If you're like most guys and enjoy pitching a tent, you know that the warmer months inspire lots of overnight outdoor activity, perfect for living off the land during the day and catching lightning bugs in glass jars by night. Should you be so inclined, we've assembled a list of campground bests with excellent views of rivers, gorges and endless potential for good summer times. They're conveniently listed from east to west so no matter where you're at, you can quit your job, pack up the car and head out on the open road with no need for a schedule or a shower.
Acadia National Park, Maine
Duck Harbor Campgrounds are located within Acadia National Park in the little town of Isle au Haut, just off the coast of Maine, which is inaccessible to cars and planes. In other words, perfect for camping. A little mail boat transfers its occupants to and from this particular spot with a population of 73 in the summer months.
The spot is renowned for its quietness, where the only urban sounds you'll recognize are the tour carriages and bicycles. Aside from the standard camping and hiking, you'll find there's plenty to do, including horseback riding, fishing and mingling with the avian locals for an afternoon of bird watching.
Cape Lookout National Seashore, North Carolina
A campsite that appeals to both the short attention spans and the wildlife lifers, Cape Lookout offers a range of things to do, from a breath of fresh air and swimming to a full day of kayaking across one of the country's best paddling locations. You can paddle out and fish the day away three miles off the mainland, or you can pull up on some sand and fish just off shore. Either way, the east coast view of North Carolina is right up there with the best of them.
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan
America's first National Lakeshore has more than 100 miles of Michigan lake view scenery and woodsy welcoming. Pictured Rocks is great in both summer and fall, as the scene goes from bright sunshine on the lake to leaves changing through a tree-filled hike. Follow the paths and stumble upon some of the Midwest's best lake cliffs and waterfalls. It's calm enough to fish, swim and boat, but just pretty enough that you'll challenge yourself to explore more because you can't get enough.
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
It's a big park but somebody's got to hike it. Extending from Montana to Idaho covering more than two million acres of wilderness and wildlife, Yellowstone is one of the National Park backbones of our overdeveloping country. Wake up and hike the secluded trails of Wyoming, watch the elk pondering life, standstill in front of grizzly bears so they cannot smell your fear and then finish the hike with a run like hell from gray wolves.
Seriously, it's beautiful and a very popular place for sightseeing and outdoor goodness. If you're not into rafting trips, kayaking, climbing or dog sledding, then we feel sorry for you, but the good news is they have spas, cavern tours and, of course, sleigh rides, should the mood end up striking you.
The Grand Canyon, Arizona
No cross-country camping trip would be complete without a trip to America's awe-inspiring canyon of them all, The Grand Canyon. Located along the Colorado River as one of the only great things about Arizona, the Grand Canyon is a marvel of human wonder, probably because for once, it wasn't made by man.
With a deep look of amazement into the Earth, guests of the backcountry can take the subterranean stance on a river raft though any of the hundreds of miles of canyon or ride on across the planes and plateaus of the colorful sandstone. Nobody has ever regretted a trip to the Grand Canyon, and nobody who ever wrote a good love song did so without seeing it for themselves.
Zion National Park, Utah
Moving a little north and west, we get to see the sandstone cliffs of America's desert region. Utah's Zion National Park is a goldmine of unique bird and plant life for canyon backpackers. You can explore the heights of one of America's most underrated states for beauty with canyon hiking or enjoy the view from below on a river-rafting trip. There's always the usual camping, climbing and biking available, but if the outdoors aren't for you, they still have a subway. Kidding, but they do have The Subway, which is a nine-mile stretch of caverns, caves and creeks to keep your phone camera entertained.
Glacier National Park, Montana
Stacked with mountains and river valleys across Montana's plush landscape, including the pristine Lake Ellen Wilson, Glacier National Park is home to some of Mother Earth's greatest accomplishments, which can be seen clearly whether you're up on a hilltop or down in its ravine. Its blue rivers, green alpines and white mountain tops will stimulate your eyes and get your legs moving across the 700 miles of hiker paradise. Just don't go hiking all 700 miles at once. With countless campsites available and plenty of wildlife to see, there's no end to the peace of mind you can find in these meadows.
