A Grand Canyon Mule Ride

The Grand Canyon: More than a mile deep. More than two hundred miles long. Home to a rich river ecosystem, with waterfalls, bubbling springs, lush canyons, it is nevertheless filled with desert-bare stone, rocky areas only slightly more hospitable than the surface of the moon. Permeated with vital living things — birds, rodents, reptiles, scampering mammals — at the same time it holds the fossilized remnants of creatures a billion years dead. Adventure-seeker that I am, here I am at 8:30 in the...

A Lake Cruise With Dinner and Fireworks

It’s amazing how much I like boats, and yet how seldom I do anything nautical. So I’m here to remedy that, with an evening lake cruise. A dinner cruise no less, with fireworks. Lake George is a spring-fed glacial pond in upstate New York, 320 feet above sea level, 32 miles long, 1 to 3 miles wide, up to 200 feet deep, and unusual on our continent in that it flows north instead of south, draining into Lake Champlain. Just a touch short of being crystal clear, the lake appears on the map as a jagged...