Joy made a comment on a response this morning about how crowded hiking trails are near her, and I'm sure we've all experienced crowded nature this year. Made me think to share a site/app that has been super helpful to our family this past year. In early October we were in Boston with our older son, and wanted to get him out of the city for a good hike in the woods, as he doesn't own a car. The first place we tried was jammed - I mean, it looked like a state fair! It was a ski resort, and there had to have have been 500 cars in the parking lot.

We used the AllTrails app and found a state park less than 5 miles away. It was closed to cars for the season, but you could park nearby and hop on the trails. We had a glorious day of hiking, and probably saw less than 8 people the whole time.

We use this app for local hikes as well. You can also record your hikes, and we've found it is nostalgic to look back at hikes we've done in past years in Arizona and other places on our travels. I plan to gift a subscription to the app to my yoga instructor/trainer for the holidays this year as she's a trail runner.