Cruisin' Alaska
By Linda Meyerriecks, Photo Editor

My son, Evan, was only 13 when we took a cruise along Alaska's Inside Passage with his father and uncle. Evan has a passion for the great ocean liners, so we pretended we were on the Titanic and bundled up in blankets on the deck chairs. We explored every part of the ship that we could, and the captain even let Evan take the wheel for a few moments. He also explored a lot of the ship on his own, but we always ended up the day in the Crow's Nest for his round of Shirley Temples. We watched for whales, kayaked around the huge hull of our ship Ryndam, then took a helicopter to Mendenhall Glacier, put on our crampons, and hiked on the ice. We squeezed through ice cracks, hoping they would not move while we were between them, and sat on the cold ice for a breathtaking view of Juneau.

Now Evan is 21 and exploring on his own, but he always calls me and sends pictures or videos of his journeys to my cell phone to share the highlights, whether it's jeep climbing the Lion's Back in Moab, Utah, or strolling Bourbon Street in New Orleans at night.

Whale-Watching in British Columbia
By Norie Quintos, Senior Editor

An hour-long boat ride from northern Vancouver Island brought my two sons and me to Hurst Island, in the heart of one of British Columbia's newest provincial parks, God's Pocket. There, a small lodge at the water's edge served as our base for exploring the area by kayak.

I was fixated on seeing orcas. So it came as a bit of a shock that during the entire five-day trip, we saw not a one. But we did spot something else in the water that turned out to be just as thrilling: several humpbacks, including a mother and calf, as they entered the cove at the entrance to the lodge. However, the encounter that made chills run down my spine was kayaking on Browning Passage and hearing behind us the forceful exhalation of air through the blowhole of one of these otherwise silent creatures—like Darth Vader, but friendlier.

Human legs get restless when they've been in a kayak all day. The cure was hiking through mossy, forested Hurst Island. One day, our guide, Lewis, a chocolate Lab who lived at the lodge, took us to Harlequin Bay, on the northeast side of the island. For Sasquatch believers, this is Ground Zero. Over the years, there have been numerous sightings of Sasquatch (i.e. Bigfoot) in the area, and Native American residents of neighboring Balaklava Island are said to avoid the northeastern part of Hurst Island.

Sasquatch lives? Having kayaked those waters, walked those forests, heard the stories, the kids and I, well, let's just say we're open to it.