New Orleans is deservedly famous for its food. But the city’s many waterways, bike paths, and greenspaces are worthy, too—and will help you earn those beignets.

6 a.m.��

Start your morning with a quick 1.8-mile run around the loop in Uptown’s Audubon Park, filled with herons, egrets, and centuries-old oaks.

8 a.m.��

Hit up on Jena Street for breakfast, where the menu is split between Good Cat (healthy) and Bad Cat (less so) options. Give in to sin and order the barbecue shrimp and grits.

10 a.m.��

Sign up with (from $37 for 75 minutes) to check out Bayou St. John in Mid-City. The canal is lined with historic homes and abuts 1,300-acre City Park.

12 p.m.��

Head to for a locals’-favorite po’boy. Top it off with a wedding-cake-flavored snowball—New Orleans’s version of shaved ice—at nearby Pandora’s.

1:30 p.m.��

It’s time to ride. Grab a Blue Bike from the city’s recently launched ($8 per hour) and hop on the Lafitte Greenway. The 2.6-mile converted rail corridor drops you in the French Quarter, but cycle on to explore Crescent Park, a 20-acre riverfront greenspace.

4 p.m.��

Drop your bags at the ��(from $143), reopened in 2016 after a $10 million face-lift. The Garden District property blends blue-blood style and New Orleans funk—the lounge features a portrait of native son Lil Wayne with a slice of the restaurant’s signature Mile High Pie.

7 p.m.��

Formerly a neighborhood market, serves up a distinctively New Orleans take on French bistro fare. Be sure to reserve a table in advance—executive chef and owner Justin Devillier has been nominated for the James Beard Award five times (and won it in 2016).

9 p.m.��

At , a wine-shop-cum-courtyard-hangout in the bohemian Bywater area, pick up a bottle on the way in and choose a spot close to the stage for live local music.

12 a.m.��

End the night with—what else?—beignets from in the heart of the French Quarter. The 156-year-old landmark is open 24 hours, so we won’t judge if you count it as breakfast.

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Luke Nelson doesn’t have a lot of free time. The 35-year-old Idaho native is a Patagonia trail-running ambassador, race organizer of , physician assistant, and author of the aptly��named blog, .��He’s also a dad to three kids under the age of 10. So when he lined up some precious time off this March, he jumped at the chance to take the family on a tour of the Southwest.

He and his wife, Tanae, packed up their ’09 Tacoma and headed south from their home in Pocatello, spending ten days camping and exploring Zion, Capital Reef, Escalante, and the Grand Canyon. The logistics were no big deal—the family hits the road a dozen times a year to travel to trail races across the West. We asked Luke for his best advice on pulling off a (mostly) seamless family adventure.

Pick Somewhere for Everyone

We wanted the kids to experience the classic American road trip: drive through the desert, see some national parks, try to unplug from the world for a while. But when you live in Idaho, springtime in the desert is also awesome because you can run on trails, wear shorts, get sunburned. So I certainly had the underlying objective of trying to get in a bunch of training miles during the trip.

Let the Kids Call (Some of) the Shots

My kids each pack a little backpack for the road—coloring books, a couple of toys, and snacks.

Embrace the Dirt

Fitting five people and all their stuff in the truck can get out of hand quickly. We live by the motto, ‘Less is more.’ For a week-long trip, we’ll take two, maybe three changes of clothes and wash them between wears—or just wear them dirty because we’re camping and it doesn’t matter.

Work With What You’ve Got

We have Sprinter envy all the time, but the truck works for us.

Easy Does It for Food

I worked for a few years as a river guide and quickly learned that, on a trip, the best food is food that’s already made. My wife prepares dinners in advance so that when we get to a campsite, it’s as simple as setting up the stove and warming up pre-made food.

Don’t Skimp on Snacks

The two things that we have to stop for are bathroom breaks or food. If we can keep snacks going—refilling trail mix, keeping water bottles full and flowing—then we can make it a lot further between stops.

