In January of this year, a British woman, Felicity Aston, accomplished an incredible feat for adventure annals: She skied solo and unassisted across Antarctica. She is the first woman — and first human — to do so. Dragging two sleds carrying 187 pounds of supplies for 1,084 miles, she completed …
For the past two-and-a-half years, I have been writing about adventure topics for The Adventure Corner travel blog, on everything from the merits of bumpy roads to tracking devices on narwhals. From my own thoughts on adventure to the latest scientific research, we’ve covered a lot of ground together. Looking …
Interstate rest stops are some of my favorite places when it comes to getting ideas for new adventures. Inside their doors are racks filled with printed brochures and colorful maps that promise excitement just down the road. It’s a banner day when I can replace my old, well-worn, highway map …
Antibacterial soaps, alcohol wipes, and bleach in our everyday cleaning products have made us focused on eliminating all the germs that we possibly can from our lives. And when it comes to our children, it seems that focus turns into an obsession. It’s here, though, where we soon become at …
Nature surrounds us with an amazing variety of animals, insects, birds, plants, and topographic features. To refer to and distinguish the entities in this bounty, we assign them names — often two: one for common use and one, a two-parter, for scientific identification. Usually, the person credited with discovering or …
When you hear about the great journeys undertaken by some of nature’s smallest creatures, you can’t help but feel inspired to step into adventures of your own that may be outside your comfort zone. And no odyssey is greater than that of the Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea). Weighing only 3.2 …
British explorer and Royal Navy officer Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912. A hundred years later, on January 17, 2012, in honor of this historic adventure, the National Geographic Society exhibited some rare photos of the expedition, taken by Herbert Ponting. A former rancher out …
Cute, adorable animals are often used to garner support for environmental causes in places that are remote. After all, it’s hard to have concern for an area that is at the opposite end of the Earth from where you live and for which you have no plans to ever see. …
There are twice as many emperor penguins in Antarctica than previously thought, stated the National Science Foundation in mid April. That’s certainly good news, as concerns about the effects of global warming on penguin colonies rise. But another new report mentions an increasing number of something else in Antarctica that …
In 1719, when cartographer John Senex was drawing a map of the English empire in America, there was still a lot that was unknown. The little information about this “new land” that he did have came from the accounts of various Jesuit and French explorers, and not much of it …