When your family is ready for an entry-level adventure vacation, tiny Costa Rica is the perfect place to start. Costa Rica family vacations have it all, beaches, jungles, volcanoes, and abundant wildlife, all in one beautiful and relatively safe and compact package. Costa Rica has bestowed some of my kids’ favorite travel moments and memories […]

For the five years when our two kids were between the ages of 8 and 17, our family had one sacred summer ritual: climbing Half Dome in California’s Yosemite National Park. The George Family Summer Half Dome Hike became one of those cherished family rites that will bind us throughout our lives. But the beginning […]

This June day, I spent the morning squatting in a clearing just off Upper Terrace Road at Mammoth Hot Springs in the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park, hand-digging Russian knapweed (Acroptilon repens). A hermit thrush serenaded me as I worked, its fluting song echoing through the nearby grove of Douglas-fir trees: first a long clear […]