Laurence Parent

New Mexico is famous for its high mountains, Indian ruins, sand dunes, and stark deserts. Hikes in the state offer everything from lush alpine lakes in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to rugged wilderness canyons in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This revised edition of Hiking New Mexico gives you the information you need to plan your customized trip to the Land of Enchantment with more than 90 of the state’s best hikes, mile-by-mile directional cues and detailed directions to the trailheads, and information on distance and difficulty for each trail. This guide leads you through New Mexico’s mountains, deserts, caves, and canyons. Climb Wheeler Peak, the state’s highest, and enjoys views deep into Colorado, go underground in the lava tubes of El Malpais National Monument, and hike for days through the lush woodland of the Gila Wilderness in complete solitude.Look inside to find:Hikes suited to every abilityFull-color maps and photos throughoutGPS coordinates Directions to the trailheadDifficulty ratings, best seasons to hike, and much more

The essential guide to Texas’s state parks and historic sites. Updated with a new park, Palo Pinto Mountains State Park west of Forth Worth; new historic sites; and scores of beautiful new photographs, the Official Guide to Texas State Parks has all the essential information organized by geographical regions to help you plan your great Texas adventure. The only complete resource of its kind on Texas, Laurence Parent’s Official Guide to Texas State Parks is the trusted source, with more than sixty-five thousand copies sold over the past thirty years. Praise for Previous Editions “Texas state-park fans should be thrilled. . . . Official Guide to Texas State Parks is the ultimate book detailing Texas’s state parks.”-Dallas Morning News “This book will make you want to hit the road to visit the natural splendor of Texas.”-Houston Chronicle “It’s good enough for a coffee table or a campfire. The Official Guide to Texas State Parks gives you sleek photography, maps, narratives, and loads of information.”-Southern Living “The newly updated Official Guide to Texas State Parks and Historic Sites . . . has beautiful color photographs and insights on camping, fishing, horseback riding, and other recreational opportunities around the state.”-Texas Journey

From the sandy beaches of the Outer Banks to the rugged mountains of the Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina offers something interesting around every turn. Author Laurence Parent describes thirty drives covering the state's most fascinating and beautiful places.

Small enough to fit in your back pocket, this guide features twenty easy-to-follow hikes in Big Bend National Park.Look Inside to FindHalf-hour strolls to full-day adventuresAccurate, easy-to-follow directions to the trailheadHikes for hikers of every ability, including families with young childrenClear, accurate, and concise mile-by-mile directions for each hikeGPS coordinates

With over 30 carefully selected scenic drives, this book offers myriad ways to explore the Land of Enchantment. Pass through the foothills of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains, stop in the ghost town of Madrid, or gaze at the immense caves of Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

From the rugged Guadalupe Mountains in the west and the deep canyons of the Red River in the Panhandle to the lakes on the eastern landscape, the Texas backcountry is as spacious and diverse as the Lone Star State itself. This guide contains unforgettable hikes that suit all abilities and interests.

Ask a Texan to name his favorite part of the state and he’ll probably say the Hill Country. This rolling open country, crisscrossed by creeks and rivers, wooded with ancient live oaks and junipers, holds many rewarding sites for photographers—like the huge granite dome of Enchanted Rock, and the cypress-lined Guadalupe River. Laurence Parent shows you the best photo spots in the most popular places as well as the best photo ops in the area’s little-known gems. He also covers scenic spots to photograph in the two large cities on the edge of the Hill Country—Austin and San Antonio. Not only does he help you identify great locations, he also offers solid advice on the best time of year to visit, the best time of day to shoot, and tips and techniques for getting the most out of your time.

Discover the Lone Star State with over 30 recommended drives. Scenic Driving Texas provides indispensable information, including directions and a map for each itinerary, in-depth descriptions of attractions and points of interest, travel tips, and more. In addition to the text being fully revised and updated, the 3rd edition features a new cover treatment.

Big Bend attracts some of the most dedicated visitors of any national park in the country. They drive for hours from all across Texas and beyond, sometimes for just a short weekend of wilderness. They bring everything needed for camping, boating, hiking, birding, and backpacking stuffed into or strapped to their vehicles. Most importantly, this loyal group of visitors brings a strong sense of caring and respect for the park.Most visitors to Big Bend National Park enjoy a wonderful, incident-free vacation and return home with great photos, thrilling memories, and stories of excitement and adventure. But accidents, even catastrophes, can happen. For a rare few Park visitors, a simple mistake, a lack of adequate preparation, or just plain hard luck has lead to deadly or near deadly outcomes. Heat stroke, dehydration, hypothermia, drowning, falls, lightning, and even murder have claimed victims at Big Bend. This book chronicles selected serious injuries, dramatic rescues, and tragic fatalities that have occurred in the Park since the early 1980s.Death In Big Bend contains useful information that could one day save your life.

