If you use a wheelchair or travel with someone who does, you know how quickly your day can go downhill when a destination has no ramps or accessible restrooms. That’s why Elysia Everett and Dave Jensen co-founded the Friendly Like Me app — so people could know this vital info before they go.
“People are more than just one thing, and accessibility means something different for everyone,” said Everett, CEO of Friendly Like Me, in a statement. “Disability is very individual, sometimes temporal, always in front of us, and yet–continues to surprise us.”
The folks at Friendly Like Me helped us put together this list of the 10 most accessible national parks in the United States. Now, let’s all go out and explore.
Vancouver is an outdoorsy city. After all, it’s built on the coast in a temperate rainforest with more nearby mountains than a non-geologist can count. Whether you like hikes in the forest or cruising through waterways via kayak, Vancouver is full of adventure both within its borders and in the surrounding area.
You may or may not get lucky with the weather. On my recent trip, the temperature hit 70 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time that year. It was like the buildings had ejected their inhabitants, and vitamin D-starved people were everywhere. But that doesn’t happen every day.
When you visit Vancouver, be prepared with rain pants and a rain jacket so you don’t miss all the city has to offer — even if you encounter what we in the Northwest like to call “liquid sunshine.” With the right gear, you’ll be ready to tackle this list of the best things to do in Vancouver.
Do you want to swim with a 40-foot-long endangered fish that weighs 11 tons? Lots of people do, making whale shark tourism popular in places like western Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. In North America, La Paz, Mexico, is the place to swim with these enormous creatures.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species lists the whale shark as “vulnerable to extinction.” Their biggest threat is human activity. While hunting is the biggest problem, conservationists are also watching the steep rise in wildlife tourism.
In February, La Paz, a city of 250,000 on the Baja Peninsula, suspended whale shark tours in the Bay of La Paz because of a sudden drop in sightings. After about six weeks — which is long in tourism time and dollars — local authorities decided tours could resume.
Photo courtesy of FITUPAZ
Outdoors Wire talked to Ximena Vega, a tourist guide at Red Travel Mexico, to find out what was going on with the suspension and how people monitor whale sharks and decide on safe levels of human interaction.
“The whale shark population in La Paz Bay is monitored mainly by the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP), but it involves environmental authorities, tourism service providers, the scientific community, and NGOs,” Vega said.
Twice a week, boats go out to established areas 700 meters from the coast and “report on the number of sharks sighted, the sighting sites, the average size of the specimens and their behavior, as well as weather conditions,” Vega said. “This pause in whale shark activities is one of the measures we take to protect the population. When five or fewer of the species are seen within a defined area, these activities are suspended.”
Photo courtesy of FITUPAZ
The Bay of La Paz is a protected area where the number of boats allowed is strictly limited. “Only one boat is allowed per whale shark, and there can be a maximum of only 14 boats per shift,” Vega said. All boats are monitored via GPS, must stay within a defined area, and comply with strict speed limits.
Whale sharks prefer warm water temperatures above 72 degrees. These filter feeders mostly swim at the ocean’s surface, which makes them vulnerable to boat strikes, fishing mishaps, plastic ingestion, and tourism. Each whale shark has a unique spot pattern akin to human fingerprints. This is super convenient for researchers tracking the endangered species.
If you decide to swim with whale sharks in La Paz or elsewhere, enter the water slowly and stay at least a meter away. Don’t touch the sharks, and — it should go without saying, but some yahoos need to be told — do not attempt to ride the shark. Show some respect for the world’s largest fish.
Does your mom gravitate toward lakes, rivers, streams, and the sea? Do people accuse her of being a mermaid? If so, celebrate Mother’s Day with a gift that recognizes her affinity for water. Whether she loves to glide over the rivers on a paddle board, challenge the waves while surfing, plunge in for a swim, or dive deep with an air tank, these gifts will make her day. And consider getting yourself a new swimsuit and updating your gear, too, so you can join mom in her aquatic adventures. Because the best Mother’s Day gift is a shared experience that will make incredible memories.
Once in a while, a kayaker might have the thrill of being all alone on a remote, pristine lake. And while this scenario has its obvious charms, there’s a lot to be said for the ease and fun of urban paddling. Whether you live in a city on a river or are just visiting one, it’s often possible to rent a kayak or go on a guided trip, even if you only have a few hours. Exploring by water gives you a unique understanding of the city and a chance to see spectacular skyline views. Experience the magic for yourself at these 16 urban kayakingdestinations in the United States.
