Have you ever tried snowshoeing? It's a low-impact outdoor activity that places you in beautiful settings. Walking through a meadow, or on a trail through the woods you can catch up with friends and chat with your kids (who won't be sending texts to friends at that moment). If you want to go with a group, several organizations around the country, and possibly in your city, offer snowshoe excursions.

Snowshoes are easy to rent at winter resorts, and easily purchased at sporting stores.

Bredeson Outdoor Adventures specializes in snowshoe hikes in the winter and hiking in mountainous locales in Europe in the summertime.

If you want small-group adventure travel trips that range from trekking in the Himalayas to visiting Cambodia, with cultural experiences such as having lunch with an Icelandic family and meeting locals in Peru's Sacred Valley, take a look at Boundless Journeys vacations.

Photo courtesy of Boundless Adventures

Put on your helmet and turn on the miner's light.  It's time to enter the Rio Secreto cave system in Riviera Maya, Mexico.  The journey, part walking and part swimming in the underground river, was a highlight of a recent trip to Mexico. Rio Secreto was formed after an asteroid crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula.  A 2010 study concluded that this is the asteroid that resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Photo courtesy of Rio Secreto

You can enter any of the 397 national parks in the U.S. for free this weekend and on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. You can walk in Dr. King's footsteps at Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Georgia, the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail in Alabama, or the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

You can also experience cross country skiing or snowshoeing on park trails, photograph buffalo crossing the road in front of you at Yellowstone National Park and experience other winter adventures at the parks where snow blankets the ground. For more information about the free days, Jan. 14-16, visit www.nps.gov.

Photo (c) Lois Friedland