Adventure Travel

What type of adventures appeal to you? The kind where you push your body or your mind? Adventure travel is not one thing to all people. Some people would be thrilled and exhilarated to raft down a river in Colorado. For other people, that’s a regular weekend activity. Not too adventuresome at all. Those people might love to try hang gliding or sky diving, while for the former person, this is tantamount to committing suicide. Obviously, these people’s definitions of adventure travel vary greatly.

That’s what’s so great about it, though. You can tailor-make a vacation to fit your wants and needs. You just have to know what you want, and where you want to go. Write up a list of the top ten or so things you want to experience in your life and that will get you started as you look through all the fabulous opportunities out there for adventure travel.

If you want to really get outside your personal comfort zone, there are any number of adventure trips you can take that will do that. You can try bicycling along the Tour de France route or hiking fourteen miles in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. How about zipping at 30 miles per hour on a wire line strung between two trees in the jungle, catching air on your snowboard in a Super pipe or white water rafting on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon? Parasailing, riding in a bi-plane or piloting a fighter plane, and rock climbing up a sheer canyon side each provide different thrills too. If you’re out for thrills, think carefully about the extent of adventure you’ll really enjoy.

Does this sound like too much adrenalin for you? Floating overhead in a hot air balloon while watching lions stalk prey on the plains below or walking through Cambodia’s Angkor Thom, where temple ruins nearly smothered by giant trees, are gentler styles of adventure travel. So is walking on trails through the Amazon jungle looking at parrots or catching sight of caimans (types of alligators) sleeping on the river banks at night. To the more laid-back person, this is about adventuresome as you can get.

Adventurous trips are not necessarily something that puts your life at risk. They are travels that change you, enchant you and ensure memories for a lifetime. Some travelers go for the physical thrills and the opportunities that stretch a body’s physical capabilities to the utmost degree. Other travelers would rather use their minds, eyes, hearing and cameras to enhance their experiences.

Each person’s definition of adventure travel is unique. What’s yours? Just don’t go on a trip that has activities that you would never participate in. Remember, what is adventuresome to you, might not be to someone else. If you’re still deciding, call up a few travel agents for ideas, or visit your local library for exotic places to visit and things to do. Scour the web for packages and deals, and before you know it, you’ll be having the time of your life, doing what you’ve always wanted to do.

Is adventure travel getting expensive for the family? The good news for adventure travel and wilderness hiking trails is that the USA has some of the most unique and incredible places to see on earth. Our National, State Parks, Monuments and Wilderness Areas are awesome, but for years there have been reduced number of visitors. Many citizens have said that a four-year program to increase national parks entrance fees to make them more uniform may discourage some Americans from visiting their national parks such as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Zion and Yellowstone.

The National Parks have been faced with a budget crisis. The parks are struggling to protect the historic, cultural and natural resources that the parks were created for. The parks are short of funds for operating facilities, repairs to roads, bridges, trails and buildings. There was an 814 million dollar shortfall in 2006. There are almost 400 areas of protection covered by the National Parks Service. Almost every park has fewer full time employees now than in 2001, while there were over 273,000,000 visitors to the parks in 2005. The park service needs more funding to provide education, interpretive and for the safety requirements of their visitors. This is a time of controversy about park fees, current plans for oil, gas and mineral exploration in our parks and of course removing the O’Shaughnessy Dam to restore the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite.

Recently the federal government has moved to replace the National Park Service’s $50 annual pass with a new $80 multi-agency pass. Some people think that the fee increases are getting out of line. The park service raised entrance fees at 34 parks over the past two years and plans to raise them at another 124 parks in 2008 and 2009. At Glacier National Park in Montana and Joshua Tree National Park in California, the fees will go up twice, and beginning in 2011, park officials plan to increase fees every three years, based on inflation. There is a proposal to double entrance fees next year at Crater Lake National Park, now $10 per car. Will it drive the local visitors away? In 1997, when the park service began raising fees, the number of national parks visitors has fallen 1% while entrance fee revenue has gone up almost 16%. Many of them are from outside the United States and love to visit the American protected lands.

Will the National Park Centennial Act to rescue our parks before 2016 – the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service? The acts purpose is to eliminate the annual operating deficit and maintenance backlog in the national parks. If it passed, it was to create a check off box on American tax returns to fund the parks. As H.R. 1124 and S 886 it did not get passed in 2006. In spring of 2006 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report about our National Parks based on research, to the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee that found that funding had not kept pace with need, requiring park managers to reduce services including, reducing visitor center hours, educational programs, basic custodial duties, and law enforcement operations, such as back-country patrolling. Additionally, the park system has been forced to close campgrounds, shorten operating hours, eliminate many interpretive programs, lay off many seasonal rangers, and eliminate many of the parks’ scientific studies programs.

So where’s the good news about our public lands? Being an outdoor writer and avid traveler to our parks and wilderness areas Bob Therrien, President of TrainingPASS Sales, Inc. has created an outdoor recreation message board, he commented “As I’ve visited the outdoors, the hardest part over the years, for me has been the research about which parks, hikes, climbs, locations and activities I want to visit with my family and friends. Exploring federal then state website after site, then mapping the distance from each area of interest is inefficient and many times lacking in information. To solve that inefficiency we have collected all the basic information about our parks, wilderness areas and national monuments and put them into one website. I don’t personally have a problem with the new park fees. It costs me more to take my family to the movies. I’d rather enjoy a full day or two at a place like Denali National Park, the Arches or Canyonlands.

The USA has incredible adventure travel wilderness and hiking trails. To promote these areas AdventureZoneTOURS created a forum for sharing trip reports on National Parks, State Parks, National Monuments and Wilderness Areas.

The Outdoor Adventure Message Board opens up to reveal a listing of U.S. States, separated into travel regions. Click on any state region and there are sub forums for all the parks, monuments and wilderness areas in that region. Many times there are several interesting choices to pick from of federal or state lands, within a state region. For the activity-specific minded, AdventureZoneTOURS.com encourages users to share trip reports for a variety of outdoor activities from hiking, climbing, canyoneering, geo exploring, photography, ghost towns, mines, and cave to water sports such as boating, fishing, jet and water skiing, tubing, rafting, and scuba. Winter travel sports such as snowmobiling, skiing and snowboarding are featured. Hunting locations, ATV and horseback trails as well as the most scenic areas for outdoor photography are also available as individual topic posts. To research or share your favorite adventure travel location, you’re invited to sign up and share today.

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