Don’t Plan (Well, Mostly Don’t Plan)

You have to have a rough idea of what you’re going to do, but with kids, you also need to be completely flexible. Sometimes you aren’t going to get where you thought you would or you’ll want to stay longer. Before we leave, we’ll ask other families and Facebook, “We’re going to this place. Where do you recommend?”��Then we fly by the seat of our pants and see how it goes.

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Pete Nelson’s first treehouse sat in a maple tree in his childhood home's��cramped Ridgewood, New Jersey, backyard. Small and no-frills, he'd��built it��with his father’s help, and��it felt like freedom to the 5 year old. Fifty years and 350 treehouses later, Nelson never quite shook that��feeling.

Nelson, now based in Fall City, Washington, is the de facto godfather of arboreal architecture. Since founding custom treehouse building company , he’s authored a half dozen books on the subject, opened , an aerial B&B in Issaquah, Washington, and hosts Animal Planet’s hit show , which kicks off its fifth season July 1. Though he’s graduated to building multi-room structures decked out with amenities like running water and recording studios, Nelson still considers treehouses a family affair: his wife, Judy, runs TreeHouse Point, twins Charlie and Henry work as carpenters on the show, and daughter Emily heads up online retailer .

We caught up with Nelson while he was in Kentucky,��where he was��working on a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired lake house perched in a peach tree. Here are his tips for building your aerie.

Pick a Tree That’s Going to Stick Around

Your oak trees, your maple trees, your Ponderosa pines, your Douglas firs. I like to find a tree that’s been through some weather and drought—it’s tested and strong.

Go Big��

Size-wise, look for 12��to��14 inches for trunk diameter on the low end. Then the sky’s the limit.

Spread the Weight

With single trees, you get into a lot more carpentry for proper support. If you’re looking at multiple trees, 16 feet is my ideal, DIY distance for spacing.

Remember That Trees Are Alive

Trees grow inversely—they get fatter—and move in the wind. You have to allow for that movement. If you’re involving multiple trees in your design and you your platform to one tree—bolt your beam right to that tree, to keep everything in place—then you’ve got to have a on the other, to allow everything to shift in the wind.

Avoid Vertigo

My sweet spot is somewhere between 12 and 16 feet off the ground. It’s all about a different perspective. Twelve��feet might not seem high, but��if you’re 12 feet off the ground and fell, it would hurt.

Skip the Ladders

Ladders are dad killers. You hear nightmares about dad cleaning the gutters or putting up Christmas lights and you know what happens… I like to build basic scaffolding with 2x4s and half-inch plywood. If you spend the time to create a nice, solid platform, then the work of building your treehouse platform is at waist level.

Break Out the Climbing Gear

Helmets and static safety lines—very important. Rig up a safety line in the tree with a good, strong climbing rope, a harness, and a Prusik knot. That way if you’re on your platform and there’s no railing, you can freely march around, do your siding, all that stuff.

Make Mistakes

It’s your treehouse, and those mistakes might turn into your favorite part. I’ve heard a lot lately that in our society we’re not allowed to fail, but a treehouse is the perfect place to experiment and fail. ‘Oh yeah, I could do that a little better,’ or ‘Now that I’ve done this, I wish I had done that…’ Just make it happen. I always felt like Nike stole one of the great automatics: Just do it.

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I grew up in New Orleans and learned to SUP on the bayous that carve through southern Louisiana. For the past year, though, it’s the waters of landlocked Montana I’ve most wanted to explore, after a friend in Missoula told me about a chain of lakes in the westernmost part of Glacier. They are said to be sacred to the Blackfeet, clear pools carved out over thousands of years by glaciers dipping to about 250 feet at their deepest. Last October, I grabbed a friend, a wetsuit, and a paddleboard, and headed north.

