Roughly a month ago, my family flew 3,000+ miles from Maine to visit me in sunny California. My mother, step-father and brother landed in Sacramento and headed south on I-80 West. Once they settled into their hotel, we met up for a post-arrival, pre-travel-induced-passing-out dinner. Over various Italian foods, we caught up and discussed what it was we were to [...]

You know, it’s summer in New Zealand right now. Watching this trailer for The Waters of Greenstone makes me insanely jealous, both as a fly fisherman and as an outdoors traveler. Crystal streams, majestic mountains, riverside campsites…I can’t wait to see this film about two friends from Tennessee who explore the backcountry of NZ. Thanks to Orvis News for the [...]

Did you know you can hike to the National Christmas Tree on December 12 with a bunch of other hardy souls? Did you also know that the National Christmas Tree is not in Washington, D.C.? The National Parks Traveler blog has a nice little article about the event to be held on Decmeber 12. If you’re in the Kings Canyon [...]

This year, instead of doing my own research like I did last year, I’m being lazy and pointing you to the best holiday gift guides I can find. So, while these other bloggers do all the work, I’m sitting back with my L.L. Bean Wicked Good Mocs, sipping some Dogfish Head Bitches Brew from my BeerME pint glass, reading copies [...]

I love craft beer. And I love hiking (so do my friends). Yet, for some reason, I’ve never taken beer on a backpacking trip. Sure, I’ll pop open a bottle after a long day of hiking, fishing, or skiing, but I never thought to actually bring the brews with me. Of course, it makes perfect sense to stash a can [...]

I’m not huge into ultralight anything. My current backpacking stove, the MSR Whisperlite International, is a beast, but it gets the job done. As I’m thinking about taking day long and multi-day long fly fishing trips, weight starts to become an issue. When the main point of my trip is to simply hike a trail, I’m not so concerned about [...]

There were two very specific reasons I moved to Maine. The first, as I’ve mentioned several times before on PTV, has to do with the relieving of my overabundance of mind melting stress.  The second is, of course, the silence. So when The Girlfriend and I took off for a day of hiking fun, my hopes of finding some pure [...]

National Trails Day is this Saturday, June 5, 2010. It’s an annual event held by the American Hiking Society to foster awareness of local hiking, biking, and walking trails and engage the public in the protection, conservation, and sheer enjoyment of these trails. In Portland, Maine alone, there are over 50 miles of trails overseen by the Portland Trails organization, [...]

I know, I know, I keep posting Arizona pictures. But seeing as I just returned from the area, I thought it’d be nice have a new image to show you. This was taken on a hike a few miles outside downtown Sedona (the trailhead was right behind my hotel, in fact).

Spring was definitely in the air last weekend in Maine, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to take advantage of warm temps and sunny skies. After hitting up a nice brunch, my friend Bryan and I set out for a leisurely hike on our local Portland Trails system at the Fore River Sanctuary.