The Roaming Parkers blog is coming up on its 1-year anniversary, and in the past year, we have published a LOT of great content related to travel, adventure, conservation, and food!

Adventure is kind of a broad category.  In our minds, it encompasses a lot of activities, mostly outside and mostly physically active, like hiking, mountain climbing, canoeing, swimming, camping. Even fishing can be an adventure!

If you are a new-comer to our little online adventure, or if you just missed something the first time around, here is a recap of what we think is our best outdoor adventure content from this first year!

Kilimanjaro

The biggest of our big things this past year was a trip to Tanzania in east Africa to trek the Lemosho route on Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing (not part of a range) mountain in the world!

I wrote a lot in preparation for the trip, including a series on why famous mountain climbers like Mallory and Messner and Harrer climbed mountains and why I wanted to climb Kili.

Speaking of mountaineering and Reinhold Messner, I find him one of the most fascinating climbers that I’ve read about, so I’ve done several articles about him, such as:

• Climbing is a metamorphosis in our head
• Messner on the intersection of life and adventure
• What sparks Reinhold Messner’s imagination?

Canoeing

South Central Mississippi is a paddling haven with Lake Tangipahoa and Lake Lincoln, Bogue Chitto and Black Creek, as well as numerous smaller rivers, creeks, lakes, and bayous!

During the past year, we’ve published accounts of our own paddling trips at IC Lake in McComb and at Black Creek, where we got run off by Hurricane Cindy!

We’ve also reviewed several guidebooks and memoirs about canoeing, including Ernest Herndon’s Canoeing Mississippi and Eddy Harris’ Mississippi Solo. as well as an amazing old documentary about infamous canoer, Vernon Kruger, who paddled more than 100 thousand miles through the Americas during his lifetime!

Lowland hiking is also an adventure

Although we have written a lot about our adventures on Kilimanjaro and our upcoming trek to Mount Saint Helens, The setting does not have to be the top of an ancient volcano to have a wonderful adventure.

Sometimes we hike on the Natchez Trace or down in a swamp or we clamber up and down loess bluffs or tromp through muddy pine plantations or we climb down and back up in a huge eroded canyon with a hidden wonderland in the bottom.

In fact, my favorite place to hike has become my local State Park just 3-miles from my home!

• Percy Quin is just right for a Swamp Tromp
• Was it a hike or was it a swim?
• You never know until you go.
• 4 things you’ve never seen at Percy Quin (and 4 more that I haven’t either

Connect with us!

The thing that makes this adventure blogging thing so rewarding is the interactions we have with people from all over the world that we would otherwise never get to meet.  Blogging is only fun and informative if YOU interact and engage.

Here are several ways that you can engage with the Roaming Parkers blog and make it better for everyone!

• Leave a comment on any current article.  We shut down commenting on older posts to stop spammers from trying to sell sunglasses and Viagra on our website but commenting is enabled for all articles younger than 2 weeks old.
• Come find our Roaming Parkers Facebook Page, Like and Follow it, and Review our page with a 5-star rating and a blurb about what it is that you especially like about Roaming Parkers.  We think that the more glowing reviews we get, the more people Facebook will spread our content to – and that’ll make the community better for everyone!
• While you are on Facebook, there is an active community of thousands of readers commenting on articles and sharing content related to travel, adventure, conservation, and food on the Roaming Parkers Facebook Group.  You are welcome to hop over there and Join the group so that you can get all that content and interact with all those folks!
• Whenever you see an article from Roaming Parkers blog that you really like, send a friend a link to that article along with a little note about why you like it and why you think they would enjoy the blog too!