Six of the Best, Craziest Summer Vacations Ever: Part 1

Got some vacation days to book this summer? Maybe it’s time to break the rotation. Get out of your comfort zone. Every state has its summer pleasures, but here are a few vacation treasures — radical, insane — that will rock your world, guaranteed.

#1 Best, Crazy Vacation

Arkansas: A 3-Day Float Down the Buffalo River

I know, I know. Arkansas. What the?

But look: The prophecy arrives in a dream: this summer, you will go somewhere for reasons you can’t yet fathom. This summer, your family or siblings or cousins or friends will board a plane for Flippin, Arkansas. You read it right: Flippin, Arkansas. Stay with me.

When you get there, you will trade your iPhone and to-do lists for a three-day float trip down the Buffalo River, America’s first established National Scenic River and one of the few remaining undammed rivers in the lower forty-eight.

You’ll be greeted by a posse of guides with long beards and names like Lonny and Earl, most of whom have spent their whole lives on these pristine waters. They will teach you how to fish, how to cast your rod into the wind and how to land a bass, and a whole lot more.

When you jump into the water to cool yourself in the high afternoon sun, you won’t be prepared for the head rush, for the revelation of swimming next to your boat as it glides through the ancient rock canyons above and the watery life below.

At night, Earl will take you bull frogging. You won’t believe the sound of the water, how the timeless rocks shine in the moonlight. Mealtime will be a whole new world. Three times a day, you will sit around a campfire with your people—get this—in no rush at all. For three days, you will give up your organic, locally-sourced, intermittent-fasting-vegan-keto crap and give yourself to pancakes and cornmeal fried chicken and fish you caught that day; you will sink into apple pie cooked in a cast iron skillet on the glimmering coals.

After supper, after cleanup, after hours around the fire talking and drinking and roasting marshmallows into the starry night, the river rolling by a few dozen feet away, you’ll nestle into your cot inside your cozy tent. You will become just another living being in the wild, as it has been for millennia.

You will listen to the voices of the river, to the guides laughing softly by the fire, to the sound of your breath. You won’t believe that you’re out here in the middle of nowhere, out here with Lonny and Earl and Bill, out here with your loved ones in a way you’ve never been before.

All you will know is that you’ll never forget Arkansas.

All you know is that the Buffalo River has you for life.

Check it out:

http://www.newlands.com

#2 Best, Crazy Weekend Vacation

Kansas: A Weekend Pilgrimage to the American Royal World Series of Barbecue

Again, I know what you’re thinking: Why would anyone want to go to Kansas for vacation?

Being from Kansas City, I have a lot to say about that, but for now let’s just say that if you’re serious about food, then heed the words of renowned New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin: “The single best restaurant in the world is Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue at 18th & Brooklyn in Kansas City.”

So for those of you who think BBQ means throwing chicken breasts on the grill and serving them with sauce at the back of your fridge, a new and epic reality of food pleasure awaits.

This September 13th-16th, head to the mothership at the American Royal World Series of Barbecue, the largest BBQ festival and contest in the world.

In the era of hyped and hoity-toity celebrity chefs, these guys are worth true worship: The Pig Doctors. Three Brothers Different Mothers. Fine Swine. Totally Sauced. Hunka Hunka Burning’ Rub. Smokinaphattie. Burnt Fingers. 3 Guys with Wood.

These tribes of smoked meat zealots spend their year refining their ribs and sauces, their steaks and chopped pork, their brisket and burnt ends and 10-foot sausages. Then they make their summer pilgrimage to the Kansas Speedway, lugging their smokers, mega-coolers and caravans in tow to join upwards of 600 fellow teams representing 10 countries.

What’s in it for the rest of the 50,000 of us who attend the three-day American Royal’s World Series of Barbecue?

Celebrating summer’s last hurrah, jaw-deep in one of humankind’s oldest and purest pleasures—the art of smoke, fire and meat—spread across 65 acres packed with barbecue feasting that will blow your mind, along with non-stop live KC jazz, local food tastings and kids BBQ-centric activities.

Needless to say, an army of BBQ professionals will be on stand-by, ready to indoctrinate you into your new spice-rubbing, smoke-loving, sauce-making love affair with BBQ — the way it was meant to be.

Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Kfr0kv15k

http://www.americanroyal.com