Little Explorers Club
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“Tommy grew up in Estes, but you notice that so many families and so many kids just don’t go into the National Park,” says Becca Caldwell. While Rocky Mountain National Park is just a short drive from Estes Park, CO., Becca found parents gravitated to the local playground or coffee shops for playdates. “Why aren’t we going out on the trails and letting the kids run loose? How can we change that for my son’s generation?” she asked. It’s a question that many experts have been asking too.
Today, for the fourth episode of our Mileposts series, we hike with the Little Explorers in Rocky Mountain National Park, and see how Becca’s simple act is forming a community of kids and parents out on the trails.
Music: The Ghost of Virginia by Justin Townes Earle • Monsoon Rains by Publish the Quest • Original Score by Amy Stolzenbach
Tracks provided by Free Music Archive and the artists.
Start your own Little Explorers Club! And if you do, post a photo on Instagram with #thelittleexplorersclub.
Great one, thanks for sharing this story.
Great story but people need to stop using the word “like” so much. It’s like making our generation like sound like a bunch of like uneducated people… Like
Thanks for the story. Always an adventure going to the national park.
Being a 15 year old kid all i want to do is be outside, it is a shame hearing other kids don’t share the same love and awe for the wilderness.
But i am glad people are out there trying to change that
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Such a great story, such a nice adventure!
This is a great site. Thanks for the info that visits by children to our National Parks has decreased by half. That is alarming! Our kids are now 38 and 40 but we have great memories of the great outdoors with them and now enjoy how they are passing the love of nature on to our grandchildren. Take your kids places when they are younger as teenagers’ jobs interfere with family trips during summer vacation. Just sorry that we never got the boys out to California to see the redwoods and sequoias.
Great story! I’m happy to say that so far we are on track to improve those statistics. My wife and I are 33 and 37 respectively, and we have a 2 year old son. We are on a mission to visit all of the national parks. We honeymooned in Yosemite in 2008 and so far have visited nearly 20 parks. Our son so far has been to Smoky Mountains, Arches, Canyonlands, Black Canyon, and Great Sand Dunes. I love the Little Explorer Clubs idea. We might try to get something like that going here in Boston.
Thank you so much for the inspiration. I’m a dad and in my neighborhood we have a dad’s group that get together every other week and hang out, talk, drink a couple beers and eat pizza. After listening to this episode, I know what will be brought up tonight at our meeting, weekly trips to trails around us. We don’t have a lot here in Garner, NC but just short ride away is Umstead Park which will hopefully be a meeting place for dads morning out with the kids. Thank you again for the inspiration and we will be posting our picture soon!