Solo travel has the power to transform: Think of the memoirs “Eat Pray Love” or “Wild.” But you don’t have to circumnavigate the globe or hike 1,100 miles to see why some people choose to go it alone. The freedom to explore at your own pace, open to connecting with people you meet along the way, can feel as intoxicating as a tropical breeze. But solo travel can be daunting, too, especially when problems arise. And of course, solo travelers need to keep certain safety considerations in mind.

So, are you ready to plan your adventure for one? Here’s how to get the most out of it.

Start off easy

“Keep your first trip simple,” said Carolyn Ray, who runs JourneyWoman, a website for solo travelers, and has visited more than 40 countries on her own. Overcome your trepidation by picking a destination in your own country or at least where people speak your language, she advises. Also, choose accommodations with communal spaces where you can meet others and that are close to the sites you want to see.

Wield the power of one

At even the hottest restaurants, solo diners without reservations can sometimes squeeze in at the bar. And singles can often snag discounted seats at shows and performances by looking for just one ticket close to showtime, says Kat Fleischman, 36, an American public relations professional who has been taking international solo trips since she was 18. She also advises travelers to inquire about single-occupancy discounts at hotels. Travelers on their own can also hop into faster-moving singles lines at amusement parks, filling in spots left empty by groups. Universal Studios Hollywood and Six Flags Magic Mountain, near Los Angeles, and Disney World, in Orlando, Fla., all have a handful of rides with singles lines.

Join group activities

Websites like Meetup and Fun JetSetter can help break the ice with others who share your interests. An internet search can reveal an array of options: Book dinners with locals and other travelers on the website Eatwith. Find fellow nature lovers through local groups like Alaska Outdoors, in Anchorage, which organizes hikes. Find new places to enjoy your favorite activities through sites like Pickleball NSW in New South Wales, Australia. Facebook groups devoted to people living abroad, like Spain’s Expats of Málaga group, can offer local advice and people to meet.

Some hostels and guesthouses also organize outings. You might find yourself going to a kayaking lesson, a singalong, a drag show or a dance club. The hotel chain Selina, for example, offers co-working spaces along with group outings in more than 100 locations in countries such as Peru, Israel and Thailand.

Talk to the locals

If you are eating alone, sit at the bar, where you are more likely to strike up a conversation with those around you. One trick: “Sit with an English-language book to attract other English speakers,” Ms. Ray said. Some dating apps have “friend” settings that solo travelers can use — take the usual precautions, of course, by meeting in a public place and telling others where you’re going and with whom.

Don’t overshare, and use a financial ‘safe word’

Be cautious about sharing personal information, accepting invitations or leaving your belongings with someone you just met. And consider packing a rubber doorstop to add an extra layer of security to your hotel room or Airbnb, and a loud key chain alarm, Ms. Ray said.

If you’re lost, Ms. Fleischman advises, instead of standing on the street to consult your phone, step into a cafe or a store. And rather than looking at your route on your phone as you’re walking, use your earbuds to get directions from mapping apps.

Come up with a term that only you and a chosen few people back home know, so that if you are genuinely in trouble and need money, they’ll know it’s not a criminal impersonating you. Leave an electronic copy of important documents like your passport, health or travel insurance, and itinerary with those people, too. You may also want to share your location with them using a cellphone app.

Leave space for spontaneity

“Stepping out of your comfort zone and embracing the unusual can lead to some of the most memorable experiences during your solo travels,” Ms. Ray said. Make plans that you can choose to change.

Keep a journal

Solo travel is an opportunity to “foster and cultivate your own sense of empowerment,” said Ms. Ray, and it will help to understand what you’ve learned if you keep a record — written, audio or video — of your goals, setbacks and triumphs.

Midmorning on the Dolores River, you could feel how recently the water had been snow. “It’s probably about 48 degrees right now,” our guide Samy said, as she carefully angled the boat so the paddlers in front got wet and she stayed dry in the back. The white water was splashy and rolling without being scary, but it picked up speed as we headed downstream.

We were in Colorado’s Ponderosa Gorge, along the line where the Rockies slip into the red edge of the desert. Sky-scraping pines sent off a dusty cinnamon smell, and there was a shock of new green growth on the red-rock cliffs. The canyon got deeper, redder and more angular as the day went on. I kept taking off my sunglasses to make sure the colors were real.

We were on a single-day trip with Mild2Wild Rafting, based in Durango, Colo., but from the launch where we pushed our rafts into the river, you can float for 173 miles, and 10-ish days, uninterrupted, until the Dolores, named the River of Sorrows by the Spanish explorers who came across it in 1776, runs into the Colorado River, right over the Utah state line.

