The holiday season is in full swing and we’ve put together a list of age-appropriate outdoor gifts for kiddos ranging in age from infancy to early elementary. This post contains affiliate links to stores where you can buy some of the products. With affiliate links you pay the same price for the products as you always would, but we receive a small commission on the purchase to help maintain our website. Infants Base Layers Any adventuring parent will tell you about the importance of a good set (or two) of base layers for the littlest adventurer on the trip. However,…
Hiking Glacier National Park with Toddlers
This past summer we had the opportunity to spend two weeks exploring in and around Glacier National Park. This National Park experiences extremely high visitor usage during the summer and is the tenth most visited National Park in the country. In 2017 alone the park had 3.31 million visitors. What is truly shocking about that number of visitors is the fact that in 2008, just 9 years previously, the park recorded only 1.81 million visitors. Due to the high number of visitors; finding kid-friendly hikes that aren’t ridiculously over crowded is definitely a challenge. In the end we found 5…
Outdoor Donkey – StayPut Connect Picnic Blanket
Companies frequently contact us asking to review or promote their products. More often than not we turn them down as we don’t like the quality or don’t think it’s a product that families should invest in. We were a bit hesitant to test and review the StayPut Connect™ Picnic Blanket because we weren’t sure what would be special about a blanket? However, the company that makes them, Outdoor Donkey, is based here in Minnesota and we instantly connected with the founder and owner, Sean. We love supporting our local companies and appreciated this company’s attention to detail. They made the…
Lake One BWCA
Our first ever trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) was back in 2016 over the long 4th of July weekend. We had idyllic weather with a sandy beach campsite and spent the weekend swimming, paddling, and having a blast. Since that first eden-esque trip we have made it a family tradition to head into the BWCA every 4th of July. This past year the weather definitely didn’t cooperate and we learned many invaluable lessons while out. As we put in at the popular Lake One public boat launch we enjoyed sun and warm weather. Rowan instantly had…
Canoeing with Babies – The Basics
Where does the baby go? Doesn’t your toddler just jump out of the boat? We get these questions frequently when speaking about taking our two children on canoe trips. They are now seasoned veterans of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) and after multiple trips with both children, in a variety of seating arrangements we have finally come up with the a seating arrangement that works for us! The sad news is, that since last summer, and the last open water we saw, our children continued to grow and develop so our once crawling baby is now a terror…
5 Tips for Best Bug Practices
Bugs are a major concern in many locations; spiders, ticks, mosquitos, no see ums, black flies, midges, honestly this list goes on and on. So, the underlying question to all of this is how do we properly prepare our children and ourselves for buggy days in the outdoors? We have developed a pretty simple system for keeping both adults and children relatively bug-free and happy. Bug Repellent After years of living in Washington state where the bugs aren’t generally an issue (although there was that one backpacking trip…. but, that’s another story) we ventured off on our first return camping…
Canyonlands National Park – Island in the Sky
Canyonlands National Park is massively large with 527 square miles of park to explore, divided into 4 distinct districts: The Needles, Island in the Sky, The Maze, and the rivers (the Green River and Colorado River converge within the park). This massive park has no road that connects the entire park together which means visitors generally chose to visit either the north or the south end. We could’ve spent a week exploring this remarkable park but, we only had two days to discover what this scenic place had to offer. Our first day was spent in the Island in the…
Hiking Arches National Park with Kids
Arches National Park may be my new favorite National Park! The geological formations are truly out of this world. The sheer number of sights to see and hikes to do is staggering. We spent two weeks in Moab, Utah, exploring this amazing area with our 3.5 year old son, Jack, and 15 month old daughter, Rowan. When all was said and done we spent 4 days hiking around Arches National Park. Our top three hikes in the park are varied in difficulty and length. Each one presents a unique view of this special park. We got to have many of…
A Walk On Lake Minnetonka
It’s easy to get depressed during the long cold months we endure here in Minnesota. One of the many ways we try and keep spirits up, and cabin fever in check, is planning activities that can only be done in the winter time. These season specific activities help us to look forward to all 4 seasons with equal anticipation of a new, exciting adventure as a family. Last winter we made it a goal to visit frozen waterfalls, this year we decided to take on a different type of ice adventure. Hiking on an ice covered lake is something I haven’t…
3 Great Parks for Biking with Kids in the Western Twin Cities
Biking has become a new family-favorite activity for us. We’ve had a fun summer and fall searching for our favorite, nearby bike trails. According to Explore Minnesota there are 4,000 miles of paved biking trails in this remarkable state of ours. It’s going to take us a long time to ride all of them, but for now we’ve selected our top 3 parks for biking with kids in the western Twin Cities metro area. All of these parks rank high for families because of the amenities they offer. The trailheads all have ample parking, various privy options, dumpsters, and drinking fountains…