, or go on the ultimate national park tour. With an RV, you have more freedom to choose.
3. Minimize your planning and maximize your adventure.
You don’t have to ship yourself resupply boxes or book hotel reservations. In fact, you don’t even have to have an end destination, an itinerary, or a plan. With an RV, the only prep you have to do is getting in the driver’s seat.
The same is true once you’re on the road. Wake up and want to go hiking? Your trekking poles are already packed. Hear about an awesome swimming hole? Ditto for the bathing suit. When you have your home with you, you have all the ingredients for any kind of adventure.
4. Actually have time for reflection.
If you’ve ever been on a long backpacking trip, you know you never end up philosophizing quite as much as planned—you’re too busy thinking about your next meal or worrying about the weather.
A cross-country RV trip gives you plenty of windshield time and space to stretch out—and none of the headache of pitching a tent in the rain. That means just as much adventure at half the brain power, leaving you more time to clear your head, think about the trajectory of your life, and reflect on who you want to be.
And if you’re with your friends or family instead of alone, the logistical ease means more quality time. After all, conversation flows more easily when the whole crew is relaxed.
5. Explore your backyard. All 640 million acres of it.
One of the best things about an RV trip is that you’ve already paid for most of it: In the United States, every citizen is born into a vast public land system and a well-maintained network of roads and trails. Your tax dollars—and those of generations before you—have put the infrastructure in place for you to explore. All you have to do is choose to get out and see it.
6. Boost your confidence.
It can be hard to justify taking a few weeks—or months—off work, but time spent road-tripping is an investment in yourself. Break out of your comfort zone and see what it’s like to live a simpler life. Experiencing the freedom an RV gives you will help you realize what you’re capable of. And that kind of confidence that will stick with you even after the trip is over.
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