Trip Calendar

Creating a Fall Trip Calendar

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Our post from earlier this week about the fee-free weekend at all of the National Parks got me thinking – what else is coming up this year? I have never tried to pre-plan with any kind of a trip calendar. I usually pick up on upcoming events and celebrations from a variety of online sites and bloggers. I then quickly react to the ones that are a good fit for me and my family. This is often too rushed and causes stress, not just for the kids who are thrown in the car at the last minute, but us grownups as well. I am not sure if I have ever pulled out of the driveway without that “Did I forget something? I think I forgot something” feeling.

Trip Calendar
As long as there are a few rocks to climb on the trip calendar, the Kiddos are happy.

So I am going to get a jump on things this time. I’m going to list some of the sites and resources that I check on a regular basis to see what’s going on and to get ideas for quick trips with the family. Maybe it’ll be helpful for someone else. Please share if you are aware of a service or site that I’m missing.

Upcoming Events and Dates – Fall Trip Calendar

So here are a few dates and sources of event feeds that I may consult as I put together my calendar. In a perfect world, we’d make all of them. But with school, basketball games, volleyball practices, piano lessons, etc. it won’t happen. A family can dream though, right? So please add anything, preferably nation-wide that we could join in on.

Full National Park Service Event Feed

Full Appalachian Trail Conservancy Event Feed

Full Pacific Crest Trail Association Event Feed

Full List of Environmental Days Feed on Wikipedia – you can pretty much celebrate something every day

National Garden for Wildlife Month – held every year in May

Great American Campout – held every year in June

National Trails Day – held every year in June

National Park & Rec Month – held every year in July

 

I really don’t have any criteria for what will make my calendar (I’m sure yours would be different as well) but I hope to list as many kid-level events as I can. One thing I am seeing resonate with the Kiddos is when they realize outdoor fun and camping out isn’t just an ‘us’ things. Their friends get out too. They meet kids their own ages at the parks. It can be as much about the outdoor community as the great outdoors itself.

Is this something you already do? Is there a better way?

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Get in Free to All National Parks

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This weekend the National Park Service turns 100 years old. To celebrate the milestone everyone will GET IN FREE to all 400+ National Parks!! This is very, very cool. Now a few parks are free already, but many charge at least a $3 “entrance” or “transportation/parking” fee. But not this weekend. So click through and find the closest place to you.

Get in Free NPS MapWhile the century celebration has been a full year party for the NPS, this weekend is especially nifty as August 25th it is THE day that President Woodrow Wilson signed the paperwork to make the NPS a legit federal service, back in 1916. What an awesome thing. So this “fee-free day” is actually 3 days long.

More Get In Free Days to Come

While there have been fee-free days earlier this year, there are two more upcoming days in 2016, though they are legitimately just a single day each:

  1. September 24th – in coordination with National Public Lands Day
  2. November 11th – in honor of Veterans Day

I love how the NPS markets all of their protected lands and memorials as ‘America’s Best Idea’. I agree, it is that important. I hope everyone gets out, enjoys and celebrates how wonderful it is to live in a place that has things like the National Park System.

If you aren’t able to get out this weekend or just live too far from any of the 124 parks that are waiving their fees, you can follow the hashtag #findyourpark on all the social media channels. I know that’s one conversation I want to join this weekend. The NPS is also active on Twitter and Facebook, if those are places you hang out online.

So how about it – are you going to get out and take advantage of the fee-free park days this weekend?

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Pokemon Go – Is It Good For Kids?

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We hid it as long as we could, but we ultimately failed. We were walking into a shop last week and my ten-year-old overheard some teens hanging out around the entrance and he asked, “What are they all doing with their phones and why are they talking about Pokemon?” That was it folks. We told him about Pokemon Go.

By the time we left the store it was downloaded on a phone and he was “catching some of them” on the ride home. But my fear was that he was the one captured. Screen addiction seems to be a real thing. I mean look at this sunset he missed because he was staring the screen:

Pokemon_Go_Sunset
Look at this sunset he missed.

What’s interesting is the effect the virtual reality app has had on kids’ desires to sit inside or brave this summer heat. In some cases it’s almost miraculous. According to Bloomberg, the data being shared by health apps and activity tracker companies is pointing up:

  • Citing numbers from a fitness band manufacturer, users almost DOUBLED their active steps from 6k a week to 11k a week.
  • An Apple Watch app that tracks heart rate said that 53% of its users were more active due to being out playing Pokémon Go.
  • Some folks using the My Fitness Pal app have started labeling some of their walking workouts as “Pokemon Go”

See the whole article here. I know that day my child ran around the fields well into twilight. And it’s hard to argue with actual data from app developers. But is there a cost?

Will kids be conditioned to think that the great outdoors is best seen through a screen?

Pokemon Go
No looking for fireflies this night.

Most of the other parents I’ve talked to around the neighborhood have been all for it. I guess we’ll see if this really does keep kids off the couch or if it’s a one month fad. What happens when they run out of Pokémon to catch? Make more? Ditch the app? Will kids be conditioned to think that the great outdoors is best seen through a screen?

