Nature Valley Trail View is ‘street view’ for national parks

by Kraig Becker on

Earlier this week, Nature Valley launched a fun new website that delivers a Google Street View-like experience for hiking trails in some of America’s most popular and iconic national parks. Dubbed Nature Valley Trail View, the new site allows hikers to explore over 300 miles of trail directly from their browser.

Much like its counter-part from Google, Trail View actually puts us on the ground and gives us a 360-degree view of the surroundings as we take a virtual hike through the wilderness. It also offers information about the trail that is currently being displayed, including: its length, level of difficulty and important points of interest along the way. This makes it a great tool for scouting potential hikes in the national parks before we go while also providing insights into what to expect when we’re actually out on the hike.

At the moment, Trail View features three of the more popular and famous national parks – Grand Canyon, Great Smokey Mountains, and Yellowstone. The video below gives us a glimpse at the technology that has gone into creating the new website, which is just the latest initiative from Nature Valley, a company that has a long history of supporting the national parks in a variety of important ways.

Enjoy the video then go take a virtual hike.


Visit the Great Barrier Reef at a substantial discount

by Kraig Becker on

Yesterday we told you about a new travel survey from LivingSocial that revealed that Americans consider themselves the worst travelers in the world. That same survey also asked respondents to rank their top international travel destinations with Australia‘s Great Barrier Reef coming out on top. To celebrate this distinction, and to help make some of those travel dreams come true, Hamilton Island is now offering a discount of nearly 40% for future visitors.

The Hamilton Island & Sydney package includes everything you’ll need to enjoy an Australian vacation. The itinerary features round-trip flights on Virgin Australia from Los Angeles, ground transportation to and from the airport and five nights stay in both Sydney and on Hamilton Island itself. It also includes snorkeling excursions on the Great Barrier Reef; a visit to the world famous Whitehaven Beach; access to windsurfing, catamarans and paddle skis; and much more. The package is priced at $3646, which represents a 38% savings, and must be taken between April 1st and September 15th of this year.

Having visited the GBR myself a few years back I can attest to how beautiful a destination it truly is. The Whitsunday Islands, of which Hamilton Island is a part, is amongst the most stunning places I’ve ever been and I completely understand why it was named as the top “dream destination” on the LivingSocial survey. Other places that earned a place on that list include the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Grand Canyon in Arizona and the Great Wall of China. No word yet if any of those places are offering discounts on travel as well.

A timelapse journey through the American Southwest

by Jessica Festa on


While I don’t think anybody would dispute that the American Southwest is beautiful, this timelapse video by Henry Jun Wah Lee of Evosia Studios takes the region to a whole new level of breathtaking. Without using words or special effects, the Los Angeles-based filmmaker brings the landscape to life with dancing fog, vibrant sunrises, detailed rock formations, and curvacious craters that appear to flow like a woman’s skirt. The photographer’s mission in his work is to inspire people who spend their time in cities to get out and re-connect with nature. Through this video, you’ll get to explore the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, North Coyote Buttes, the Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons, Rattlesnake Canyon, the Eastern Sierras, Vermillion Cliffs, Yosemite National Park, Grand Staircase Escalante, and the December 2011 Lunar Eclipse.

So how did he create such a stunning masterpiece? Jun Wah Lee explains it took, “a little bit of luck, a lot of traveling and sleepless nights, and a lot of practice!”

Grand Canyon National Park to ban plastic water bottles

by Kraig Becker on

Plastic water bottles are about to become an endangered species at Grand Canyon National Park. The Park Service has announced that the sale of bottled water in vending machines, shops, and hotels inside the park will be banned early next year, in an effort to cut waste and protect the environment there. But first, park officials must complete an extensive survey of the availability of other water sources and the impact the ban could have on the safety and health of visitors.

The Grand Canyon was first set to implement the ban last year, but Jon Jarvis, the Director of the National Park Service, put a halt to that plan. At the time, Jarvis said that the NPS was working on creating a policy for potential adoption by the entire park system, but his announcement led some to speculate that the Coca Cola Company was exercising its considerable influence. The soft drink maker is a major contributor to the parks, but also sells a lot of bottled water as well.

