Travel Outside the Box, Fourth Stop, Tasmania

Unlike the rest of the Caribbean, the attraction in Dominica is not the beach, but a lush mountainous interior ripe with every tropical fruit and vegetable imaginable and bathed with so much water that around every bend is another raging waterfall, a serene swimming hole nestled in the thick bush, or a hidden hot spring to rest your weary body after a day in the outdoors. Indeed, this island closest to Martinique has become an affordable haven for the active traveler who yearns to hike through a jungle-like forest (see my story for The Boston Globe).
During his 40-plus years in the travel industry, Dan Austin has reaped accolades like “World’s Best Tour Operator for Families” by Travel & Leisure. We can vouch firsthand for Dan’s exceptional product, having taken the kids to the Canadian Rockies on one of his guided multi-sport adventures. Each day, we sampled a different activity including whitewater rafting, hiking, biking, and rock climbing. It was one of our most memorable trips as a family and it led to this story in The Boston Globe. Yes, that’s my son, Jake, falling off the raft in the photo!
Nestled within Newfoundland’s Gros Morne National Park, a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its unique combination of quartzite rock and wetland terrain, the Long Range Mountains could very well be the one of the last remnants of pristine wilderness within a three-hour flight of New York and Boston. Yes, wilderness, one of the most misused words in the English language. Any green space with a chunk of land the size of a suburban backyard seems to fit the bill. But here on Newfoundland’s western coast, a mere hour drive from the airport in Deer Lake, there are no roads, no power lines. The only sign of humanity tampering with the terrain was the dock we landed on.
This is a paragraph taken from a story I wrote on backpacking Gros Morne National Park that originally appeared in Backpacker Magazine. Now this spectacular park, a favorite of caribou and moose, is the setting for a three-day winter wilderness survival course run by Linkum Tours. Learn to build snow shelters, light a fire, and cross-country ski atop mountain ridges that overlook magnificent fjords. The course is being held from January through March, 2011.
Driving east of Flagstaff, the dry arid Arizona terrain gives way to colorful bands of rock, as if some Impressionist painter laid down his brushstroke on the badlands. Welcome to the glorious Painted Desert. Continue a wee bit south and prehistoric rock gives way to 200 million year old petrified wood, also colored in rainbow hues, the home of Petrified Forest National Park. Once a playground for dinosaurs, Petrified Forest also was a settlement for a long line of Native Americans as evidenced by the Agate House, an ancient pueblo built of petrified wood. By all means, get out of the car with camera in tow and take several of the short hikes. A one-mile loop called Blue Mesa brings you to the multi-hued sandstone, while the half-mile Giant Logs Loop leads to the biggest trees in the park, some with trunks close to ten feet in diameter.
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Visiting Tasmania is just going out of the box as it is having some adventurous things to do such as hiking, tracking and more. Folks love to visit such hilarious places like Tasmania so as to entertain themselves and get refreshed.