The 100 Best Affordable Vacations (29 page)

 
Organ Cave, Greenbrier County, West Virginia
. A variety of wild cave tours, from two hours to overnight, from $40. Some of the tours are open to children 8 and older.
Organ Cave, 304-645-7600,
www.organcave.com
.

 
Rat’s Nest Cave, Canmore Caverns, near Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
A variety of four-hour tours, from $110.
Canmore Caverns, 877-317-1178,
www.canmorecavetours.com
.

Most of these caverns also offer general tours that are reasonably priced and suitable for children. Some have light shows and scripted spiels; others are led by geologist guides who explain the slow science behind cave formations. All reveal a world so unlike that above ground that they may well be worth a stop—even if you’ve gone underground before.

track the gray wolf

CENTRAL IDAHO

He who cannot howl, will not find his pack.

—
POET LAUREATE CHARLES SIMIC, “AX” (1971)

32 |
In this era of GPS and Google Earth, it’s hard to imagine that some things still remain hidden. Consider
Canis lupus.
The only sure way to find a wolf in the wilderness is to track it, step by step, finding its footprints, measuring its gait, and, most memorably, listening to its haunting howl in the middle of the night.

These skills, once essential to Native American hunters and pioneer explorers, are still taught by Wilderness Awareness. Every summer, this outdoor educator teaches how to track down one of nature’s greatest hunters from a base camp in central Idaho.

Wolves were reintroduced in the region in the mid-1990s, a move some still consider controversial. Since then the population has grown from 200 to about 1,000. Limited hunting is now allowed. But the tracking classes are about honoring the predator, not harvesting it.

A weeklong adult tracking program is offered every summer and runs $895, which includes food, instruction, and transportation from the Boise, Idaho, airport. The class camps about 100 miles and three hours north of Boise, west of the Sawtooth Range, and at the south edge of Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. It’s an area of rolling hills of ponderosa pine forest, intermingled with wide, flat open meadows. Perhaps most notable, a number of dirt Forest Service roads weave through the region offering likely spots to find wolf tracks.

Accommodations are glorified car camping and a cook prepares meals. Students help with nightly clean up and must bring a tent and sleeping bag. Daily lessons are determined by the wolves. Every morning, instructors base the day’s activities on the animals’ likely location, and students self-select into groups. Several people might hike 15 miles to a ridge where tracks suggest wolves may be found. Another group might head out for a few hours to watch a herd of several hundred elk, which serve as a source of food for the pack. Along the way, instructors will stop to note tracks or examine wolf droppings to determine what the carnivores have been eating.

Students are urged to participate, not just listen. Experienced trackers might measure the paw prints, while others examine the setting in an attempt to re-create the wolf’s path and activity.

A CENTER FOR WOLVES

Once common throughout much of the United States, the gray wolf now is only found in a handful of the lower 48 states, including Minnesota, where the wolf population is estimated to number 2,000 to 3,000. Established 25 years ago in northern Minnesota, in Ely, the International Wolf Center welcomes visitors to its interpretive center. Live exhibits at this educational resource offer a chance to study the impressive predators.

Special programs allow you to enrich your inner wolf. A wolf-tracking experience takes guests off site to locate a radio-collared wolf. Guests learn the basics of tracking and how to use telemetry equipment. And an evening program teaches you how to howl like a wolf, and then takes you to the woods to call out to a pack. Admission: $8.50; programs cost an additional $8.50.
International Wolf Center, 1396 Hwy. 169, Ely, MN 55731, 218-365-4695,
www.wolf.org
.

“We want to put together this whole story of how wolves are moving,” says Emily Gibson, the adult program director and lead instructor. “What’s the energy? Is it just walking along and biding its time, or is it running or chasing something?” Over the course of a week, students enter the wolves’ world. “It’s amazing to me to see the transformation that happens to people, the way their eyes light up and the way they’re more connected to the natural world, and to themselves.”

Although there are no guarantees, groups usually see wildlife, including elk, bears, moose, deer, mountain lions, river otters, beavers, foxes, coyotes, and
sometimes
wolves. Student Jackie Aaron, a yoga instructor from Florida, was drawn to the class out of a fascination with wolves, and not tracking. Still, she found the class moved her in unexpected ways. One afternoon, a Native American woman visited the class and suddenly began singing about the animal they were tracking. “When that elder sang that wolf honoring song, I wasn’t the only one that had tears in my eyes,” Jackie says. “It wasn’t a planned thing. It was the epitome of going with the flow in a really healthy way.”

