Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

A laugh-out-loud account of an outrageously rugged hike--by the beloved comic author of "Lost Continent" and "Notes from a Small Island". Published in the 75th anniversary year of the Appalachian Trail. Father's Day merchandising.

When Duncan McKaskel decided to move his family west, he knew he would face dangers, and he was prepared for them. He knew about the exhausting terrain, and he was expecting the punishing elements. What he worried about was having to use violence against other men--men who would follow him and try to steal the riches that he didn't even possess. Yet bandits were only part of McKaskel's worries. For a mysterious stranger, Con Vallian, had appeared...

Boone's Lick transports the reader to the era about which McMurtry writes better and more shrewdly than anyone else. Told with McMurtry's unique blend of historical fact and sheer storytelling genius, the novel follows the Cecil family's arduous journey by riverboat and wagon from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Fifteen-year-old Shay narrates, describing the journey that begins when his Ma, Mary Margaret, decides to hunt down...

Virginia City! Boom town on the wild Nevada frontier! Atop the silver-rich mountains of the Comstock Lode were the desperate dreamers, thousands of men and women lured by the glittering promise of limitless wealth. But as the bountiful mother lode is mined, the nation itself is being torn apart by a burning confrontation that threatens to destroy America for ever.

His second major venture into nonfiction (after Death in the Afternoon, 1932), Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife Pauline journeyed in December of 1933. Hemingway's well-known interest in--and fascination with--big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip. In examining the poetic grace of the chase, and...

Originally published over one hundred years ago, Roughing It tells the (almost) true story of Mark Twain's rollicking adventures across the United States. A hilarious account of how the author tried finding wealth in the rocks of Nevada, it was published before his most famous works and shows why he would grow to become one of the most beloved American writers of all time.

Chicago celebrity and pitchman Charles James is supposed to be dead. Everyone believes he was killed in a fiery plane crash, a flight he narrowly missed. But thanks to that remarkable twist of fate, he's very much alive and ready for a second chance at life and love. Escaping death has brought Charles some clarity: the money, the fame, the expensive cars; none of it brought him true joy or peace. The last time he was truly happy was when he was married...

"Bound for Antarctica, where polar explorer Ernest Shackleton planned to cross on foot the last uncharted continent, the Endurance set sail from England in August 1914. In January 1915, after battling its way for six weeks through a thousand miles of pack ice and now only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. For ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted northwest before it was finally crushed. But...

For twenty thousand miles, Peter Matthiessen crisscrossed the South American wilderness, traveling from the Amazonian rain forests to Machu Picchu high in the Andes, down to the edge of the world at Tierra del Fuego and back. In the course of his journey he followed the trails of old explorers, encountered river bandits, wild tribesmen, and the evidence of ancient ruins, and discovered a fossilized snout of a giant unknown crocodilian hidden in the...

When a disastrous decision by the new wagon master forces Jesselynn Highwood and her companions to separate from the wagon train, she races back to Fort Laramie to find a guide to take them to Oregon. But the guide has a far different plan, and following her heart, Jesselyn agrees to join him, her rag-tag band in tow. The ensuing journey is fraught with hardship and danger. Back in the East, Louisa Highwood and brother Zachary are captured by Union...