A hot pink kayak drops over the edge of a giant waterfall. For a few seconds, only froth and foam are visible. Then, a light pink spot emerges from the foam, getting brighter and brighter until kayaker Dane Jackson emerges victorious, still in his kayak. It’s the first giant drop in his descent down the world’s steepest rideable waterfall series at Chiapas, Mexico’s Santo Domingo Gorge.
Spoiler alert: he lived to tell the tale.
The four-part gorge drops more than 300 feet in less than .2 miles. Its four powerful waterfalls are Angel Wings, The Dome, Toboggan, and Raw Dog.
Jackson is a four-time Freestyle World Champion kayaker. His whitewater adventures include feats in Chile, Pakistan, and Kenya. But Chiapas, Mexico, has been on his mind for the last decade.
“I have been to so many incredible places all over the world, but the Santo Domingo Gorge is truly a one-of-a-kind sequence of waterfalls,” Jackson said in a statement. “It is one of those places you can’t believe when you see it. You can look up at that majestic sequence of waterfalls and know you can run the entire thing; there is nowhere and nothing like it.”
Photo by Lucas Gilman
The beautiful falls could easily turn deadly. Much of the Santo Domingo River is only accessible by kayak. So, if something were to go wrong, good luck getting medical help in time! The nearest hospital is two hours away by rough back roads. And that’s only going to help if you can get the kayaker out of the gorge.
Jackson assembled an international safety paddle team in case he ran into trouble. His crew — Israel “River” Maderos (Mexico), Bren Orton (United Kingdom), Adrian Mattern (Germany), David Sodomka (Czech Republic), and Issac Martinez (Mexico) — was trained in emergency procedures and positioned along the route. You can see them in the video, sitting in the calm pools at the bottoms of the falls, probably crossing their fingers and toes that Jackson didn’t wipe out. California-based adventure photographer Lucas Gilman captured the footage.
Photo by David Sodomka
Jackson, 29, is based in Rock Island, Tennessee. He spends more than half the year living in his RV while traveling to kayaking events and looking for new thrills. Jackson started kayaking as a child. His father, kayak champ and designer Eric Jackson, founded Jackson Kayak.
Discover tales of sunken ships, crashed planes, and more.
Ken Stewart first learned to scuba dive in 1989 and immediately became hooked. But by 2003, after almost 800 dives, his beloved sport had become a bit same-old, same-old.
“All the fish start looking alike,” Stewart said. “If you go from Florida to any exotic country, you’ll say, ‘oh, man, that fish looks like the same fish, or the same corals.’ There were some places that look more exotic than the other. But after a while, it becomes repetitive.”
His diving life perked up when a documentary filmmaker named Karuna Eberl contacted him. By then, Stewart, a Nashville resident, was the Southern states representative for the National Association of Black Scuba Divers. Eberl asked Stewart to put her in touch with some Black divers willing to be interviewed for her documentary “The Guerrero Project.” The slave ship Guerrero, which has still not been found, sank in 1827 somewhere around what is now Biscayne National Park in Florida.
Photo by Tane Casserley
The project led Stewart to meet the late Brenda Lanzendorf, a park archeologist at Biscayne National Park. “We became instant friends,” Stewart said. “She had this infectious personality. She was unbelievable.” Lazendorf was congressionally mandated to monitor the 41 or so wrecks in Biscayne National Park. But she was a lone diver. And she needed a diving buddy.
Back home in Nashville, Stewart had an epiphany. He sent out an email to the divers who’d become involved in the Guerrero project. “I said, ‘Are you tired of the same old diving? Let’s dive with a purpose.’ And that’s exactly how it started.” Within a year, Lazendorf and Stewart had assembled the first Diving with a Purpose (DWP) program.
Diving with a Purpose today
Now about 20 years old, DWP is a leading volunteer underwater archaeology program. It provides education, training, and project support services for submerged conservation projects and heritage preservation. DWP focuses on the African diaspora but also works on many other shipwrecks.
More than 300 people have participated in DWP. Most are repeat attendees. Every year, a DWP group dives together in Florida, documenting wrecks. The program has expanded from Biscayne National Park to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA).