Many people know the Rio Grande as a recreational river-a place for float trips through the canyons of Big Bend; for fishing at Lakes Amistad and Falcon; for archaeological study of ancient pictographs at the river's confluence with the Pecos; or for hiking the river in New Mexico and Colorado. Yet these pleasant interludes on the Rio Grande in its more scenic stretches are only part of its story. The other parts include controversies over water rights and water quality, terrorism threats both real and imagined, and the smuggling of drugs and humans across the international border. In Big River, Rio Grande, acclaimed photographer Laurence Parent teams up with former Texas Parks & Wildlife editor David Baxter to create an expansive portrait of this magnificent river that highlights both its timeless beauty and its current challenges.Laurence Parent's photographs capture many of the most dramatic and lovely stretches of the Rio Grande from its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico to its headwaters 1,896 miles northwest in Colorado. He includes striking scenes of the canyons and Sierra del Carmen Mountains of the Big Bend in Texas and Mexico, of the Conchos River in Mexico, of the Carson and Santa Fe National Forests in New Mexico, and of the Rio Grande National Forest and San Juan Mountains in Colorado, to mention only a few places. David Baxter tells a contemporary story of the river through the voices of people who are working passionately for its survival-ranchers and other citizen activists, water rights attorneys and water managers, scientists who study endangered fish species, government and law enforcement officials, and river outfitters.

Big Bend National Park is one of the few places left in America where a person can literally get away from it all. Nestled in the great bend of the Rio Grande that forms one of the most distinctive features of the silhouette of Texas, the park is several hundred miles from any large city. Within its 1,250 square miles of mountains, canyons, desert, and river, Big Bend National Park offers visitors respite from the stresses of urban living-a place for taking stock and charting new courses. That's one reason why many people return to the park year after year.This book is the first and only comprehensive photographic and word portrait of Big Bend National Park. Laurence Parent presents a magnificent photo gallery of park scenes. He portrays the mountain ranges-Chisos, Dead Horse, Rosillos, and Sierra del Carmen-from first light to moonrise and in all seasons and weather. He includes dramatic images of Santa Elena, Mariscal, and Boquillas canyons, as well as landmark features such as Mule Ears Peaks, Elephant Tusk, and the Chisos Basin Window. Parent also portrays the ephemeral beauty of Big Bend wildflowers, including giant bluebonnets and blooming prickly pear cactus, as well as the traces of human habitation at ghost towns scattered around the park.Joe Nick Patoski complements Parent's images with a masterfully crafted word portrait of Big Bend National Park. Patoski describes the powerful geologic and volcanic forces that created the awe-inspiring landscape of the Big Bend. He reviews the park's natural history and also its human history, from the prehistoric hunter-gathers who ranged over the region to Cabeza de Vaca, who was probably the first European to see Big Bend, to the creation of the national park in the 1930s and 1940s. Patoski also summarizes recent conservation efforts that have led to the protection of 2.1 million acres on both sides of the Rio Grande.Although no single book could ever hope to contain the vastness of Big Bend National Park between two covers, this one beautifully captures its essence.

From the sandy beaches of the Outer Banks to the rugged mountains of the Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina offers something interesting around every turn. Author Laurence Parent describes thirty drives covering the state's most fascinating and beautiful places.

The Texas coast attracts everyone-children playing in the surf and building sand castles; high school and college students partying at spring break; adults easing workaday stresses by beachcombing, birding, fishing, or just watching the waves roll in one after another. In the coast's elemental landscape of low dunes, sandy beaches, salt water, and sea breezes, life itself seems simpler. There's time to watch the seagulls fighting over a fish, bodysurf in the waves, pick up shells on the beach, and reconnect with the healing rhythms of nature. This beautiful book combines Laurence Parent's magnificent photographs with Joe Nick Patoski's entertaining text to create a one-of-a-kind portrait of the Texas coast. Parent's images capture Texas beaches, bays, estuaries, and salt marshes from Sabine Pass near the Louisiana border to Boca Chica, where the Rio Grande (sometimes) enters the Gulf of Mexico. He records all the familiar and distinctive scenes-sunrise over the Gulf of Mexico and sunset over the bays, sand dunes covered in goat-foot morning glories, historic lighthouses, shrimp boats and sailboats in harbor, and our favorite destinations of Galveston, Port Aransas, Corpus Christi, and South Padre Island. He also highlights lovely, lesser-known places you may not have discovered yet, such as Brazos Bend State Park. Joe Nick Patoski takes you on a verbal tour of the Texas coast. He describes the irresistible allure of this undramatic yet somehow unforgettable chain of barrier islands and bays. He also acknowledges the human activity that has always been a part of the coastal story-the arrival of immigrants to settle Texas; Civil War battles at Sabine Pass, Galveston, and Palmetto Ranch; towns, such as Indianola, that flourished and then suddenly folded after devastating hurricanes; the building of a huge petrochemical industry; and the successful effort to create wildlife refuges to sustain migrating birds and endangered species such as whooping cranes and Kemp's ridley sea turtles. Together, Parent and Patoski make it plain why people return to the coast as regularly as waves lap the beach. Looking through Texas Coast may well be where your next visit begins.