Midway up the Appalachian Trail, a little country store in Gardners, Pennsylvania, invites hikers to take on an additional challenge: eating a half-gallon of ice cream in one sitting.

Many of these places are a mix of rural and urban communities and destinations, where peaceful outdoor activities, nature, history, and culture meet.

Most of the 256 shelters on the Appalachian trail are pretty rough. Then there's the Fontana Hilton ...

There are 18 National Parks in Maryland as well as an additional 10 affiliated sites that partner with the National Park ...

Election Day in the woods, in a nation of cruelty and grace On the Appalachian Trail, the shelters are welcoming, but there are wasps in the walls.

The shelter, maintained for decades by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club and “innkeeper” Jim Stauch, has potted plants, coffee table books, garden decorations, tidy sleeping areas, and clean lounging ...

Nowlin camps out on the trail but typically avoids his least favorite sleeping arrangement— what are known as Appalachian Trail Shelters, which are three-sided wooden structures.

An inexperienced young backpacker with a broken marriage braves the Appalachian Trail in Virginia in 1979.

A contemporary hiker surveys the terrain at Dragon's Tooth along the Appalachian Trail west of Roanoke, Virginia. The author's fraught backpack on the trail launched in 1979.