Adventure Travel in Luxury in the Canadian Rockies

by Jamie Rhein on

Usually I equate adventure travel with roughing it. Getting dropped off by helicopter into the wildnerness where there are no paved roads also sounds a bit risky. On the contrary on both accounts. Although heli-hiking vacations do involve helicopters and donning hiking boots for some rigorous activity, there’s no reason to forgo the niceties of pampering if you’re spending the night in the wild.

That’s what I found out when I read Joe Nocera’s first person account of his trip to Canada in the New York Times travel section. He went on a Canadian Mountain Holidays vacation that involved being dropped off on top of a mountain in the morning so he could hike all day with the rest of his group in stunning, hard to reach places before the helicopter came back for them to return them to the lodge. According to him, this experience allows for roughing it travel that is mixed with luxurious slumber in a lodge that also offers massages, wine and hors d’oeuvres. That does sound good BUT. . .

One of the things he mentioned was seeing markings left by grizzly bears, something that might be hard to see if you just hike somewhere. Harumph! The first time I hiked in Glacier National Park in Montana with my husband the spring before we got married, he pointed out two grizzly bears across a field from where we were heading to a lake he thought I should see. I wondered about the fruit in his pack. He said I ought to be more concerned about the salami in mine and all he had to worry about was out-running me. The bears were so far away they looked like small dogs and according to this personal tour guide of mine who spent the summers in college doing laundry at Many Glacier Hotel in East Glacier, we weren’t in any danger. We made it to the lake several miles from the parking lot. I still remember the mountains still capped with snow and the brilliant blue of the water. And at the end of the day, I had the satisfaction of knowing that I got there and back by using my legs to carry me. We didn’t see one person along the way. If a helicopter had shown up, though, I probably wouldn’t have turned down the ride.

One company I found that offers a smaller scale version of Nocera’s experience is Heli-Canada Adventures. You can do a heli-hike for a day if you want to picnic on top of a mountain, for example, and you just don’t want to walk there.

Let’s Load Up Someone Else’s RV

by Brett Atkinson on

The early movies in the National Lampoon’s Vacation series did a great job in capturing the trials and tribulations of travelling with your family, and a new website has just launched that might really get Clark Griswold’s interest.

Already there are schemes where you can exchange your house or boat with someone in another country, and now the idea has spread to motorhomes and recreational vehicles. The www.motorhomeholidayswap.com site currently lists vehicles in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Austria, Spain, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Founder Chris Farrow, a motorhome owner (naturally) from Northumberland in England is behind the website and claims “Owners can have the reassurance that they will exchange with like minded people who care about their motorhomes.”

I wonder if that would include families like the Griswolds?

News via TravelMole.

Making The World Safer For Bananas

by Brett Atkinson on

Whether you’re hiking the Appalachian Trail or hanging out of Vietnam’s Reunification Express, there’s nothing like a fresh banana to give you a boost of energy. Trouble is the tasty fruit in the handy natural zipper pack does not respond well to being left in a day pack with a guidebook and GPS.

Finding a bruised and forgotten ‘nana is not the best way to end a day.

The Banana Bunker is designed to keep Ecuador’s finest fresh throughout the busiest travels.

There’s no word yet if the design work has been completed on the Aubergine Apparatus or the Pomegranate Pouch.

Alaska Float Plane Photo Gallery

by Neil Woodburn on

If you’ve been enjoying Gadling the last couple of days, you may have read our two-part series highlighting the joys of float plane fishing in Alaska.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime vacation I recently took with a group of old friends from high school, most of which had never been to Alaska before. It was a do-it-yourself trip that turned out to be surprisingly inexpensive and expectedly wonderful. We saw bears and bald eagles, caught so much salmon we had to throw most of it back, hiked through magnificent scenery, and otherwise indulged in all that is Alaska.

As one might expect, nearly a week of fishing for salmon from a remote Alaska cabin produces quite a number of fantastic photographs. While many of them were already included in the two-part series, we’ve grouped the others into an amazing Photo Gallery that truly captures the Alaska experience. But be careful; viewing these photographs may be dangerously motivating — you might just leave the wife and children at home and venture into the wilderness just as we all did.

Affordable Float Plane Fishing in Alaska Part 1
Affordable Float Plane Fishing in Alaska Part 2

What Kind of Mini Bar Traveler Are You?

by Brett Atkinson on

Let’s talk about mini bars.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen in a mini bar, and what sort of mini bar traveler are you? Do you sometimes accept the usurious prices for a cold beer or a packet of honey roasted peanuts, or do you only consume items you can easily replenish from the 7-11 down the road?

And is checking out the contents of the mini bar the first thing you do in a new hotel room?

Traveling for Lonely Planet, I don’t actually stay in mini bar equipped hotels much any more, but the occasional press trip for other folk does allow the mini thrill of seeing what’s on offer. A trip to Sydney once revealed everything from condoms to effervescent vitamin B hangover tablets (Do you have Berocca in the States?)

In a previous life I traveled a bit for business, and can safely say that an overpriced bottle of Tiger beer, a chilled Toblerone bar, and Mythbusters on the telly is as good an antidote as any to an eleven flight from Auckland to Singapore.

Thanks to Carla Michele on Flickr for the pic.