With Brandon's permission, I have included links to photos on Flickr that she took during hikes to land where wild mustangs roam on a range managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Carson City District Office. This second group of photos was taken Pine Grove, a ghost town in Nevada. They are great examples of places where you can hike without paying an entrance fee.
Did you know that we all have free access to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park that straddles Tennessee and North Carolina? It's the largest piece of wilderness in the eastern United States and there are 800 miles of trails, including a long stretch of the Appalachian Trail waiting to be explored.(This park is free because the state governments and private donors bought the land and donated it to the National Park Service, stipulating that no one would be charged for visiting what had been family farms and homesteads.)
More Places to Hike and Mountain Bike for Free
A subset of Colorado hikers have made it their mission to climb all of Colorado fourteeners - the 50plus peaks in this state that rise more than 14,000 feet above sea level. Bagging all of these peaks is so popular that there are Web sites that pass along information about the 14ers, stats and details for people who want to hike all of them. One of the best is 14ers.com. (While the climbs may not cost, one of the t-shirts that list the 14ers, with places where you can check off each one you've climbed, aren't free.)Several readers chimed in when I put out the word to find places, activities and ideas for free adventure travel. One reader suggested Dauset Trails in Georgia, where the hiking, fishing and biking are free. Beavers Bend State Park in southeast Oklahoma was another suggestion. Exploring on foot isn't limited to the U.S., of course. Another reader pointed out that once you're in the Azores Islands, an autonomous region of Portugal about four hours by plane from Boston, you can hike up ancient volcanoes and go spelunking in lava tubes that run for miles on these islands.
