Jerry goes snorkeling. A-mazing. Look at that missing finger handle an octopus. More here.

Youtube: Grateful Dead – Ramble On Rose

Starting next month, the United States Mint will issue the first of 56 quarter-dollar coins featuring designs depicting national parks and other national sites. The first coin to be released is Hot Springs National Park, which was set aside by Congress in 1832. Four other coins will be placed into circulation this year—Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park, Grand Canyon National Park and Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon. (via Joel S.’s OhRanger! blog)

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I have looked through a lot of old books about camping, the outdoors, etc., and I have yet to find any that are as good looking as the Time-Life: American Wilderness series. Pictures and writing are both wonderful. (Ed Abbey edited the “Cactus Country” edition.) The best part about these book is that they’re not too hard to find at your local thrift/used book shop, but if you’re not near one of those, go on over to your favorite online auctioneer and pick a few out.

Y’all have some of these? Got a favorite?

Great photo, bad name, decent album.

MP3: New Riders Of The Purple Sage – I Don’t Know You

MP3: New Riders Of The Purple Sage – Whatcha Gonna Do

The Frontiersmen Camping Fellowship (originally called “Frontiersmen Camping Fraternity”) was founded during the summer of 1966 by The Royal Rangers, a worldwide ministry of the Assemblies of God. From the “History” section of their website:

The early American frontiersman was an excellent example of man’s ability to adapt to the outdoors and the wilderness. His achievements were also an example of courage and determination. The national office, therefore, made the decision to base this fraternity on the lore and traditions of these early frontiersmen.

The first FCF chapter was organized in the Southern California District on July 8, 1966. High in the San Bernardino Mountains in a clearing surrounded by gigantic trees, a large group of Royal Rangers sat around a blazing campfire. As they waited, a feeling of mystery and expectancy filled the air.

Suddenly, the blast of a hunter’s horn shattered the night’s stillness and echoed through the trees. National Commander Johnnie Barnes stepped into the firelight, dressed in a buckskin outfit and a coonskin cap. As lie began to explain the new FCF program, a hum of excitement rose above the sound of the crackling campfire. Assisted by two district leaders, Ron Halvorson and Bob Reid, these men proceeded with the first FCF callout. After pledging to endure a time of testing, the candidates were led away carrying a large rope to a mountaintop nearby for an all night initiation.

Later as the new members (five men and five boys) were officially inducted into the fraternity at the final friendship fire, they sensed that this ceremony was a milestone in Royal Rangers history.

That same year, three more chapters were organized in the Northern California, the Southern Missouri, and the Iowa Districts. This exciting and unique fraternity has so captured the imaginations of men and boys until the program has now grown to include organized chapters in the majority of our country.

More old guidebook covers after the jump…

In the early 1940s, while working as a journalist at the Miami Herald, Marjory Stoneman Douglas was asked to contribute to the Rivers Of America Series by writing about the Miami River. She was unimpressed by the river, so asked if she could instead write about the Everglades. She researched the Everglades for five years at a time where little scientific knowledge existed about the area, and in 1947, the year that the Everglades was designated a national park, The Everglades: River Of Grass was published. The book’s first line is one of the most famous written about the good ol’ Glades:

There are no other Everglades in the world.
They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, remote, never wholly known. Nothing anywhere else is like them: their vast glittering openness, wider than the enormous visible round of the horizon, the racing free saltness and sweetness of their massive winds, under the dazzling blue heights of space. They are unique also in the simplicity, the diversity, the related harmony of the forms of life they enclose. The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass.

Stoneman helped to educate the public and protect the park until she died in 1998. She 108 years old. What a pretty little bird.

MP3: Lonnie Mack – Florida

In case you have yet to watch VBS’ Heimo documentary in full, make sure you do yourself a huge favor and stop here over the weekend. And when you’re finished watching, read an interesting interview with James Campbell, Heimo’s cousin and author of The Final Frontiersman, the book about Heimo, at Viceland.

And if you still can’t get enough of Heimo world, then watch a video of John Martin from Vice eat some very fresh caviar while making the documentary. That’s after the jump..

Well done, VBS. Well done.

It’s always a bittersweet moment getting back to your car after a few days in the woods/desert/prairie. You’ve accomplished something – even if it meant walking a few hundred yards, starting a fire, then drinking yourself to sleep – but you’ve also got to get back into a big piece of metal that will most definitely be either too hot or too cold for comfort. You take off your muddy clothes, put on less muddy ones, and drive a group of aching bones back to wherever it is you call home. But no matter how badly you wish you had one more day of eating apples and cinnamon oatmeal from an enamel bowl while watching the sun come up, you finally have a chance to play (BLAST) the song you’ve had in your head since the second you stepped on the trail.

Last week I carelessly asked how y’all prepare your coffee in the morning, and was surprised, shocked even, that so many people commented. I thought it’d be fun to do something like that again, because as I’m sure you must know by now, you are all much more interesting than I am and your answers show it. So hopefully you’ll take part in this one too and not make me feel like a fool when the comment section reads “0.”

What album do you put on when you get back to the car from a good hike?

MP3: Free Beer – Cruisin

Wired has an article about the best cars, from past to present, to use in a “snowicane.” And of course, the ol’ Wagoneer makes the cut. Read it here.