GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan woman who wrote a letter to her family in 1974 has been reunited with the tattered note after it was finally delivered to the home where her family lived...

SEATTLE (AP) — John Allen Chau spent summers alone in a California cabin as a wilderness emergency responder, led backpacking expeditions in the Northwest's Cascade Mountains, almost lost his leg to a rattlesnake bite, and coached soccer for poor children in Iraq and South Africa.

DOTHAN, Ala. (AP) — Most people know him as Michael Whittaker, a retired postmaster in Ozark, but on the Appalachian Trail fellow hikers simply call him "Swimmer."

The Appalachian Trail is estimated to be about 2,200 miles long. The route, which begins and ends in Georgia and Maine, navigates hikers through 12 states and typically takes roughly five to seven months to complete.

Day in and day out, Whittaker slips on his hiking books and, as he puts it, "just walks and walks and walks."

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The National Park Service is looking for two hikers who did not meet a scheduled air taxi pickup within Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.

The hikers, a couple from Missouri, on Tuesday and Wednesday also failed to make two pre-planned satellite phone calls to their air taxi operator.

Gulkana-based Copper Valley Air Service on June 22 dropped the hikers at Sanford Glacier airstrip.

Exploring nature and sleeping under the stars can be viewed as an economical vacation. But buying gear and booking campsites or renting an RV can add up.

With some cost-saving strategies, camping can fit a variety of budgets, whether you're planning a car or RV camping trip or backpacking. Try these tips to enjoy the outdoors free of technology, traffic and a big tab.

The butter-bright flanks of golden trout are known to exert a magnetic pull on anglers.

The trouble is, the trout tend to live in some of the hardest-to-reach lakes of the high mountains. Consequently, those who want gold have to pay with a good measure of sweat, sore muscles and sometimes a bit of heartache when the finicky fish don’t bite.

Alexis Renee was 20 years old when she first met Chitti Aaron.

The couple met in Andhra Pradesh, India, 8,000 miles away from her home in Apex, North Carolina. Five weeks after meeting him, they were engaged.

Renee visited India before on short-term backpacking trips.

“The first day I spent in India started with me and a bunch of girls walking down this tiny alleyway with cows and chickens heads cut off and beggars grabbing my arms,” Renee said.

TORONTO (AP) — The Latest on the U.S.-Canadian family rescued from captivity (all times EDT):

11:35 p.m.

Canadian ex-hostage Joshua Boyle says the Haqqani network in Afghanistan killed his infant daughter in captivity and raped his wife.

Boyle gave a statement after landing in Canada late Friday with his American wife and three young children.

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A Pennsylvania woman has fallen ill and died during a backpacking trip in Colorado.

Pitkin County sheriff's officials say the unidentified woman got sick Thursday while hiking with three friends to Conundrum Hot Springs. They planned to camp at the hot springs but instead set up a tent after the 20-year-old woman began vomiting.

Two of the hikers went for help and a third remained with the woman in the backcountry.

KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Authorities say the body of a Southern California man who disappeared nine months ago while hiking in the Sierra has been found.

Seventy-four-year-old Robert Woodie was reported missing after he didn't return from a four-day solo backpacking trip in Kings Canyon National Park last October.

Around that time, a cold spell hit the mountains, with strong winds, temperatures below freezing at night and snow at higher elevations.

Matt and Kimberly Kinney always travel light when they head into the woods, leaving behind everything but the necessities and keeping their backpacks as slim as possible. Two summers ago they decided to add one very heavy item to the packing list: their 22-pound infant.

In July 2015, the Sacramento parents took their son Thomas, then 11 months old, backpacking on the 165-mile Tahoe Rim Trail.

Here are some of their tips and tricks for successfully camping or backpacking with babies:

If trudging up a steep, rocky mountain with a backpack isn’t your idea of fun, but you like getting out, here are five options for woodsy walks that won’t make your creaky knees cranky. Be warned, though, these are popular places — partly because the walking is easy — so don’t expect to be alone.

PHOENIX (AP) — Backpacking is a great way to enjoy the outdoors with the added bonus of getting a little exercise. Those packs are not light and it involves walking most of the time, so you definitely feel it at the end of the day.

The two-wheeled version of backpacking adds a more technical dimension.

SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Search and rescue crews are looking for a missing Arizona hiker believed to be somewhere in central California's Sequoia National Park.

The National Park Service says crews began mobilizing Sunday to search for 41-year-old Vince Scalise of Phoenix.

Mountain goats and hikers are meeting in dangerously close proximity at Heart Lake in the Bitterroot Mountains.

The goats near the popular backpacking destination south of Superior, Montana, have given up the safety of the state-line cliffs, lured by human-related salts and foods around the mountain lake.

The attraction away from the cliffs has left the mountain goats more vulnerable to predators such as wolves and mountain lions.