Category environment
Opt Outside (#OptOutside) as often as you can to improve your health & outlook
Opt Outside (#OptOutside – promoted by REI for the Friday after Thanksgiving) and National Take a Hike Day (held each year on Nov. 17) are reminders to get outside and enjoy nature. Being outside and in nature should not be a slogan or campaign for just a few select days. That’s a worthy goal for […]
Grand Canyon is ‘grand’ from South Rim
After my post about hiking in the Grand Canyon, several of my blog readers who haven’t visited the Grand Canyon asked me if a visit to the Grand Canyon would be so “grand” if they weren’t hikers. Yes! Grand Canyon National Park — as with other national parks – is designed to provide a wide […]
Hiking the South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon
When you reach Ooh-Aah Point on the South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon, you know why it got that name. What a view! As I looked out over the Grand Canyon, I felt like I was airborne but without a plane. Ooh-Aah Point is a 1.8-mile round-trip on the South Kaibab Trail, and hiking […]
LeConte Lodge – cabins, llamas & mountaintop views
My recent hike to Mt. Le Conte marked my 51st hike there. I first hiked to Mt. Le Conte with my church youth group when I was in high school. I’ve been fortunate to able to hike Mt. Le Conte almost yearly – and sometimes several times a year – since that first hike. Most […]
Rainy hike to Mt. Le Conte
Clouds, rain and thunderstorms. That wasn’t the weather I would have requested for hiking, but that was the weather we had for hiking Alum Cave Trail to Mt. Le Conte to spend the night at LeConte Lodge. And when hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, rain always is a possibility, especially in the […]
Tree leaves provide different looks for nature trail
What a remarkable day in May for Florida. The weather system that caused the closing of roads in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park due to fallen trees and the possibility of snow on mountain tops brought a beautiful day to Florida. Cool temperatures and enough breeze to mean no insects. A great day to check out […]
Celebrating Earth Day by cycling on Hawthorne Trail
Earth Day was just the day to renew my Florida State Park card and then put it to use by visiting one of the nearby state parks to cycle on the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail. The trail is a converted railroad track that goes through woods and prairie and includes a few hills. I saw pileated woodpeckers, […]
Wildfires sweep through GSMNP & Gatlinburg – loss of lives, property and wildlife
2016 is the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. National Parks across the country have been celebrating and having record-setting attendance. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has the distinction of being the most visited of the 59 national parks, with more than 10 million visitors annually. The second most visited park is the […]
Earth Hour provides case study for media writing class
When I checked Twitter on my iPhone this morning, I found non-stop twittering about today’s Earth Hour, which challenges everyone to turn off the lights for an hour starting at 8:30 p.m. The tweets are filled with individual pledges, reports of people playing board games by candlelight, and photos of lighted and then darkened buildings. […]
Former student and Keep Alachua County Beautiful intern steps up to be class guest speaker
When you plan for a guest speaker in class, you always have in the back of your mind the fact that the speaker may not be in class. That’s especially true of guest speakers who work in the media and may have a change in their schedules from when they initially said “yes” to speaking […]
Julie Dodd 