Stewart is involved with DWP’s spinoff program, Youth Diving with a Purpose (YWDP), which trains young divers to be archeology advocates that help document shipwrecks. Additionally, DWP consults on projects worldwide.
Underwater archeology
If you’re like me, your first vision of diving into a shipwreck includes swimming around a whole ship on the seafloor, the vessel’s name clearly written on the side, and perhaps an old skeleton still at the helm. I probably saw this in a cartoon.
“In the Keys, any wooden ship that has sunk, it’s not intact,” Stewart informed me. In addition to deterioration caused by ocean activity, undersea worms eat the wood. Instead of an intact vessel, divers explore a field of artifacts on the ocean floor. “The worms can’t eat the artifacts,” Stewart said.
Divers map the artifacts with pin flags and strings called baselines. They use trilateration mapping, which lets them determine positions using distances from at least three known points. The baseline could be 300 yards long. The divers form groups of two to work sections of the wreck. While underwater, they’re mapping, writing figures down, and even doing in situ drawings that can involve staying in the same place for an hour or more.
Photo by Tane Casserley
Part of the process is figuring out what’s an artifact and what isn’t. “Usually the artifacts have some kind of crustaceans on it, so it’s very difficult to determine what an artifact is when it’s on the ocean floor,” Stewart said. “Sometimes you can take your knife and you can hit the artifact. Oh, it sounds like metal. So you know Mother Nature didn’t make metal. So they’ll do that with every artifact along those 300 yards of baseline. Every one.” Before the divers resurface, they remove all the flags and the baseline. Two architects work with DWP to turn the divers’ info into site maps.
This kind of detailed work takes a special kind of diver. It’s not for everybody. Many divers prefer working with DWP’s conservation program, Stewart says, which is more hands-on and helps restore coral reefs.
DWP and the African diaspora
A lot of people contact DWP because they want to help document slave ships, Stewart said. However, not many have been found. Stewart has only conducted dives on three of them. “We’re laying the groundwork for people who want to be involved in the documentation of a slave wreck when and if another one is found,” he said.
The first slave ship Stewart dove was the Henrietta Marie, an English ship that carried captive Africans to the West Indies. It wrecked in 1700, 35 miles off the coast of Key West. Since it was on its way back to England, no Africans were on board. Treasure hunter Mel Fisher found it in 1972, and Stewart dove it in the late 1980s.
“The eeriness of it is what kind of gets to you,” Stewart told me.
Eventually, the cleaned-up artifacts toured the United States in a traveling exhibit called “A Slave Ship Speaks.” “The thing that really brings tears to your eyes, and everybody who has seen it, is the shackles for the children,” Stewart said. In his work with youth, Stewart tries to convey the horror of finding oneself enslaved. “I tell the children all the time, here you are walking down the street and then somebody snatches you up and takes you to another country. You never see your family again. Can you imagine that? And most kids can’t. Most people can’t.”
The National Association of Black Scuba Divers placed a plaque at the site of the Henrietta Marie. Divers can use GPS to find the plaque and the ship’s hull, which is encased in sand.
Photo courtesy of Diving with a Purpose
DWP has also documented Tuskegee Airmen airplanes in Michigan’s Lake Huron. The men who flew these planes were the first Black military aviators in the country. During World War II, they escorted American bombers over Italy and protected larger bombers from German planes. Fifteen of the airmen died while training over the Great Lakes. DWP was able to document the plane flown by Lieutenant Frank H. Moody. The organization also helped raise funds to place a memorial to the Tuskegee Airmen beside Lake Huron.
As for the Guerrero, the wrecked ship that inspired DWP’s creation, divers are still looking. This July, YDWP is conducting what Stewart hopes will be the final search for the ship. “I’m bringing the crème de la crème, the best that I’ve got,” he said. “These kids are dynamic.” And if they finally find the Guerrero, DWP will have a whole new chapter in its documentation mission.
Want to help? Qualified divers with more than 30 dives (or 25 for youth) are welcome to get involved with DWP. You can also donate to Diving with a Purpose here.
Want to learn more about slave ships? The Africatown Heritage House in Mobile, Alabama, is opening its new exhibit documenting the Clotilda on July 8, 2023.
