Moving from day hikes or car camping to your first night out? Start with the gear, the planning and the trail habits that matter.

In Glacier Bay, silence is a presence, broken only by the crack of calving ice and the hiss of a surfacing whale. These are notes from a morning and an evening on the water.

On the Mississippi riverfront in St. Louis, a steel arch catches the first light while the city is still quiet. These are notes on the sound, the silence and the long view west.

Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska packs tidewater glaciers, humpback whales and temperate rainforest into a long fjord you see mostly from the water. Here are the top three sights, with quick specs and viewpoints.

Glacier Bay National Park is a spectacle of pure Alaskan drama: colossal tidewater glaciers dramatically calving into icy fjords, majestic humpback whales breaching, and adorable sea otters gracefully floating among icebergs.

Shenandoah National Park, a serene and majestic expanse in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, invites adventurers to embrace the harmony of nature. From cascading waterfalls to sweeping vistas, this park encapsulates the beauty of the Appalachian region.

The chill of the Alaskan air clawed at my skin as the ship sliced through the frigid waters toward Glacier Bay National Park . A...

Before sunrise in Yosemite Valley, the granite walls turn from grey to gold and the Merced runs cold and loud. A few hours of morning, and what stays with me is the sound and the quiet.

In Wrangell–St. Elias, the silence is a presence, broken only by meltwater and shifting ice. These are field notes from a morning on the Root Glacier and a long evening after.

Voyageurs is a water park of lakes, rock islands and northwoods, where the quiet has weight and the loons carry it. A first-person look at a long day on the water, from dawn mist to northern dark.