by Harley McAllister The Yellowstone Park Foundation is holding its second annual photo contest, and the deadline for entering has been extended an additional month. This is a fundraiser, so there is a $25 fee to enter up to 20 photos, but it goes to a good cause and there are several categories with prizes up to $5000. So if you are a shutterbug who loves the National Parks, you might want to check it out on their website here. And for a little inspiration, here are a few of our favorite Yellowstone photos. |
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By Abby McAllister So...we don't blog much in the summer...that's because we're too busy being outside! Duh! I am in between trips at the moment and am struggling to get photos downloaded, sorted, edited and posted. I recently shared on FB our gallery of photos from Pinnacles NP and today got photos from Sequoia NP up. You can find the inspiration galleries for each park under our "trip reports" tab above and then under the "National Parks" tab or by clicking the green linked text above. We loved our time in California and will be posting more photos from the other parks as soon as we quit playing outdoors and find the time to get in front of the computer again!
We are excited to begin a countdown to our official Utah guide book release. Although it is already available on Amazon and doing well, we have been planning to have a special release event in March. In order to count us down to March 11th we will be posting our favorite Utah national park moments each Friday. We will feature a favorite moment from one parent (Harley or I) and one moment shared by one of our kids. Today we kick off the countdown with our Zion National Park most memorable moments! Surprised by Unexpected BeautyBy Abby McAllister
Feeling Like An Action Movie Star!By Kaden McAllister, age 14 The most memorable part of Zion NP for me has to have been the hike to Hidden Canyon. This particular hike took us along a really steep cliff wall. The trail was carved out of the rock or sometimes followed a narrow ledge. In some places chains had been drilled into the rock wall for you to hold on to, so you wouldn’t fall down the few-hundred-foot drop. I remember looking down and being glad of the chains! It made me feel like I was in a movie or something, hiking along that precipice. At the top of the mountain, the end of the path, there was a ravine with boulders that you could scramble over and around. We spent hours jumping over and crawling under the boulders. I also loved the view from the top. You could see all the way back to the trailhead, and see all of the people, as small as pinheads along the trail. It really let you see how far you had come. Going down was fun too because I didn’t have to work as hard as I had coming up.
By Abby McAllister
by Harley McAllister
by Harley McAllister As we write this, we have recently completed a couple of major changes in our lives. We moved back to the US about a month ago, and our family has grown by one with the completion of our adoption of Isaac - a 2 year old Dominican boy who will need heart surgery soon.
As we think about this transition, together with this adoption, we see things with some new perspective. Not only have we given this little boy a name and family, but as Americans we have also given him a rich heritage of all the rights and privileges that come with being a citizen of this country. In particular we are thinking of the privilege we enjoy of our public lands. The US was the first country to come up with the concept of National Parks, National Forests, National Monuments, and the like. And as citizens, we are all owners of these lands - we all have an equal right to access and enjoy these lands. We have a new appreciation for this heritage, this birthright, this inheritance. And we owe a great deal to the leaders and conservationists who pioneered these ideas and got the laws passed to make this happen. Men like Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Thoreau, and countless others. It is now in our hands to ensure that these public lands continue to be protected and maintained so that they can continue to delight our children and future generations. Accordingly, we are now embarking on a journey with the start of this website. It begins with sharing this rich heritage with our children, and continues with our efforts to encourage and enable other families to share this great gift, this great treasure, this great heritage with their children. In a couple of days we plan to put up some photos of our first trip upon return to the U.S. - Yellowstone National Park. So come along with us and enjoy! |
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