Incredible Shrinking Trips
Americans take just nine vacation days a year, according to travel planner expedia.com, and the average trip is a mere four days. So how do you cram big fun into a teeny getaway? The travel biz has plenty of innovative activities for short-timers.
The name of the game is geocaching--a term that refers to a search for hidden goodies using a GPS (global positioning system) unit. Geocaching got its start in 2000 when a couple of guys in Oregon concealed a cache--a container of some sort filled with goodies--and posted coordinates on the Internet. Since then, the sport has exploded: There are an estimated 200,000 caches in some 200 countries. Resorts, in their never-ending quest for new lures, have added geocaching to the menu.
At the 170-acre Caneel Bay Resort on St. John in the Virgin Islands, there are no TVs or telephones, but guests can borrow a GPS unit and head out on a high-tech treasure hunt. Novices, be not afraid. The hotel reveals which trail to start on, and the unit is programmed to beep when you reach the right coordinates, where you then seek a hidden box. Inside, there's a logbook to sign and trinkets to take--from a shell to a Pokemon card. Nice geocachers also leave a memento of their own. Summer rates range from $350 to $875 a night, double occupancy (caneelbay.com).
Geocaching is slightly more rugged at Tenaya Lodge, 2 miles from the south entrance to Yosemite National Park. Geocachers hike or bike on winding dirt trails to a half-dozen caches tucked away near a waterfall or at the base of a towering pine. The lodge offers summer geocaching packages from April through August,starting at about $320 a room, double occupancy (tenayalodge.com).
Mountain lovers can check out geocaching at Smuggler's Notch, Vt. (smuggs.com), where hunters look for booty among boulders high in Smuggler's Notch Pass. And in Canaan Valley Resort in West Virginia, high in the Allegheny Mountains, geocachers ride the ski lift to search for a cache near the mountain's peak. So it looks as if the sport is, er, caching on. - M.A.
You'll pack two vacations in one at an adventure spa: the virtuous excitement of physical challenge with sublime submission to sensory pleasure.
At the Red Mountain Spa in Utah's Mojave Desert, guests can sign up for a guided hike through "the Wave," an 8-mile twisting canyon whose red sandstone walls look like ocean waves. Then they can unwind at day's end with an Indian-inspired Four Directions spa treatment, which includes a blue-corn and tobacco scrub, cedarwood oil massage, and sweet-grass body wrap ($239 to $469 a person, meals included; redmountainspa.com).
The Boulders Resort & Golden Door Spa, in Carefree, Ariz., is clustered around a 12 million-year-old pile of boulders, ideal for rock climbing. Guides teach guests to make the 75-foot ascent. Afraid of heights? Try desert night biking on golf trails. Afterward, the nine-oil Raindrop Therapy massage will ease aches and pains. Rooms start at $119 (theboulders.com).
At the New Age Health Spa in Neversink, N.Y., polish up your skin (with a maple sugar compound) and your bird-watching creds (guides lead early-morning forays into the Catskill Forest Preserve to spy on American baldies). Rooms are $254 to $499 (newagehealthspa.com).
High in the Colorado Rockies, an old mining town has been given new life as Dunton Hot Springs, a luxury resort and spa. Guests who sign up for the two-day fly-fishing school ($2,500 for two, duntonhotsprings.com) or a three-night horseback excursion through alpine forests and meadows ($2,450 for two) get the kinks out at one of the resort's three geothermal hot springs. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who reportedly hid out in the town after a bank heist, never knew what they were missing. - M.A.
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