Back in September of this year I reviewed three of my favorite “desert” books. All three were written over 50 years ago. Here I review another that is worth adding to your library.

The Secret Knowledge of Water was written about 25 years ago (originally published in 2000). Like the other three books, this one is also timeless.

The cover includes a wonderful quote from the book:

There are two easy ways to die in the desert: thirst and drowning

For those of us who have lived and explored deserts extensively, this dichotomy says so much.

Continue reading Book Review: The Secret Knowledge of Water, by Craig Childs →

“In the predawn hours of July 10, 2014, the son of legendary Alaskan explorer Roman Dial walked alone into the untracked rainforest of Costa Rica’s remote Pacific Coast. ‘I’m planning on doing 4 days in the jungle,’ he wrote his father before leaving, ‘it should be difficult to get lost forever.’

Then he vanished . . .”

This would be the last communication from Roman Dial’s son.

Continue reading The Adventurer’s Son: A Memoir — My Book Review →

For the 20+ years that Joyce and I have been married, most years we awaken on Christmas morning and New Year’s Day in a campground. Occasionally we stay at home. This year was a stay at home for Christmas time.

We had planned on heading out to the Lake Mead area after Christmas but a mild case of the flu, which has been lingering for a couple weeks, made us decide to stay home to completely recuperate at. We’ll be heading out in the camper soon.

Joyce loves to decorate for the holidays. Given all her efforts, I decided to put together a collage of her work.

Continue reading Happy New Year →

It was time to update the copyright notice in the footer of the Website when I noticed that it has been a little over 10 years since PopUpBackpacker was created.

Over the past 10 years I have covered a lot of territory backpacking, hiking, camping and writing about the things that interest me. In this post I’ll cover some highlights, where I have been and what the future might hold for me and PopUpBackpacker.

Continue reading PopUpBackpacker is 10 Years Old !! →

Earlier this month we spent a few days at beach to cool off from the summer heat.

Today I received a message that this website’s software needed to be updated with a couple new versions.

Typical stuff. Software updates are supposed fix bugs, and more importantly to me, patch security vulnerabilities. So I installed the updates. As I usually do, I took a quick tour to ensure everything was working. At the bottom of the sidebar, I saw the Page View statistics.

Continue reading 4 Million: What’s in a Number? →