National Parks Centennial

100 reasons to love the parks (and a few things we’d improve)

As you approach from Missoula, Glacier lies behind the Flathead Range, hidden until you gain elevation and the world opens up into more than a million acres of coniferous forests, glaciated peaks, and wildflower meadows. George Bird Grinnell, right-hand man to Teddy Roosevelt, led the charge to make it a national park in 1910, dubbing it “an unmapped corner—the .”

Pulling through the entrance gates, we were the only car to turn off the main road that connects West Glacier with East, following the Flathead River into the North Fork Valley. Down a rutty dirt road, past the century-old red clapboard , which still serves its famous huckleberry bear claws, and past the abandoned cabins of Glacier’s only homestead lie Quartz, Bowman, and Kintla Lakes, tucked so deep into the bowls between peaks that they seem to spring straight out of the granite.

Bowman is the closest of the three, sitting a half-hour from the Merc and drawing the biggest crowds. (There were eight of us on this unseasonably warm Saturday, with one canoe on the lake.) As we took our first strokes, the water was so clear that we could see rocks 40 feet down, and little flecks of gold danced on the glassy surface as the light hit the surrounding hillsides of deciduous larch. Paddling back to shore hours later, we collapsed on the rocky sand, rousing ourselves only to pitch a tent and finish a six-pack, clinking cups under a big sky.

The next morning, we headed an hour down the road to Kintla, a boomerang-shaped pool sitting in the shadow of Parke and Long Knife Peaks, a half-hour hike from Canada. The rangers and tourists had already packed it in for the season, so all six miles of the lake belonged to us—a welcome surprise until the sky darkened, the water started churning, and reality set in that the closest warm bodies were likely working their way through bear claws. Kintla is about a half-mile wide, and we could have paddled to shore and dragged the boards back to the car. Still, the remoteness was daunting—not quite an unmapped corner, but close.

After a strained hour slamming to our knees as the wind kicked up, the clouds started to lift, revealing the mountains towering above. Cold, snow-dusted prisms, they wrapped around the lake, crowning the golden hillsides. I took a long look, trying to commit every peak and valley to memory, then dug the paddle back into the water and headed toward shore, hoping the Merc sold beer.

Access + Resources

When: Shoot for warm weather in late summer, or avoid the crowds in early fall.

How: Missoula, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the park, offers direct flights from Denver and Atlanta. Kalispell’s Glacier Park airport, 25 miles west of the park, is closer but pricier.

Play: Bring your own inflatable paddleboard, or rent one from in West Glacier ($45).

Stay: On the drive from Missoula, spend the night in Whitefish at the and stick around for the gourmet breakfast. Bowman has the most developed campground of the three lakes.

Eat: Don’t miss the huckleberry bear claws at the in Glacier’s North Fork Valley.

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Colorado’s first serious avalanche accident of the season took place in Summit County on Saturday, according to the ��(CAIC). Summit County Rescue Group, assisted by a��helicopter from national emergency rescue��group Flight for Life, evacuated a skier��partially buried on the east side of Bald Mountain, near the town of Breckenridge, according to .

The man was skiing alone on a northeast-facing slope,��at an angle of about 38 degrees, that had received 20 inches of snow from the week’s storm. After the slide, he found a bar of cellphone��service and made multiple calls to 911. At 2 p.m. local time, he reached a dispatcher��to report that he was injured, according to CAIC��forecaster Scott Toepfer, who has��30 years of avalanche forecasting experience.��

The man was rescued at 4:30 p.m. MST. His injuries were not life��threatening, but he was at risk for hypothermia.

Two additional avalanches were reported in Summit County on Sunday.��One was located near Arapahoe Basin, but not within the ski area’s boundaries, and the other was near the top of Loveland Pass. No burials were reported.

“Both my boss, who was with me, and I kept saying, ‘I can’t believe how big this avalanche is on November 21,’” said Toepfer, who visited the slide area the next day. “This was an unusually��large avalanche for this time of year. And��as much as I love avalanches, that makes me very anxious.”

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