Yosemite National Park, California
Finally to the golden goose of California, we enter Yosemite National Park, known for its wide-open space and waterfalls. No stranger to a good camping trip, Yosemite has 13 popular campsites on a first-come basis. With rich meadows and giant sequoias, you can get along with nature like you're Willy Nelson while staying not too far from society, just a little ways east of the Bay cities.
Beginning Memorial Day weekend and rolling into the fall, campers can do just about anything their little camper hearts desire, from swimming and fishing to biking, climbing and horseback riding. It's a popular spot so plan ahead and find a shady spot out of the California sun. How do we know it's popular? Because the gang from "Saved by the Bell" planned a trip here; that's how.
Beacon Rock State Park, Washington
Heading a little closer to the western coast, Washington state stirs up a frenzy with its Beacon Rock campgrounds. Located just outside Portland, Oregon, the mile-high Beacon Rock is a friend to climbers and photographers nationwide. Its view of the Columbia River Gorge as you climb to higher grounds is worth the visit alone. Although fair warning to young ones and dogs, this spot can be great for family but may be more tailored to advanced outdoorsman.
Nestled between a number of hillside walkways and horse riding trails, Beacon Rock shows off its best parts with the long legs of high elevation views and photogenic greenery. Any fan of Portland would likely dig this step outside of urban life for a taste of the good life.
Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, California
If you're only going to camp one place this year, it better be Pfeiffer or you're settling for second best. Campers will want to plan ahead to get a good spot in the promised land of Big Sur. Located up north in the beautiful county of Monterey Bay, Pfieffer Beach is well-known to common hikers but best kept a secret for those who enjoy its solitude of both lodging and campsites.
With some of the most miraculous views of the west coast, Big Sur loads all of the greatness of woodsy camp life with the beaches, redwood groves and gorges of California. Big Sur River Gorge is one of the most sacred views, if you can get there in your lifetime, of a scarcely populated camper's dream town. If you have the chance, drive over Bixby Bridge for the best view of your life, maybe horseback it at some point. Just don't go when the wildfires are strong.
Another week, another batch of inappropriately hilarious tweets compiled just for you. Be sure to follow these guys and gals, and check back here every week for more jokes you can tell your friends and pretend you came up with them yourself. They'll think you're hilarious, but inside you'll be cold and dead.
Follow @robfee on Twitter.
I put on my pants just like you, reluctantly, when the doorbell rings.
Remember, behind every crazy woman, there's an even more batshit mother.
A fly flew right into the toilet while I was peeing and died. Tell someone you love them before it's too late.
Working essay title: Gravy fries, Sex, a Fist Fight & Other Things I Wish I Hadn't Had at Applebees This Morning
If you had a terrible childhood, you'll be super-bummed out by Bank of America's options for security questions.
A gay man wanted to get in my pants, which was a real compliment since it meant he clearly liked my outfit too.
I'm not advocating this, but "Not enough centaurs" would be a pretty sweet suicide letter.
No matter what I say to my barber, he hears "one late 90s women's basketball coach special please!"
I imagine most men approach sex the same way I tear open envelopes.
How long should I wait before answering a text, like on a scale of 0-5 seconds
If you love something let it go and spend the rest of your life comparing everything to how great that thing you let go was.
"My phone's about to die." -Me, 30 seconds into every phone call.
I hit a little girl on a tricycle, and when I got out to exchange insurance info she just laid there. It's like, come on...don't be a dick.
Limbless people can't make snow angels, only snow peanuts. :(
If you don't have anything nice to say, just say "guuuuuuuurl" for like 15 seconds and walk away.
WAYS TO KILL 2 BIRDS W/ 1 STONE
1 Ricochet
2 Retrieve, rethrow
3 Line up birds precisely
4 Huge boulder
5 Use lovebirds, 2nd dies of grief
You'd think Goldilocks would have been all like, "Damn, it smells like bears in here. Is that a family portrait of bears?! I should leave."
The average Florida resident is murdered 5 times a year.
Sigh. 15 years of Soundgarden and yet not a single soundvegetable.
I like how we say "vegan" now instead of "eating disorder".
Ain't no party like a guinea pig pool party.
Now just paint yourself a little happy Bob. Happy little Bobs, yes, just paint a happy little Bob on your canvas.
This is how I imagine the 10 seconds before this photo went:
Dog: "Why the long face?"
Horse: You son of a BITCH!
You're doing the Lord's work, Maury.
