Zion National Park

If I could go anywhere in the United States, I would go to Zion National Park. Zion National Park has massive sandstone cliffs that line the sky and a great diversity of plants and animals. The weather in Zion can range from a low of 50ºF in the winter to a high of 90ºF in the summer.  I would fly into the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, and drive into Zion. In Zion National Park, I would hike many of the cliffs, including Angels Landing. I would also like to camp their and go whitewater rafting. Zion National Park would be a fun and relaxing place to go on vacation.

John Krakauer

Jon Krakauer was born in 1954 in Corvallis, Oregon. He graduated from Hampshire College in 1976. After graduating, he moved between Colorado, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest working as a carpenter and a commercial salmon fisherman. He developed a love for climbing mountains which led him to climbing Mount Everest in 1996. While climbing, a storm killed four of his five teammates who had reached the summit with him. He wrote an article for Outside magazine about the climb and received a national magazine award. Following this he wrote a novel about the tragedy called Into Thin Air, which was a New York Times Bestseller. Krakauer also wrote the novel Into the Wild about a man who survived in the Alaskan wilderness for 119, which was on the best seller list for two years. His writings have been published in Outside, GQ, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and more. In 1997 he received the Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism for an article he wrote for Smithsonian on volcanology. In 2003 he published, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, in 2009 Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, and in 2011, Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost his Way. 

Into the Wild Summary

Into the Wild by John Krakauer is a novel based on the journey of Christopher Johnson McCandless. After graduating from Emory University in 1990, McCandless began a two year trek across the United States to Alaska. He survived 119 days in Alaska with only what he could find in the wilderness, 10 pounds of rice, a .22 caliber rifle, rifle rounds, a camera, and a few books. On his journey he took the name Alexander Supertramp and spent time in South Dakota working on a grain elevator before hitchhiking to Alaska. He was found dead on September 6, 1992 in a bus he had been camping in. In the novel, Krakauer analyzes McCandless' journey and relates it to historical events, his own life, and famous authors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Wild_(book)