In the rapid-strewn red-rock canyon, boaters float past the remnants of granaries built by Ancestral Puebloans and panels of petroglyphs and pictographs. There are bear scratches on the big ponderosas and river otters in the eddies. Threatened native fish thread up into the headwaters, and blooming fendlerbush dot the banks. The river is a ribbon of connectivity, and it carves through one of the largest untouched landscapes left in Colorado. In 1975 it was the first waterway in the state to be studied for Wild and Scenic designation.

But it’s runnable only when there’s enough water, and these days the river channel is dry more often than it’s not. Because of over-allocated water rights, McPhee Dam, upstream of the gorge, releases water only in years when there’s more than enough inflow to fulfill legal obligations to rights holders. Before this spring, the river last ran in 2019, and conditions are predicted to keep getting hotter and drier.

“Any time you can get on the Dolores it’s special,” said Alex Mickel, 53, the president of Mild2Wild Rafting. “There’s no other river I know that offers so many different environments; it makes for a pretty unparalleled multiday trip. It breaks your heart that it only runs rarely.”

My trip was in June, and the Dolores’s season was over by early July.

But after an exceptionally snowy winter across most of the West, rivers that don’t normally run at raftable levels this late in the year — or run at all — are cranking this summer. And as heat domes sit across much of the country, breaking temperature records, it’s a relief to be able to get wet. Here are five rivers that are having notable seasons, and which you’ll still be able to run into the fall.

California

Kern River

After a three-year stretch when it was impossible to run the Kern River — “Covid then drought then more drought,” said Matt Volper, 35, who runs Kern River Outfitters — this season’s high flow broke the benchmark set 40 years ago, and the river is still running.

“We will have good river flows on the Kern River until Thanksgiving and possibly even later this year,” Mr. Volpert said. “We’ve never seen anything like this season; it’s been pretty remarkable.”

The river, which is within easy driving distance of Los Angeles, runs out of the southern end of the Sierra Nevada, and cuts through glacier-carved granite canyons. In white-water sports, rapids are graded between Class 1 and Class 6, with 1 being flat water and 6 being too dangerous to run. Experienced paddlers can raft the 17-mile, Class 5 Forks of the Kern section into August this year, which is notable because the stretch typically stops being runnable by early June. The more moderate Lower Kern, where swimming holes and rocks to jump off are interspersed between the rapids, will be running through August, too. Mr. Volper said the company’s two-day Lower Kern trip is its most popular option, starting at $419.

Merced River

“I think the big news from this season is how long the rivers without upstream dams will continue to be raftable this year,” said Bob Ferguson, 76, owner and founder of Zephyr Whitewater Expeditions, based in Columbia, Calif. Dam releases can give rafters steady flows over the summer, while flows in undammed rivers are at the mercy of upstream weather. Mr. Ferguson said that his company will be paddling free-flowing rivers like the Merced, which flows through Yosemite Valley, into September, thanks to the record-breaking snowpack that’s still melting out of the mountains.

Mr. Ferguson said that’s extremely special and rare. The company’s last trip on the Merced in 2022 was in mid-June, because the river was so low, while this year, the National Park Service had to close the gates of Yosemite National Park because the river peaked high above its banks. Now it’s back down to safe rafting flows, and there’s still water coming downstream.

The river is so beautiful that Congress designated it as Wild and Scenic in 1987, but its value is more than just visual. It’s also home to abundant wildlife, including the limestone salamander, which isn’t found anywhere else in the world. Half-day trips are $113.

Oregon

Upper Klamath River

This season is bittersweet on the upper Klamath River, according to Pete Wallstrom, 50, owner of Momentum River Expeditions. After more than 20 years of negotiations, four dams on the Klamath are coming down in 2024, restoring fisheries and tribal water rights, but rendering the popular Hell’s Corner section unraftable because the water flow will be inconsistent. This will be the last season for trips on it.

“It’s the right thing to do. The dam removal will create a healthier ecosystem, but it’s also one of the best rivers in the country to introduce people to white water, so we’re sad to lose it. Rarely are things black and white,” Mr. Wallstrom said. The upper Klamath carves through a high-desert basalt canyon, and the 17-mile Hell’s Corner section starts with mellow Class 2 rapids before escalating into continuous Class 4 white water. It covers 30 rapids over the course of a single-day trip. Your last chance to run Hell’s Corner is this summer, and there are guaranteed flows through Labor Day. Day trips start at $220.