Click here for more insane Maury Povich graphics.
First and foremost, we promise to only include one M. Night Shyamalan film on this list. Otherwise, our work would be halfway complete from the jump. But we digress. Misdirection can be what separates a B movie from an A movie. From "Psycho" to "Seven," sometimes a twist is all it takes to give an audience that final gut-punch that may not send them away happy with how things turned out for the characters, but satisfied because it couldn't have gone any other way. On the flip side of that, a lame twist can completely ruin a great story. Or, it can simply be the final nail in the bad movie coffin. Here are 10 shining examples of such famously terrible twists. (SPOILER ALERT!)
The Village (2004)
We'll get M. Night Scamalan out of the way first. We're calling him that because when he first started out, his films were actually good, and the twists at the end were more of a bow on top than anything else. But as they continued, they just became a gimmick. By now, people are paying him for twist endings that aren't even surprising, unless you count surprisingly idiotic. Cut to "The Village," a film marketed as a monster movie set in the late 1800s. But wait, the "monsters" plaguing this town are merely townspeople in costume trying to prevent their young from venturing too far into the woods. Why? Because this village is actually a commune existing in present time, and the elders of the town want them to grow up away from modern day technology. Ignoring the fact that this twist involved bribing the government to never fly planes above, walling themselves in a secret wildlife preserve, and revealing that a forest ranger played by M. Night himself was the caretaker of said village (how subtle), the twist is still so unbelievably hair-brained it's a wonder this man is allowed to continue making terrible films.
The Forgotten (2004)
While movies like "Signs" (another M. Night stinker) end with the totally illogical twist that the aliens who have invaded Earth can be killed by water (our most basic resource), at least aliens weren't the twist themselves. But that is what we are asked to choke down in "The Forgotten," a film that is surprisingly captivating until its awful, convenient ending. The story revolved around a mother, played by Julianne Moore, who loses her son to a plane crash. The problem is, not only does no one believe the child died, including her husband, but they don't even recall him ever existing. Sounds intriguing, no? Too bad the lazy, anticlimactic ending ends up revolving around aliens experimenting on people. And worse yet, if you paid attention to the trailers, this was ruined for you in them. Talk about a major letdown.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
This pill may be a bit harder to swallow considering that many people actually really enjoyed this film, not to mention it took home the Oscar for Best Picture. And it IS a pretty amazing film -- right up to the point where the main protagonist is killed (offscreen, mind you) by someone other than the antagonist, and we are then left scratching our heads while they cut to a final monologue from Tommy Lee Jones' Sheriff Bell character, and the film just sort of...ends. Yes, this was how the novel the film was based on played out as well, but at least in the book, Sheriff Bell was the focus of the story. If that were the case in the film, the ending would have been more tolerable.
Planet of the Apes (2001)
You can't expect a remake of a classic film to be perfect, but come on. They could have done a little better than this. And by a little better, we mean a little less complicated and stupid. Tim Burton goes so far in this remake to try to top the original's ending, that the result is so convoluted that many still don't quite understand what it was going for. In a nutshell, Leo, the main character played by Mark Wahlberg, goes back in time in his spaceship to present day in order to try and stop the apes from enslaving the Earth, only to find that the apes must have gone back even further in time in order to ensure their rule. As Leo lands in Washington, D.C., he is surrounded by ape cops and Thade, the main ape Wahlberg is fighting in the film, is now emulated on the Lincoln Memorial as a sort of Ape-raham Lincoln. "Earth all along" is sounding mighty good right about now.
Diabolique (1996)
In another failed attempt to top an original's twist ending, this time of a 1955 French film by the name "Les Diaboliques," we again get an overly convoluted finale that would have been best to keep simple, considering most hadn't seen the original anyways. Basically, the French version ends with the husband character (who was assumed dead) having faked his death in order to "come back to life," scaring his wife to death in order for he and his mistress to inherit her riches. They are then found out by the detective in the story and thrown in the slammer. Sounds complicated enough, doesn't it? Well, the remake consists of the assumed dead husband character "coming back to life," scaring his wife to what he believes to be her death. His mistress then tells him she had a change of heart and tried to stop him from completing his plan, but was too late. The wife then reveals she is still alive, a fight breaks out between the three of them, and the two women end up drowning him in a pool, just as the detective arrives to arrest the mistress. Phew! Even typing that, we're out of breath.