I have to admit that I haven’t seen an Pokémon Go players out on the trails behind the house. Maybe Pokémon are not creatures of the forest? Or I bet, like we all know, trails and hiking can be hard work. I imagine the designers of the game just found it easier to tether their virtual Pokémon creatures to known landmarks rather than trek off into the woods and sweat for it.

Pokemon Go phone
It drained the batteries faster than his desire to run around outside chasing fake creatures.

Which in the end could be a good thing. Let the Pokémon rule the city, Bambi the woods and Hobbits the shire.

What are your thoughts on Pokemon Go? Is it good for your kids?

 

Teaching Kids About Litter

Teaching Kids About Litter

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As stated in a previous post, we had a blast this 4th of July. But one thing we did – we made a terrible mess. Face it: all those sparklers, pops, rockets, booms, and firecrackers come at a cost – they litter the ground with trash. And it’s not good. It was a huge mess! We woke the next morning and you could not help but see all the small colored pieces of paper scattered in the grass. So I wanted to think of a way to go about teaching kids about litter.

Teaching Kids about litteringI got a couple of the older kids to do a pass with me to pick up what we could, but it wasn’t enough. So while we were picking up I mentioned to the kids how I was embarrassed by the mess we made while having such a good time. I asked them what could we do next time. There were lots of shrugs. But after a younger kid commented on how pretty, colorful and shiny the trash was I had a couple of ideas.

Tell me if these ideas make you roll your eyes:

  1. Next 4th we will do a better job with a “sand pit” with higher walls. This will do a better job of collecting some of the trash. We’ll also “aim” better to make trash pick up easier and not scatter it all over the place.
  2. We will have supplies on hand for the littler kids to make “art” out of all the spent fireworks. I could see this being pretty cool, if we had the right firecracker packaging to blow up. Not sure about your kids, but ours L-O-V-E to glue things together and make art. It could be fun.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve come up with for now. I will be sure to read up on some smarter ways to launch fireworks before the next July 4th celebration. Someone has to have figured all this out, right?

It seems to be easier to get my kids excited about the “play” side of things when it comes to the great outdoors, but teaching conservation and stewardship is a much harder idea to get them to buy into. Maybe this will become a great opportunity to teach them.

I’m open to all the ideas!

Fireworks Photos

4 Tips for Taking Firework Photos

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This past weekend was a fantastic one around here. The 4th of July holiday was much needed. Hopefully you and your friends and family were able to squeeze some time in celebrating the 4th. Ours was filled with swimming, a hike, diving, picnics outside and fireworks. With all of the preparation that went into the weekend, I failed in one area – read up on how to take quality firework photos with my camera phone. I’ve never been able to do it. The timing and steady hand have eluded me in the past and I should have collected some phone photo pic tips before the long weekend.

Fireworks Photo

I’m not 100% sure when the next fireworks-filled event is (New Years?), but I want to be prepared. So I clicked around the internet and collected what seems to be the most universally acknowledged “best practices” for taking quality images of fireworks at night. In no particular order, here are the top four tips:

Turn Off the Flash

Basically the light from your phone’s flash reaches out only a few feet. Certainly not all the way into the sky. But your phone auto-activates because you’re standing in the dark. So the pros recommend turning it off to get the best auto-color settings, etc. from your phone. The camera doesn’t need to be expecting to get back a flash-filled image when in fact all it’s going to see is a colored lights in the sky.

Buy a Tripod

While this would not have helped us much during the show we attended (we were on a boat), I get what everyone is saying. Fireworks happen fast and every little shimmy and shake will show even with the biggest glow. I’ll be sure to have a small tripod with me for the next event. Now I just have to research what makes a good tripod…

Fireworks Photo

Play with Slo-Mo, Filters, Time-Lapse, Panorama, Square, etc.

These are two new software features that most phone software has. I can see the appeal and fun of it. It was fun taking slo-mo video of the kids diving and cannonballing into the water. But I’m just not sure I have the patience to start toggling all the settings. When I’m out with friends, I like to enjoy the sights and chatter. Not looking down at my phone the whole time. That being said – I will try these each a couple of times just to see if I am missing out on something really cool. I mean, what are the chances a bunch of people on the internet are wrong about this?

 

My best tip, from this past weekend…

For the fourth and final tip, I offer one born out of experience from this past weekend. Take lots of pics. Look for something called Burst Mode. On my phone, I can hold down the button and it will start taking a photo every split-second. It’s really kind of amazing. Basically, I’d wait to hear the boom of the rocket launch and then hold down the button. It’d start racking up images. Once the firework popped and faded I’d let go. Each set like this had 30-40 images in it. I could then quickly delete all but the one or two images I wanted to keep. It worked great.

How about you? How was your 4th of July?

Any great tips I missed? Or better yet, any apps I should consider to help me out on night like these?

Any and all of your advice would be greatly appreciated. I’m tired of all my fireworks photography fails.

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