Jenna Schnuer

There is, of course, the all-American burger. It’s got pickles. It’s got ketchup (or, as some spell it, catsup), lettuce, raw onion, a red-enough slice of tomato. Thankfully, though it’s a classic, one burger does not America make. When it comes to burgers around the U.S., one size definitely does not fit all.

So, in celebration of all that makes the nation delicious, here are some of the many ways to burger-up around the country.

Katmai National Park is visited by thousands of bears near its campground every summer, so visitors must follow the rules....

Ever notice how, when they step into a fresh snowfall, most dogs get all bouncy and goofy? There’s a lesson there. They benefit from time outside when it’s cold just as much as their owners do. To find out how to keep tails wagging when temperatures plummet, we checked in with vets in spots where winter hits hard.

After opening the tin that came with the day’s mail, I cried. I was weeks into a new role: breast cancer patient, 43 years old and just 11 months into my life in Alaska—which I’d finally moved to after falling in love with it a decade earlier on an expiring frequent flyer miles-motivated trip. My new home city, Anchorage, is 4431 driving miles away from NYC’s delis, bagel bakeries, and bodegas. This was the cookie version of my friend coming over to sit with me, to just listen.

No need to worry about Doughnut Day sending you into full sugar-crash nap by 3 p.m. This year, you’re going to rock some protein along with that pillowy glazed (or plain) doughnut goodness. Here, we welcome doughnut sandwiches from around the U.S. that will keep you happy and moving forward all day long.

Larry LeSueur is used to former peers from the software world asking him, “What the heck are you doing?” It’s a reasonable question, considering the decidedly different turn he and his former Microsoft colleague Jose Lugo took in 2010 when they founded Redmond, Wash.-based WISErg, anxious to solve the growing problem of food waste in America.

During the first couple of years after moving to Anchorage from the east coast (NYC, mostly), I cobbled together a list of restaurants that could quell at least some of the missing-there and homesick-for-certain-restaurants feelings and hunger pangs that welled up. After finding good Vietnamese and Korean restaurants, a Greek restaurant owned by a former New Yorker, falafel that came with a side of advice if the place was empty enough, and some of the best hummus I’ve ever come across, I started to feel more at home. One thing that eluded me: proper pizza.

It’s just about high season for hitting the trails, and there’s no time like the present to start gathering your gear and upping your skills. Not sure how to get started? Hit Play on these podcasts. And if you’re a seasoned backpacker seeking to go bigger this season—hitting tougher terrain for longer periods of time—you’ll find wisdom in these episodes, too.

The wood bison is a cousin, if you will, to the better-known plains bison—both are subspecies of the American bison—and their scientific names seem straight out of a Belushi-era Saturday Night Live skit: the wood bison’s Bison bison athabascae to the plains bison’s Bison bison bison. (Bison are not buffalo.)

“In the United States…wood bison have been gone for somewhere around…we don’t really know, but let’s call it a couple of centuries,” says Tom Seaton, a wood bison biologist (and all-around ungulate guy) for theAlaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G). “Now is our chance to correct that and put them back where they were. Most of the really amazing and grand wildlife recovery adventures have already played out. This is really the last one.”