From the category archives:

Adventure Travel

6 Simple Solutions To The Boring Vacation

by Alan Rider

Let’s face it: Vacation days are precious commodities.  So why would you want to squander them on the same old ho-hum travel destinations and activities, especially when you can have a downright mind-blowing experience you’ll be telling stories about for months to come?

Fortunately, all it takes to transform your next getaway from boring to boffo is to make a few minor changes to the way you approach the planning process.  With that in mind, here are six suggestions you can use to help make your next vacation downright unforgettable:
Ditch The Destination Mindset
Instead of focusing on where to go, spend some time thinking about some of those things you’ve always wanted [...]

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Welcome To The Jungle: These Survival Classes Include Lots Of Tasty Grub(s)

by Alan Rider

While searching out and reporting on novel once-in-a-lifetime adventures is both my passion and my profession, there are honestly some experiences I’m all too happy to leave to someone else.
Like my friend and fellow travel writer Bob Howells, for example, who decided it might be fun to spend a week learning traditional survival skills from a native guide in the depths of the Amazon jungle.  The results were equal parts amazing and amusing as the hero of our story, equipped with little more than a machete and a smile, slowly came to understand what the brochure actually meant when it promised “rustic accommodations and lots of tasty grubs” (see [...]

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Finances, Fitness, And Fear: Overcoming Obstacles Between You & Your Next Big Adventure

by Alan Rider

If you’ve been putting off your next big adventure because of the steep price tag, you might want to take a minute to check out this great post on National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog.
The reason I bring this up is because “I can’t afford it” is one of the most common objections I hear when I ask people what’s keeping them from making their dream trip a reality.  But personal experience has taught me that this issue of finances—along with two other frequently-cited deal-breakers I call fitness and fear—are a lot easier to overcome than most of us might believe.
To illustrate my point, I thought I’d take a minute to [...]

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These Volcano Tours Will Have You Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

by Alan Rider

While I don’t necessarily consider myself a thrill-seeker, I can’t deny that I occasionally find myself irresistably drawn to certain experiences that have at least some element of danger to them.
This character flaw may help explain why reading a short blurb on Volcano Awareness Month in Hawaii immediately sent me scurrying off to find out how I could live out my dream of getting up-close-and-personal with an active volcano.  Which is how I found the folks at Volcano Discovery, a group of trained volcanologists who organize tours to some of the world’s most active eruption zones.
If this sounds like fun to you too, you’ll find a complete list of their [...]

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Ten For '10: New Year, New Experiences

by Alan Rider

While other media outlets have been busy looking back at 2009, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks planning some of the great new feature stories I’ll be bringing you in the year ahead.
Now before we go any further, understand that the list below is by no means complete.  In fact, if my math is correct, you can look forward to reading about more than 100 truly remarkable once-in-a-lifetime adventures both here and on the pages of XTRORD.com in the next 12 months.
That said, here’s a quick preview of what I expect to be our 10 coolest extraordinary experience stories for 2010 (click on the links to see previous posts):
Throw [...]

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Experience This!

by Alan Rider

Just read a great interview with one of my heroes, Blue Highways author William Least Heat Moon.  A man responsible for my long-held belief that it’s not the destination but the experience that really matters.  And the more extraordinary that experience the better.
While I’ve collected a fair number of extraordinary experiences both here and on the pages of XTRORD.com, I’m well aware there are lots more of these truly remarkable once-in-a-lifetime adventures out there waiting to be discovered.
Which is why I’ve been geeking out on a handful of new adventure travel books.  While all of them tend to focus on destinations rather than experiences to some degree, read between the [...]

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Black Friday Blues

by Alan Rider

Just heard an interview with a women who arrived at a southern California mall at 4:30 this morning because she thought joining the crowds lined up for the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving deals would be an interesting “experience.” I’m sure she’s right on some level, though honestly battling the Black Friday throngs for questionable deals on things I have no real use for is one adventure I have absolutely no interest in.
As a matter of fact, I’ve long been a proponent of the philosophy that we’re all burdened by way too much “stuff.”  All of which will wear out, go out of style, or just plain get ignored at the back [...]

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