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Hiking is an activity that families can enjoy together as a way of reaching fitness goals, learning about the environment, and spending quality time together. Understanding that children and adults delight in hiking for different reasons is critical to maximizing everyone's enjoyment.

For adults, hiking is an opportunity to abandon their purpose-driven lives. A good dose of nature's wonders will quickly dull the drone of a boss's orders, nagging bills, relationship issues, and all the other trappings of adult life.

On the other hand, I have never hiked with a child of any age who understands or appreciates wandering for wandering's sake. The key is to plan and create goals that children of all ages will enjoy attaining, and making that achievement as special and comfortable as possible.
Make sure your hike begins with an age appropriate goal for your hike that all your children can get excited about. The National Park Service understands this idea and many national parks have a junior ranger program that does the work for parents. Specific tasks are presented along with educational materials for the purpose of earning a junior ranger designation. These programs are unique to each national park and provide varied learning opportunities based on each park's uniqueness. My children were thrilled when they were able to find and identify a Dipper (bird) at Rocky Mountain National Park at the end of a hike to an alpine lake. If a national park is not your destination, take the time to investigate the Park Service's online examples and create a similar document for your child.

Specific physical challenges can be used as achievement goals. Pick a specific landmark you would like to reach and make it the purpose of your hike. Younger children will appreciate understanding that there is a beginning and an end to the hike that is tied to reaching a specific location. Having an answer to the question, "are we there yet?" is important. For older children, make the hike a physical challenge. Whether your goal with your teen is reaching the top of a fourteener in Colorado or making it across the dunes to Lake Michigan at Sleeping Bear Dunes, getting there will be half the fun.

Engage your children. Young children will be exposed to things they have never seen before. Embrace the wonder in their new discoveries and take the opportunity to use these new findings as teaching moments. With older children, bring their school science lessons to life. Talk about the importance of conservation,

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