This summer, L.L. Bean wants to help you feel great out there with gear tips and advice for heading outdoors and exploring all the possibilities of the season.

Sand sticks to pretty much everything. So here's a hack for keeping it out of your

socks, sheets, and rugs when you come home from the beach. Corn starch. Simply rub some cornstarch where the sand is sticking and it'll fall off with ease.

This works especially well between your fingers and toes.

For more fun ideas, easy howtus and inspiring stories, visit L.L. being

dot com slash guide. National Park trips can be very complex to plan in addition to

securing lodging in or near a park, finding the closest airport and verifying the driving route and reserving entry

to a park if required, a fair amount of research is needed to determine how to actually

spend your time once in the park.

From visitor centers to geologic features to historic sites, travelers often want to squeeze

every last opportunity from a national park site. Beyond the scenic drives, hiking trails, horseback riding and boating, ranger programs, visitor center films and exhibits, and wildlife sightings, the nagging doubt remains.

Have I missed anything?

Set against the backdrop of Rolling Hills in Western Wyoming, Fossil Butte National Monument,

like so many other parks, presents a variety of activities.

Let's set aside the scenic drive and the hiking trails and focus on the main event,

the fossils.

On the drive into the park, signs tell you what kind of animals and plants appeared on Earth at different times.

Once on the deck of the visitor center, a concentrated history of Earth's living organisms,

large and small, is documented on the railing that surrounds the building and

looks out over what was once Fossil Lake.

Starting where the deck meets the parking lot sidewalk, 540 million years ago, encompasses the phanozoic

eon, the Paleozoic era, the cambrian period, with complex trace fossils and

...