Kim Brown Seely

AS EVERY TRAVELER knows, milestone birthdays are the perfect excuse for milestone trips. But when my husband was planning for his 70th and our sons asked, “What are we doing for Dad’s birthday?” we realized our family had morphed into something very different from the one that had trekked the Andes for my 50th and the Dolomites for my 55th. We were now multigenerational with two grandsons: one a toddler, the other barely 4 months old.

We needed a new kind of trip. But what? To make matters even more complicated, our nuclear family had split off to New York, London, and a small town in Idaho.

Unlike us, the roads were bendy, with no shoulders, and took their sweet time threading between stone walls and thorn trees. All morning we’d been driving on the left of these narrow, winding roads, as one does in Ireland, muttering (or worse) at occasional oncoming traffic.

Following the devastation of Hurricane Helene, the Great Smoky Mountains in spring are still alive with fireflies, fish, and elk. What the area needs now is tourists.

A couple embarks on an epic voyage across land and sea.

The power of a handwritten note is how it makes you feel.

Our kids were coming for Christmas, but it was the elk who stayed for dinner.

From whale watching to bunking at rustic-luxe resorts, here are six ways to embrace the remote wilderness that is British Columbia’s largest marine park.

A study links green spaces to lower hospitalizations

See the largest coastal temperate rainforest left on Earth.

Bits of white ice bob around our ship in the dark-blue sea, and every so often an iceberg floats by. It’s 5:30 am aboard National Geographic Resolution, but the sun hasn’t set all night. The vessel, on its inaugural voyage to the Arctic, glides silently up a bright fjord, and I’m up early – too excited to sleep – taking in the beauty while northern fulmars streak past like wingmen.