To sense and experience the environment firsthand has profound educational and motivational value. The splendor of the Rocky Mountains lures one to explore, and with this adventure comes an opportunity to learn lessons in ecology in a way very different from the traditional classroom approach. To climb a high mountain is to witness the transition that occurs in biological communities with a change in climate. The same observations on the horizontal would require traveling thousands of miles.Our national parks are valuable educational resources and can serve as outdoor laboratories. Two of these parks, Glacier National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park, were used in an ecology travel study program. In this course, students discovered the life zones of the Rocky Mountains and how the mountains, in turn, influence life zones for hundreds of miles east across North America.This paper describes the use of a field trip to the Rocky Mountains to promote knowledge, understanding and awareness of the environment. It discusses some ecosystems encountered on the trip and describes some of the hikes taken in these parks. It is not the intent of this paper to give a detailed account of these ecological communities, but rather a general idea of the educational potential of the course with some direction to the educator for planning.

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