Ultimately, the experience adds up to much more than the mechanics of stalking a wild creature. Jackie heard wolves howling on her first and last nights, but she never saw the mysterious creatures. Did she feel cheated? Not at all. “Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean you can’t feel its presence palpably. I didn’t need someone to tell me that the wolves were around.”

Nearly a year later, Jackie says she cherishes the memories. “I saw something in my journal that said I’m really glad I did this for myself,” she recalls. “There are some vacations that are restful and there are some that are nourishing for the spirit.”

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH

Wilderness Awareness School,
P.O. Box 219, PMB 137, Duvall, WA 98019, 425-788-1301,
www.wildernessawareness.org
.

strap on the snowshoes

NATIONWIDE

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?

—
AUTHOR J. B. PRIESTLEY,
APES AND ANGELS: A BOOK OF ESSAYS
(1928)

33 |
If you can walk, you can snowshoe. Experts confirm it: “It’s a little like hiking in the snow, but with big feet,” says Sue Leslie, whose octogenarian mother still snowshoes.

All you need is snow and a good pair of lightweight modern snowshoes to enjoy the glory of countryside so freshly powdered that the only footprints you’ll see are those left by the squirrels. “You can do it off your back porch,” says Andy Brown, a snowshoe enthusiast who lives in Vermont. “You can take the walks you like during the summer, but enjoy them in a way that has been transformed for the winter.” And you won’t need pricey lift tickets or hours of lessons beforehand.

No snow in your back yard? That’s where out-of-the-way and less ritzy snow-sports centers come in. Some have groomed slopes, professional lifts, and lodges; others are less formal, with trails across public lands and simple lifts. Accommodations typically cost far less than at the upscale resorts likely to grace the cover of upscale travel magazines—often in bunkhouses, local motels, and owner-rented cabins. You often can rent snowshoes at local sports shops for $10–$20 per day.

Here are three venues that rate as relative bargains:

Mount Baker, Washington.
The Mount Baker Scenic Byway (aka Rte. 542) provides access to many popular snowshoeing trails into
Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest
in the North Cascades. Access to most is free, although a few require a Northwest Forest Pass ($5 per day), sold locally in and around Bellingham. Snowshoe rentals are available for about $20 per day from local ski shops. The
Mount Baker Ranger District
(360-856-5700) and the
Mount Baker Ski Area
(360-734-6771,
www.mtbaker.us
), a private downhill ski center, can provide information on area snowshoeing. Cabin and chalet rentals abound. The Whatcom County Parks department rents six rustic cabins at
Silver Lake
(360-599-2776,
www.co.whatcom.wa.us/parks/silverlake/cabins.jsp
) that sleep four to six people and cost $78 to $105 per night (bedding not provided).

Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest,
425-783-6000,
www.fs.fed.us/r6/mbs/
;
Bellingham Whatcom County Tourism,
360-671-3990,
www.bellingham.org
;
Washington State Tourism,
800-544-1800,
www.experiencewa.com
.

Taos, New Mexico.
The area around Taos is best known for its Native American culture and desert landscapes hauntingly reflected in the works of the late painter Georgia O’Keeffe. But its location in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the southernmost Rockies means this is also snow country. For locals and visitors alike, the 1.5 million acres of Carson National Forest offer plenty of free trails and meadows for snowshoeing. The region boasts two upscale resorts:
Taos Ski Valley
(www.skitaos.org) and
Angel Fire
(www.angelfireresort.com). But for more solitude (and cheaper prices), visitors head to
Sipapu Ski and Summer Resort
(800-587-2240,
www.sipapunm.com
), founded by Sue Leslie’s family, 20 miles southeast of Taos. Even in winter, overnight rates start at $24 for a dorm room and $44 for a double cabin; other accommodation types are also available. For something less rustic, try
El Pueblo Lodge
(575-758-8700,
www.elpueblolodge.com
, rooms from $89) in the historic district of Taos.

Taos County Chamber of Commerce,
575-751-8800,
www.taoschamber.com
;
Carson National Forest,
575-758-6200,
www.fs.fed.us/r3/carson/
;
New Mexico Tourism Department,
505-827-7400,
www.newmexico.org
.