GeoChallenge 102: How to Play Now that you have been introduced to GeoChallenges – the highlight of our soon-to-debut revamped website, Pocket Ranger® eXchange™ - in the first part of our GeoChallenge guide, it’s time to learn how to play! Pocket Ranger® GeoChallenge from PocketRanger® on Vimeo. Where do I begin? To participate in any of the Pocket Ranger® eXchange™ games or challenges, you’ll need [...]

Fireside Fiesta: 5 Camp-friendly Recipes for Cinco de Mayo This Cinco de Mayo celebrate Mexican heritage (and delicious food) by gathering around the campfire or grill and feasting on these delicious culturally inspired recipes. For those unfamiliar with the holiday, Cinco de Mayo or “The Fifth of May” is a Mexican celebration of national heritage that is often honored with lots and lots of [...]

What’s Your Mountain?: Conquering Goals in the Parks We all have mountains to conquer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to trek to the top of a nearby peak to reach our goal. The Post Grape-Nuts Fit “What’s Your Mountain?” GeoChallenge isn’t about scaling rocky mountainsides – unless, of course, that’s next on your bucket list. Your “mountain” can be any hurdle you’re [...]

Vantage Point: Desert Climbing in Washington State Contributed by Michael Restivo, Mike off the Map Washington is known for its unique and diverse landscapes. While Mount Rainier dominates the snowy Cascades and Olympic mountains, lush rainforests caress the rocky shorelines in the west. One of Washington’s most striking and unexpected landscapes is a dusty desert that encompasses the area known as Vantage, just [...]

5 Greatest Man Vs. Nature Novels In literature, the adversarial relationship between man and nature can be traced back to early creation myths, when human beings attempted to make sense of the world through their experiences with nature. The Greeks anthropomorphized forces of nature into capricious and at-times vengeful Gods, and numerous stories, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Noah’s Ark, feature cataclysmic [...]

Digiscoping With Your Children Contributed by Al Quackenbush, The SoCal Bowhunter Have you ever tried to get a four year-old sit in one place for a long period of time? How about a short period of time? It’s nearly impossible! They have an abundance of energy and are always on the move. So how do you slow them down? The key [...]

Waynesborough State Park to Cliffs of the Neuse State Park: 22-mile Overnight Paddleboard Contributed by Bill Howard, Bill Howard’s Outdoors and Bow Adventures Magazine. The weekend was shaping up to be very interesting. After having a week of 80-degree weather, here in North Carolina, a cold front stormed its way in on Friday and would drop the highs to the low to mid 60’s Saturday and Sunday. At stake was a [...]

Park Spotlight: Image: Bottle Beach State Park Bottle Beach State Park, located in Washington State, is a 75-acre day use park with 6,000 feet of shoreline harbor. The park, named for a bottle factory that once existed on the premises, is a frequent destination to migrating shorebirds such as Western and Least Sandpipers, Dunlin, and Semi-palmated Plovers, who make appearances along the [...]

GeoChallenge 101: A Guide for the Geo-Challenged Many of you have been digging the delicious recipes supplied by our proud partner, Post Grape-Nuts Fit, not to mention enjoying the tasty product samples available at participating state parks. Well, we have even more great news, because this partnership just got better! To celebrate joining forces with Post Grape-Nuts Fit, we teamed up to create [...]

5 Greatest Animal Companions Animal companions and parks go hand-in-hand. If you’ve ever taken your pet to a state park, you know how much our four-legged friends absolutely love the outdoors. The moment you release them from the car and they smell the pine trees or hear the rush of the river, their tails start to wag like crazy [...]

SOG Woodline Knife Review and GIVEAWAY! Contributed by Al Quackenbush, The SoCal Bowhunter   Right out of the box the SOG Woodline fixed blade knife separated the elk hide from flesh like it was warm butter. It was sharp, fit perfectly in my hand and was a comfortable weight. Even though I had bloody hands, the SOG Woodline fixed blade knife is an [...]

Off-Duty Confidential: The Campy Mom Just when you thought a busy mother of three young children couldn’t possibly add one more thing to an already jam-packed schedule, Tiffany Akin proves there’s always room for adventure. The Campy Mom, as Akin’s known in the blogosphere, not only makes time for the outdoors but she also makes sure it’s part of her [...]

Review: LifeStraw helps outdoorsmen suck it up Contributed by Bill Howard. I keep a backpack I use on those “special” hunting trips where I may be gone from home for several days in the wilderness. I keep things such as an extra fall restraint system (in case my safety vest were to either get damaged or get used for its purpose, I [...]

Giveaway, Part 2: 20 items under $20 Bill Howard‘s second offering of free gear is here! To enter, tell us in the comments section what you need for your next outdoor—you might just win your very own! We’ll announce the winner next Friday after our third installment. Good luck! LifeStraw Personal Water Filter I once posted that I find it as a [...]

The Best Camping Pranks We love camping because it gives us a chance to leave behind all the stress, all the technology, all the appliances, all the people, all the social media, all the television and video games…all the things that are fun? Let’s face it, sometimes camping can be boring.  There’s usually one surefire way to bring some [...]

Giveaway, Part 1: 20 items under $20 Starting today, and running consecutively for the following four Fridays, our contributor Bill Howard (Bow America) will be sharing his suggestions for best hunting and fishing gear under $20. Do you agree with his favorite finds? Be sure to tell us in the comment below, as we will be giving away some of these items [...]

What’s up with SUP? Intro to Paddleboarding Contributed by Jacqueline Basallo, The Basallo Brainery. I have a confession to make: I’m a born-and-raised Miamian who can’t swim. (Even those of us who live within close proximity to the water have a hard time staying afloat.) I’ve mastered the doggy paddle and my underwater skills are up to par with Ariel but, beyond [...]

Packing Tips: Essentials For a Bow Hunting Adventure Contributed by Al Quackenbush, The SoCal Bowhunter Over the past two decades I have seen hunting backpacks grow in popularity and size. Not only cubic inches, but number of pockets and where we can strap things. Don’t be sucked into the thought that you have to fill each and every pocket or empty space with something. [...]

Let it Burn: How to Build a Campfire Campfires are to camping what packs are to hiking. Sure, you could probably do without one, but the experience would just not be the same. If not for a campfire we could not make s’mores or grill dinner, and, in the winter, we’d probably freeze by nightfall. Although the convenience of matches and lighters to ignite [...]

The Backyard Bard: Three Twisted Tales to Tell Around the Campfire When our mouths aren’t full of s’mores you can often find us sitting around the campfire swapping spooky stories and trying our hardest to scare the pants off of our friends and family. With Halloween fast approaching what better time to gather everyone around a blazing bonfire and haunt the night with ghastly ghost stories [...]