Vacations.

When I was young, my parents would drag us away from Detroit on an annual family vacation. These trips would pften be semi-adventurous vacations to somewhere around the U.S. We always went by car, always five of us packed in, making these trips long and rarely comfortable. If nothing else however, they were memorable. By the time I was 10 I had experience climbing some pretty tall cliffs, and I'm sure that my brother and I considered ourselves to be pro rock climbers. Other adventures involved 'spelunking' or cave exploration or white water rafting (we'd take the raft out on the roughest section of New England rivers we could convince our parents to let us in). It all seemed to be leading to a life of adventure and exploration. Now, as adults we've certainly explored much more of the worlds cities than I expected, but I recently realized that I haven't been the active young man I had expected to be as a kid.

Yesterday, My brother and I agreed to take one adventure trip per year. Inspired by the amazing vacations we read about as kids in the back pages of the Smithsonian Magazine, I've started a list, which I'm posting below. I'm looking for more ideas, if you have any. Unfortunatly, I've found that most of what's in those old Smithsonian magazines is too tame for my tastes now.

1) An Amazon River Cruise. A week long cruise in a small boat exploring areas of the rainforest that would otherwise be completely unaccessable sounds great to me. I've been to the rain forest in Central America before, but I understand that the South AMerican rain forest is a very different place. See the picture to the right of what one of these tours might be like. I'm so down for this one. It reminds me of that scene in the original mummy movie when the bad guys get on the boat and they have to fight them off. Only, they didn't have piranha in the water. By the way, despite the fact that many scientists say that piranha won't attack humans, there is a true story of a boat on the Amazon River that capsized in 1981 and as many as 300 people were eaten alive by the fish. It's true, I found it on wikipedia.

2) Dogsledding in Norway. So this sounds cold, and it likely is seeing as snow is required for sledding. Still, all of the trips can't be in beautiful warm destinations and given the choices Norway sounds pretty damn interesting. One alternative to sledding in Norway would be an Alaskan bear hunting trip. Cool, but I've never touched a gun and I'm pretty sure my brothers never hunted either, so we'd probably be the city guys who piss off the guide. Finally, there's ice fishing in Greenland. It's recently been brought to my attention that my brother isn't fond of ice fishing (something about a dislike of colorful flags I think?), so that's likely not going to happen.

3) An Egyptian Oddyssey Tour. I'm not sure what is included in this as there isn't much of a price tag included. Maybe the folks advertising this one don't think it needs description. It's Egypt, what else is there to do besides the obvious. Hey, if it involves riding a camel, pyramids, desert and a sphynx then count me in. I'm easy that way.

4) Jewel Cave Spelunking. The cave exploration we did as kids was considered amature at best. (I only realize that now, after researching the real deal.) Serious spelunking involves full diving gear as well as some serious risks. Again, count me in. Apparently any trip that could kill me is what I'm looking for.

5) Rock climbing. There are some amazing cliffs out west we could use for this, if we're looking for a financially modest vacation. Hopefully we'll find a great location in overseas somewhere though, like the Himalayas or the Andes. Seriously, how sweet would that be?

6) African Safari. This is one of those that is a must on a list of extreme vacations. Safari's are getting pretty popular these days, so we'll probably have to add in something exciting like lion wrestling or some other crazy African adventure. I know it sounds horrible, but I'd love to hang the head of a lion on my wall, or better yet a Rhino! Sweet.