Utah

Cataract Canyon

The Grand Canyon might have better name recognition, but clued-in boaters know that some of the biggest rapids on the Colorado River are upstream, in 46-mile Cataract Canyon, which runs out of Canyonlands National Park and flows into the north end of Lake Powell. The sky-high red-rock walls hold the infamous Big Drop Rapids, which include Satan’s Gut and Little Niagara. John Wesley Powell is said to have named the canyon Cataract, because the rapids looked like waterfalls.

Because Cataract is upstream of the biggest dams and reservoirs on the river, flows can be seasonally variable, and this year they’ve been running high after a winter in which Utah broke its 40-year snowpack record and received as much snow in one season as the past two years combined. Companies like Mild2Wild will run trips through at least October, and you can spend up to six days in the canyon for $1,499.

Colorado

Gunnison Gorge

Blue Mesa Reservoir, outside Gunnison, Colo., is up nearly 50 feet from last year, and the water level is 20 percent higher than average, which is a welcome reprieve for the area, and for the Gunnison River downstream. The spectacular 14-mile Gunnison Gorge, just downstream from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, holds 1.7 billion years of geologic history in its dark, narrow walls.

The trip would be worth it for the scenery alone, but the gorge is also home to world-famous trout fishing, and the river hits more than one rapid per mile as it flows downstream. Despite its highlights, it tends to be uncrowded, thanks in part to a short hike to the put-in, but the reward is well worth the walk. Guided trips will run through September with outfitters like Gunnison River Expeditions, and day trips start at $155.

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The Transportation Department announced on Wednesday that it had finalized new regulations to require more commercial aircraft to have accessible bathrooms, a long-awaited step to address complaints from disabled travelers about the difficulties of flying.

Under the regulations, new single-aisle planes with at least 125 seats will eventually be required to have at least one lavatory large enough for a disabled passenger and an attendant to enter and move around in. Twin-aisle planes are already required to have an accessible lavatory.

“Traveling can be stressful enough without worrying about being able to access a restroom,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “Yet today, millions of wheelchair users are forced to choose between dehydrating themselves before boarding a plane or avoiding air travel altogether.”

The finalized regulations came out of a lengthy effort by the Transportation Department, dating back to the Obama administration, to develop new rules intended to improve air travel for people with disabilities. In 2016, an advisory committee established by the department called for accessible bathrooms on new, larger single-aisle planes, and the department proposed new regulations last year to carry out that recommendation.

Airlines have increasingly used single-aisle planes on lengthy flights, worsening the discomfort for disabled travelers who cannot use existing lavatories.

The new requirement for accessible lavatories does not kick in immediately. It will apply to new single-aisle planes that airlines order beginning in 2033 or that are delivered beginning in 2035. But that timeline is faster than what the advisory committee laid out in 2016 and what the Transportation Department proposed last year.

The new regulations also include other steps meant to improve air travel for people with disabilities, such as installing grab bars in lavatories on certain new planes.

Jani Nayar, the executive director of the Society for Accessible Travel & Hospitality, a nonprofit organization, said that people with disabilities have sometimes avoided air travel altogether and that larger lavatories would allow travelers in wheelchairs to fly more comfortably.

“People are not very happy with dehydrating themselves so they can travel or using a catheter or leg bag,” Ms. Nayar said.

Heather Ansley, the chief policy officer for Paralyzed Veterans of America, said the new regulations were the result of decades of advocacy to ensure that airline passengers with disabilities could have their basic needs met while traveling and would not have to put their health at risk to fly. The veterans’ organization sued the Transportation Department during the Trump administration in an effort to push the agency to issue new regulations on accessible bathrooms.

“This really goes a long way in saying that we recognize that passengers with disabilities are people that deserve to have dignity and, just like every other customer, should have a chance to use a lavatory if they need to,” Ms. Ansley said on Wednesday.

In written comments submitted to the Transportation Department last year, two trade groups representing airlines, Airlines for America and the International Air Transport Association, expressed support for requiring accessible lavatories. But they said that planes would have room for fewer seats as a result, which would cost airlines revenue and lead to higher fares.

In a statement on Wednesday, Hannah Walden, a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, said, “U.S. airlines fully support accessible lavatories on single-aisle aircraft and have been voluntarily working with the disability community, the Department of Transportation and industry stakeholders for seven years on solutions.”

The department’s announcement on Wednesday came on the 33rd anniversary of the signing of the Americans With Disabilities Act by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. That law does not apply to air travel, but another federal law, the Air Carrier Access Act, bars airlines from discriminating against people with disabilities.

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