While ziplining is recognized worldwide today as an adventurous form of recreation, the earliest ziplines were all about practicality. The first known ziplines were used in ancient China to cross rivers. Later, Australians used ziplines during wars for transportation and to deliver food, mail, and ammunition. In the 1970s, a wildlife biologist named Donald Perry began creating primitive canopy ziplines to study the jungles of Costa Rica. Perry was the first to patent zipline technology.
Now, zipline outfitters around the world compete to have the best course. This list includes standouts, whether they claim superlatives like fastest, longest, or steepest, or just take advantage of incredible scenery.
The outdoors are for everyone. Even so, humanity has a long history of people monopolizing spaces to the exclusion of other identities. While everyone should have the right to explore the world, actually doing so is difficult when laws and social norms prohibit or restrict your options.
Many obstacles have barred women in the United States from traveling the world and experiencing the outdoors. Systemic racism makes these obstacles even more difficult for women of color to overcome. Despite all of this, several female explorers throughout history fought to experience the world on their terms. This Women’s History Month, honor these women by learning about their lives and accomplishments. Not sure where to start? Here are three incredible female explorers you should know about.
Photo courtesy George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images
Bessie Coleman
Groundbreaking aviator Bessie Coleman was born on January 26, 1892. Inspired by her brothers and their stories of World War I pilots, Coleman applied to flight schools throughout the country. As a woman of African American and Native American descent, she faced rejection from each institution due to systemic sexism and racism.
Unwilling to give up on her dream, Coleman took French classes so she could apply to flight schools in France. In 1921, she earned her international pilot’s license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. After returning to the U.S., Coleman gained attention as the first African American woman to perform a public flight. Her impressive flying tricks amazed people across America and Europe.
Today, her memory lives on throughout the world. Scholarships in her name encourage women and people of color to pursue aviation careers. Coleman was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2001 and the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2006.
Sarah Winnemucca
Born around 1844, author and activist Sarah Winnemucca was first known as Thocmetony. This Northern Paiute name means “shell flower.” Winnemucca grew up around what is now western Nevada and California. Despite once being kicked out of a school after parents complained about “Indians being in school with their children,” Winnemucca learned several languages (including English and Spanish) during her youth.
As an adult, Winnemucca used her communication and translation skills to advocate for Native Americans. She traveled across the country working as an interpreter, writing about her experiences as a Paiute woman, and educating Paiute children and incarcerated Native Americans. With her 1883 book “Life Among the Piutes,” Winnemucca made history as the author of the first known autobiography written by a Native American woman.
Modern anthropologists continue to recognize Winnemucca’s work today. Omer Call Stewart, a cultural anthropologist with the University of Colorado, once declared her book “one of the most enduring ethnohistorical books” written by a Native American person. Winnemucca was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 1993.
Photo via Wikimedia, courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress
Zora Neale Hurston
Acclaimed author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891 and raised in Eatonville, Florida. The town was America’s “first incorporated all-black city,” and the area influenced Hurston throughout her career.
As a student, Hurston displayed a “fiery intellect.” While attending Howard University in 1918, she studied anthropology and co-founded the student newspaper “The Hilltop.” Hurston’s anthropological research focused on the spiritual practices of Black communities in New Orleans, Jamaica, and Haiti. In addition to publishing this research, she also wrote short stories, plays, and novels that drew upon her experiences of adventuring through the world. While Hurston is perhaps best known for her 1937 novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” she also received awards for her short story “Spunk” and her play “Color Struck.”
In the 21st century, writers, readers, anthropologists, and travelers alike remain drawn to Hurston’s work. The Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Heritage Trail in Fort Pierce, Florida, leads visitors on a walking tour of her life. Here, people can begin their journey at the Zora Neale Hurston Branch Library and honor the author’s legacy while exploring markers along the trail.
Historically, archery has been the domain of warriors and hunters. But even if you have no inclination toward warfare or slaughtering your own dinner, the challenging sport has health and psychological benefits. It can increase your confidence and improve your hand-eye coordination and upper-body strength. And talk about focus! Archers must be able to stand strong and steady while anticipating how wind, sun, rain, and other conditions will influence their arrows. People of all ages (though experts recommend children be at least eight years old) can enjoy the sport. Whether you’re an accomplished or aspiring archer, here are some archery ranges around the United States and Canada where you can let your arrows fly.
Sarah Winnemucca