Undaunted by the change in direction, officials at the Grand Canyon continued to move ahead with their own plans. By strategically placing water bottle refill stations throughout the park, and actively encouraging visitors to bring their own reusable bottles, they hoped to cut back on the use of disposable bottles within the Canyon. As a result of these efforts, park officials feel that they are prepared for the ban to go in effect, although they admit that comprehensive studies have not been done yet to determine the impact of the changes.

The Park Services announcement opens the door for other parks to ban plastic bottles as well, although they will have to undergo a rigorous self-assessment before they do so. Some of the things that will need to be considered include the safety of visitors, ease of access to water, and existing contracts with onsite vendors for selling bottled water.

While it may still be a few years off, we’re looking at the potential for a ban of plastic bottles in all of the national parks down the line. In the long run, that is a very good thing for the environments in those parks, but in the short term, a lot of work will need to be done to prep the parks and educate visitors about bringing their own bottles.

A Grand Tour of the American West

by Paul Brady on


I could see the end of my road trip, on the other side of the deserts of the American Southwest, the sun-parched stretch of near nothingness that conceals some of the country’s greatest natural wonders. So after leaving Spaceport America in New Mexico, I prepared for a ironman push to the West Coast, my ultimate destination Los Angeles. Along the way, I’d stop at the Four Corners and the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas and probably some dusty, God-forsaken gas station in the middle of a field of rock and scrub and little else. It was going to be a long drive but, weirdly, I was excited.

Traveling the American Road – Road Trip Destiny Made Manifest


I found the Four Corners, the intersection of Arizona and Colorado and New Mexico and Utah, down a short dusty road on Navajo land just outside Teec Nos Pos, Arizona. It is, inarguably, one of the most touristy places I’d seen on the entire trip: There’s next to nothing here but for some trinket stands and a photo op, standing or sitting a paved circular monument to geographic coincidence, the only place in the country where visitors can touch four states at once.

Which isn’t to say people weren’t enjoying it. A group of Italians were riding on each others’ shoulders, getting unique angles for their pictures. A couple was visiting with her parents, each standing in a different state. Young kids were by turns bashful and brash, forced into photos their parents will one day look back on fondly only to be disappointed when the then-teenagers deny any recollection of the time the family went to the Four Corners.

As I walked back to the car, another group of Italians was having a loud conversation when one woman’s cell phone rang. “Pronto?” she asked as she answered, taking a call from the homeland as she photographed her friends standing on the spot we all came to see.

At the Grand Canyon, I worried that I’d find more of the same, a promise of greatness tempered by an ultimately disappointing monument. How wrong I was: Seeing the striated canyon formed by the Colorado river was a multi-layered pleasure, unfolding as I took in the views from the South Rim, stopping at turnouts along the road to take panoramas while standing on the roof of my SUV. One woman asked me to snap a photo for her, as long as I was up there.

The canyon changed not just in space but in time too, as I watched the sunset turn the rocks deeper and deeper hues of orange. As the shadows lengthened, the gorges in the distance turned purple and blue and finally black. Cameras lined the canyon rim, but I was happy to simply enjoy the sunset, trying to mentally catalog all the colors rather than capture them with my SLR. After nine weeks on the road, furiously photographing my trip, it was a luxury to simply enjoy the view.

In the morning, after the haze had burned off, I struck camp and set out for Las Vegas, the final waypoint before the end of my journey. But I was more interested in a nearby sight than any neon magic on The Strip: The Hoover Dam, a man-made wonder from an era of economic uncertainty financed by massive public spending. The art deco masterpiece is less than an hour from the biggest casinos in Las Vegas, but it’s also a four-hour haul through the Arizona desert.

There’s little to see until you speed across the Mike O’Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, when the canyon walls fall away and reveal the concrete monolith. Though walking across the top of the dam is quite pleasant, I prefer the view from the bridge, opened in October 2010 as a traffic bypass. A pedestrian-friendly walkway along its north edge provides a fantastic platform for photography–and contemplation of what extraordinary taxpayer spending and sacrifice can accomplish.