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
How do you make the worst movie of a trilogy by far somehow even more irritating? With a twist ending, of course. This one's so bad that it comes after the credits, too. Yeah, fat chance anyone stuck around for that. After killing several beloved characters off in the film, including team leader, Cyclops, and founder of the X-Men, Professor Xavier, we are treated to a post-credits sequence involving Professor Xavier having telepathically transported his mind inside the body of a coma patient before he croaked and waking up. Yet somehow he talks in his same voice. Was this supposed to excite us for a sequel? It's not like he could put himself back in his old body; it was disintegrated. But, on the plus side, Brett Ratner screwed up this franchise so bad that they brought Bryan Singer back in to fix everything with "X-Men: First Class" and the upcoming "X-Men: Days of Future Past." So there's at least a silver lining with this one.
Swimming Pool (2003)
This film ends in a way that is even cheesy and unsatisfying for TV. It's the story of a British novelist who goes to live at her publisher's home in France in order to work on her latest book. However, soon she is joined by the sexy young daughter of the publisher, and things in this erotic thriller get out of hand, as the girl ends up being a bit of a kook. A murder mystery ensues, only to have the rug pulled out from under us at the end when we find out it was all in the writer's imagination and she was just coming up with a good story for her book. We may as well have just watched the finale of the TV show "Roseanne" instead. At least we wouldn't have wasted as much of our time.
Identity (2003)
This one's similar to the twist in "Swimming Pool," but with another twist. Ew, this already smells of suck. Anyway, ten strangers meet at a hotel, only to start getting killed off one by one. But which of them is responsible for the murders? Our money's on John Cusack, but it turns out that all of these people are just one of ten multiple personalities inside some murderer's crazy head. What?! And the third, worst twist of all is that this is revealed somewhere in the middle of the film, not at the end. And now we have to sit here watching a bunch of characters get knocked off that technically don't even exist. Yeah, sounds like a very productive use of our time.
Color of Night (1994)
She's a he-she. That's the simplest way to sum this up. But where movies like "The Crying Game" and even "Sleepaway Camp" succeed using this device, the twist in "Color of Night" can be seen a mile away. Bruce Willis plays a psychiatrist trying to figure out if his new, gender-confused male patient is a killer. Around the same time, a strikingly similar-looking female character enters the psychiatrist's life, and they begin shagging each other. Could it be that they are the same pers- yes, of course yes. It's clear as freakin' day from the jump.
The Number 23 (2007), Secret Window (2004), Perfect Stranger (2007), High Tension (2003), Hide and Seek (2005) and Never Talk to Strangers (1995)
The basic twist ending to all of these films is the same thing: The main character is trying to stop a killer and/or trying to figure out who is behind something, only to discover that it was him/her all along. As you can see, this has been done about a million times, and it always sucks. Now can we get to the real issue here? Why did they make the poster for "The Number 23" look exactly like Jim Carrey's character in "Liar Liar"? "The pen is blue. The pen is blue. The GODDAMN pen is BLUE!"
A dozen years have passed since the first installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise, also known as Vin Diesel and Paul Walker's annuity plan. The budget grew from $38 million for the first film to $125 million for Fast Five ten years later. The cars have progressed quite a bit and so has the supporting cast, but so much more has changed in the real world in the decade-plus since June 2001 when The Fast and the Furious debuted.
5. American terrorist Timothy McVeigh had just been executed by lethal injection, on June 11, 2001, for detonating a deadly truck bomb in front of a federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995.
oubled since -- to $123 million -- for the 2013 season.
ven if you worked in a different industry. One great example is a friend who said, "I used to work in nursing years back and now I'm in marketing. There's no connection between it." It turns out that Proctor and Gamble was looking for someone who had a background in medicine and that was what ended up putting her ahead. So list positions including internships and volunteer work. Recruiters are on LinkedIn and by virtue of the way they're searching, using key words and the duration of your career, they'll be able to find you better.
thor:
4. The Girl Who's Only There to Meet Guys
9. The Non-Athlete All-Star
14. The Ringer
Texting has become the preferred method of communication for most young people. It's more convenient to send a quick message than to be stuck on the phone for what seems like an eternity.
