As John McKinney puts it: “I’ve been blessed to have had the opportunity to take a hike and write about it in many great places in North America, Europe, and elsewhere around the world.”

John McKinney, The Traveling Hiker, knows the best way to experience a place is by sojourning on foot. From the mountains of Maui to the Lake District in England, the inveterate walker shares his enthusiasm for traveling—and enjoying the best hiking along the way.

An expert on hiking tours, guided and self-guided hiking vacations, John McKinney has designed and led tours for a walking vacation company. “Leading a hiking tour is a demanding but very rewarding experience,” he says. “You get to know people really well when you spend time with them on the trail in a beautiful place.”

You like to hike and you like to travel. You’re a special kind of hiker, a Traveling Hiker. 

Traveling hikers have a spirit of adventure, a natural curiosity about people and places far from home, a sense of humor that enables them to take every curve in the road in stride and a young-at-heart spirit common to active people of all ages and stages of life. 

They also share a love of nature, an appreciation of the green world and a desire to stay active and healthy while participating in a kind of travel that challenges body and mind. 

During the 1930s and 1940s, passengers on the Bermuda Railway were treated to breathtaking views of palmetto-fringed shores, picturesque hamlets and a profusion of subtropical plants and flowers. The train is long gone, but the Bermudan government in 1984 converted the rails to trails. The result is a 22-mile footpath that offers hikers an intimate look at the island. 

Curry Village Pavilion American Buffet-style, all-you can eat for breakfast and lunch. No surprises, just good old American classics; load up pre- or post-hike for good taste at a good price.

Curry Village, In the Valley Shuttle-bus stops 13A, 13B, 14, and 20 Breakfast $9.50 adults, $7.50 children; dinner $12 adults, $10 children Daily 7-10am and 5:30-8pm DC, DISC, MC, V

Mariposa Grove

Difficulty Rating: Easy-moderate

Distance & elevation gain: To Grizzly Giant is 1.6 miles round trip with 100-foot elevation gain; or 4.8-mile loop with 1,000-foot elevation gain

Estimated time: 1-2½ hours

Best time to go: May-October

Website:www.nps.gov/yose/

Recommended map: Yosemite National Park map

Trailhead GPS: Trailhead GPS: N 37.30.227 W 119.36.638

 Known the world over for its great granite cliffs and domes, enormous waterfalls and giant sequoias, Yosemite is everything a national park should be and more. Such well known Yosemite Valley destinations as Vernal Fall, Nevada Fall,YosemiteFalls and Half Dome are magnets for hikers. Equally attractive are many more sights outside the valley: Tuolomne Meadows, CathedralPeak, Clouds Rest, the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees and many more.

The park boasts a magnificent High Sierra backcountry, one that (by rather severe Sierra standards anyway) is quite accessible. Well-marked trails lead to wildflower-festooned alpine meadows, lovely lakes and tarns, trails and cross-country routes to peaks.

“Vancouver is one of the world’s best cities for hiking because the wilderness is right in our backyards,” declares Manfred Schollerman, owner-operator of Rockwood Adventures, a walking tour company. “A twenty minute walk takes you from city streets into a rain forest with thousand-year old trees.”

Asian and European visitors, whose cities are far, far from any wilderness, are particularly awestruck by the close proximity of the forest primeval to civic center, explains Schollerman. Indeed his most popular jaunt, the Capilano River Canyon Walk begins near a shopping center and almost before his walkers can say “banana slug,” they find themselves in a temperate rain forest. Trails weave through an emerald forest of hemlock, red cedar and Douglas fir, over a forest floor carpeted with moss, ferns and flowering plants.

The land we now call Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, located about 225 miles north of San Francisco, has long been recognized as something special. During the late 1960s, the great Catholic theologian, Thomas Merton, felt that the Needle Rock area would be an ideal place for a life of prayer and contemplation, and talked of establishing a monastic community there.

As you hike up to the top of Kelso Dunes you might just find that the dunes sha-boom, sha-boom, sha-boom for you. Geologists speculate that the extreme dryness of the East Mojave Desert, combined with the wind-polished, rounded nature of the individual sand grains, has something to do with their musical ability.

Except for the sha-booming dunes, the Kelso Dunes are absolutely quiet. Often hikers find they have a 45-square-mile formation of magnificently sculpted sand, the most extensive dune field in the West, all to themselves.