Rose Write

Uncharted Territory: Discover the Top Ten Outdoor Adventures in Lewis Clark Valley

As the gateway to the awe-inspiring Hells Canyon, Lewis Clark Valley is an outdoor paradise. From kayaking to mountain biking, Lewis Clark Valley’s outdoor diversity will bring you in, but discovering this extraordinary (and crowd-free!) place will make you never want to leave. 

In the valley, recreation opportunities are limitless — that’s with a boat in the water or both feet on the ground. And with so many options, these ten ultimate LC Valley outdoor activities are the perfect place to begin your adventuring.

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Homebase: Midland

Traveling through Texas, sometimes visiting the next town over can feel like a day trip. Midland, on the other hand, is an anomaly. It feels, in the vast Texas landscape, close to everything. With multiple national parks within a couple hours’ drive, crystalline spring-fed pools and picturesque rolling sandhills, learn why Midland is your perfect homebase for countless epic Texas day trips. 

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Getting Around Grapevine

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West Texas Outdoors: A Trans Pecos Wildlife Guide

In Midland, a trip to the naturally sublime is a short one. More than country music and United States Presidents, Midland is the gateway to one of the most biologically diverse—and visually spectacular—areas in North America: The Trans Pecos Region of West Texas. Through its terrain and wildlife you’ll find a system of trails—and communities—that make Midland a paradise for any lover of the outdoors.

The Trans Pecos is unique—it’s not only the most mountainous area in the state of Texas, it’s also part of the largest desert in North America, the Chihuahuan Desert. Because it lies at a point where multiple ecosystems meet, Midland and its surrounding areas enjoy an abundance of wildlife, a biodiversity rivaling any in the nation.

Here are three perfect places to start your journey through Midland and its place in the Trans Pecos.

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Cascades to Coast: Oregon’s Spring Bounty

Growing up outside of Independence, Missouri—the 2,170 mile Oregon Trail’s eastern starting point—the importance of travel, and expanding horizons, was laced into the soil. I can still remember tracing the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails with orange and green crayons through Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas—all the way back home to Missouri. It’s no wonder Oregon always represented the classic journey for me.

Living and working in Boise, Idaho has given me lots of journeys and destinations to explore—with its immediate access to Oregon worth mentioning first. Needing to escape for the weekend, I fired up my Toyota Sequoia and headed west. The plan was simple: start in the Cascades, then hop, skip and/or jump my way to the Oregon Coast.

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Fun, Destruction, Virtue: Treating National Parks Ethically

On December 22nd, 2018, at midnight, Capitol Hill went dark. Budget disagreements resulted in the longest government shutdown in United States history—35 days. The shutdown touched every part of American life—but perhaps nowhere was it felt more than within our National Park System. 

Of 24,681 active NPS employees, 21,383 were deemed unessential. They stayed home, without pay, for 35 days—while our nation’s greatest parks remained open to visitors, and vulnerable to whatever action was privately deemed acceptable.

Parks employees are returning to America’s natural sanctuaries and finding evidence of gross misuse. Piles of trash, graffiti, usage of unauthorized trails, damaged landmarks, and human waste pepper our most iconic landscapes, with conservationists estimating public lands could take decades to recover from the damage—500-year-old Joshua trees destroyed by off-road vehicles and spray painted, $5,000 worth of tools and equipment stolen from Great Smoky Mountain, cars driving illegally through wildflower fields in Rocky Mountain.

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