If are in the mood for some humor, this hilarious video by Zack at The Good Badger is guaranteed to scratch that itch 🙂

As long as I’ve signed myself up for this bout of insanity, I’m going to take the steps necessary to make sure that I’m a highly tuned hiking/camping machine before I ever step foot onto the Appalachian Trail.

The Travel section of the LA Times has an interesting article on the fledgling national parks of China and talks about how the culture is not yet embracing the outdoor experience.

“For now,” she said, “Chinese tourists don’t travel like you, carrying a backpack into the mountains and going camping. A very small group of Chinese people are doing that, but most of them are just getting on buses and going to overlooks.”

I suppose that in many ways, the popularity of outdoor activities like backpacking and camping is a measure of a society’s wealth, since wealth leads to an increased amount of leisure time.

So this week is full of blog posts about New Year’s resolutions, but these at Wheeling It made me smile.

Polly and the cats have been so fantastically inspiring that I decided the best thing I  could do for myself in 2011 is learn from their lead. So, with life lessons learnt from my furry friends allow me to introduce my 8 dogkittylutions for 2011: