ARAMARK Parks and Destinations in Shenandoah National Park is hosting family friendly events and programs – including culinary and special events programs – at Big Meadows Wayside, Skyland Resort or Big Meadows Lodge which officially open on March 23, March 29, and May 16, 2012. Additionally, guests visiting the park April 21-29 will receive free entrance in honor of the National Park Service’s fee free promotion to celebrate National Park week.

What’s on the agenda? Among other things, there’s an Easter brunch, games, crafts, story-telling, S’mores & Stories and home-made ice cream events. For the adults, the park is hosting an elegant vintner dinner. Here’s more:

Twilight Hikes will be offered Saturdays departing from Big Meadows Lodge. Prices are $10 per adult and $8 for a child.

Vintner Dinners include an elegant four-course dinner highlighted with wine pairings from a featured Virginia Winery. The Vintner will provide insight for the selected pairings. Priced at $359 for double occupancy, the package includes Friday night lodging, dinner for two people, etched wine glasses and Saturday morning breakfast. The dinners are available monthly beginning April 13, 2012 at Skyland Resort.

Cooking Demos feature the chef as he prepares one of his favorite items at Skyland Resort. Guests can pamper their palette indoors when the trails outside are too wet for their taste. Priced at $10 per person you can enjoy a delectable sample and take home the recipe. Demos are Tuesdays and Fridays at 3pm beginning April 6, 2012.

Virginia Wine Tastings are held Thursdays at 3pm beginning April 5, 2012. One winery is featured weekly and the tasting includes assorted cheeses plus a handcrafted glass to take home.

For a complete listing of events or to book overnight reservations at either Skyland Resort, Big Meadows Lodge or Lewis Mountain Cabins, please call 800-778-2782 or log on to www.visitshenandoah.com.

More National Park Information from SingleMindedWomen.com

National Parks: 6 Fun Free Family Vacations

Free Entry into all 392 U.S. National Parks in April

Affordable, Fun Family Vacation Ideas

As part of the ‘free week’, the National Park Service is hosting some themed activities.

On Saturday April 21, take the kids to National Junior Ranger Day at your favorite park. Children will take part in planned activities that educate them about park wildlife and conservation and in the end, they earn a junior ranger patch. Some parks are hosting their own theme days, including special events at Yellowstone, Lake Powell, and the Grand Canyon.

Don’t worry if you miss the free-entry week. The National Park Service hosts other free days throughout the year including June 9, 2012 for Get Outdoors Day, September 29, 2012 for Public Lands Day, and November 10-12, 2012 for Veterans Day weekend.

SingleMindedWomen.com Resources

• National Parks Week
• Earth Day
• National Junior Ranger Day
• National Parks Free Entrance Days

More National Park Information from SingleMindedWomen.com

National Parks: 6 Fun Free Family Vacations

Family-Friendly Activities at Shenandoah National Park

Affordable, Fun Family Vacation Ideas

For most single minded women who work outside of the home, domestic pleasures are not all that common either. There’s something incredibly centering about taking a day off and just staying home. It reminds you of school days when that cold or tummy ache gave you a junior version of a mental health day. Yes, there are times when you can retreat to the pleasures of home, a warm bed and a day off.

File your request for a day off and plan your home holiday in advance. Think of the things you love to get when you’re on vacation: luxurious extras like nice sheets and towels, good wines, French-milled soap and get them for yourself. Imagine your home is your hotel and you are the guest.

Here’s how to get the best room in the house:

Buy new sheets and towels.

Great hotels are known for the high thread count on their sheets and for their deep, soft cotton towels. Go get one set of great sheets and some fluffy white towels with a deep pile. If you can splurge, buy a white terry cloth bathrobe that looks as if you’ve just come from the bathroom of a suite at the Ritz.

Light up your life with scented candles and incense.

Not just any old candle. Get one that smells great. New York-based Red Flower (www.redflower.com/) makes incredible scented candles that smell like real flowers, woods, and precious balms. My favorite is the jasmine which made me feel as if I were on holiday in Thailand right in my own bedroom. Pricey but worth it. After all, you’re on vacation.

Turn off the phone and internet.

No, you don’t need to “check in” at the office. Your friends can reach you tomorrow. You’re in flight, remember? An editor at Conde Nast Traveler once confided in me that to her, the ultimate luxury was not checking e mail. She’d take a day off from the web and felt as if she’d gone to Bora Bora for a week.

Order in.

Unless you love to cook, that is. It’s all about your pleasure. I have a friend who told me that when guests came over and asked for something to eat he’d direct them to his fridge—which was filled with take out menus, not food.

Get a really good bottle of wine or champagne.

The difference between a ten-dollar bottle of Chardonnay and a thirty-dollar bottle of something really good like Rully or Puligny Montrachet is huge. Play sommelier in your own house. Or get a split of great champagne but remember to use real champagne glasses. Drinking a good wine in a bad glass is a criminal offense in France.

Rent a guilty pleasure flick.

A three Kleenex box tear jerker, Gone With the Wind or if you’re really feeling adventurous, maybe an “adult film” or two. Think of it as “brain candy.”

Take down your memory boxes.

You never have time to look at them—do it now. Take out those old photo albums and dust off your old diaries. See how far you’ve come and how you’ve grown. Celebrate your progress in life with a toast to you.

Spend all day in bed and don’t feel guilty.

My most guilty travel pleasure of all time was spending an entire day curled up in a luxurious bed in Venice with the window open, watching the gondoliers go by. We always feel like we should be “doing something” on our day off, but why not take a real day off from doing anything? A day reveling in your new sheets with no phone to answer and no e-mails to reply to is something that millionaires often don’t even have time for but crave more than private jets.

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Photo credit: Flickr, alborath

The words “boot camp” have traditionally referred to military training. Juvenile boot camps for troubled teens are designed to instill structure and discipline; whereas software boot camp teaches non-nerds the essential programming and inner-workings of computers.

The newest addition to the boot camp family is the rapidly growing trend towards fitness boot camps, designed to whip the overweight and out of shape into lean machines.

“Most women today maintain such crammed schedules, we seek fast, measurable results that will work for the long term,” says Shelli Adler, a fitness boot camp instructor in New York City. “Programs vary from daily local classes in your neighborhood to fitness boot camp vacations.”

By learning about a few of the different kinds of programs available, you can take this information and begin researching offerings in your own location or consider traveling.

In Stamford, Connecticut, the Fairfield County Adventure Boot Camp (www.fairfieldcountybootcamps.com) offers a month of unlimited women’s boot camp classes for $299 which includes 20 one-hour sessions with certified fitness trainers, nutritional counseling and motivational training. Classes are held with working women in mind on weekdays at 5:45 a.m. or 7 a.m. Their motto is: Lose pounds and gain friends.

Premier Fitness Camp, Park City, Utah, has a similar setup to America’s Biggest Loser show (www.premierfitnesscamp.com) with a beautiful location and the emphasis on losing weight and learning to make sustainable lifestyle choices. This is a residential fitness boot camp, in five-star accommodations, priced at $2900 which includes: Roundtrip airfare in the USA; weekly personal coaching which continues after you return home; weekly massages, all meals, health assessment by a physician, and activities including hiking, circuit training, kick boxing, yoga, skiing, snow shoeing, and aerobics. Like the show, classes include men and women. Of course, the added bonus, is while you’re in Utah, you could also add immersion or volunteer elements to your time visiting the area.

“Extreme Fitness in Lavish Locations” (www.getawayfitness.com) offers packages for girlfriend getaways, or as they like to call them, “girlfriend sweataways.” Here the emphasis is on activity (prices vary due to location, starting at $199 per night) which includes five hours each day of intensive workouts biking, kayaking, strength training, core conditioning, Pilates and yoga, agility drills, and cardio kickboxing.

There are a variety of boot camp programs offered through health spas, like Canyon Ranch, or you can easily create your own fitness vacation by combining new experiences, like hiking, swimming, or cross-country
skiing, with new places, and giving back through volunteering as well.

I’ve interviewed women who have come up with all kinds of fascinating and interesting ways to get in shape and travel. Diane’s goal was to walk the Continental Divide, which took “five years of weekends and vacation days and was the biggest personal accomplishment of my life.” A group of New York State girlfriends decided to walk the Erie Canal, which they combined with visiting wonderful B&B’s along the way, learning the history of the area, and singing “The Erie Canal Song,” also called “Low Bridge, Everybody Down.”

The Catalina Island Conservancy (www.catalinaconservancy.org) offers a variety of volunteer programs to choose from. “My two teenage daughters and I went for a week of building hiking trails and planting new areas on Catalina Island,” says Marilyn. “I’m a movie buff and I only knew about the island from the movie and the song, but it was a place I always wanted to visit. Not only did I do something I never thought I could do, I lost 12 pounds in one week doing it and a big chunk of our vacation was tax deductible.”

When I needed a week’s break on a tight budget where I could relax, get some work done, eat well, and exercise, I rented a cabin on a Pennsylvania State Park (www.dcnr.state.pa.us/stateparks/recreation/cabins.aspx) for $200. I walked every inch of the park, did volunteer cleanups along the way, ate my favorite foods, photographed my adventures, and lost weight and felt better than I had in months. Fifty percent of fitness is feeling great about what you’re doing for you. Take a break, take care of yourself, visit a new place, connect with the surroundings and the people and enjoy a healthy, happier you.

Sheryl Kayne is a writer, adventurer, performer, educator, and public speaker. She is the author of Volunteer Vacations Across America and Immersion Travel USA: The Best and Most Meaningful Volunteering, Living, and Learning Excursions (Countryman Press, a division of W. W. Norton and Company). Sheryl would love to hear from you at ImmersionTravel@aol.com.

“If you’re going to travel as volunteer for a registered non profit agency, you can deduct the trip from your Federal Income Tax,” says Bonnie Lee, an Enrolled IRS Agent, and author of the upcoming book, Taxpertise.

“Say you want to go with a reputable group and build housing in Africa,” Lee explains. “There’s a place to fill that in on your income tax on “Schedule A” under “Charitable Contributions.”

What can you deduct? Airfare to and from the destination, accommodation (nothing unreasonable like staying at the Four Seasons while helping build grass huts), food, transportation. “Before you sign up with a program that calls itself a “volunteer vacation” you should have proof from that organization that it is indeed tax exempt,” says Lee. “And keep receipts for everything. Keep all the correspondence to and from that organization about the nature of the trip. You can spend some time sightseeing on your volunteer vacation, but keep expenses reasonable and realistically scaled to your volunteer duties. The IRS doesn’t like extravagant expenses. Build in a sightseeing day in the village you’re helping out. Go on a safari with locals. You can take a per diem or actual expenses for the time you are working with the organization but it must be reasonable.  The primary intent of the trip should be for the charitable activity, not combining your vacation with volunteer work.”

How to find a reputable organization and not just one that lists volunteer vacations but is actually a for-profit travel agency? Brian T. Mullis, of Sustainable Travel International says be cautious.

“Many tourism providers don’t have development experience or experience working with NGOs, (non governmental organizations) so it may be difficult for them to select appropriate partners and projects,” he explains. “In addition, voluntourism programs should not foster dependency. Tourism providers that offer successful voluntourism programs typically have a strong focus on rewarding project recipients for personal initiative and self-reliance. I suggest you do your due diligence to find the right voluntourism for you. Determine how they select appropriate partners and projects and what some of the net results of their work have yielded.”

All of which adds up to realizing that doing good takes a lot of work—even if it’s part of a life-changing holiday.

Like all travel experiences, volunteer vacations require detailed planning and a fair amount of insight into your own goals and experience. Here are some more tips:

Don’t overestimate or underestimate your skills to the organization you are planning to work with. They will take you at your word if you say you can speak a language or build a bridge—and others are relying on you.

Make sure you are aware of your living arrangements and are comfortable with them before signing up. If you have a deadly fear of insects and or dislike getting dirty, staying in an earthen-floored hut without running water might not be your best choice of experience. You don’t have to be Mother Teresa to make a difference. There are plenty of things you can do to change the world without putting yourself so far out of your comfort zone that you won’t be useful.

Make sure you’ve vetted the organization you’re going to work for thoroughly. Ask to speak to someone who has been through the program who is not affiliated with the organization but who is a regular traveler like yourself.

If you plan on taking the volunteer vacation off your taxes, talk to your accountant before signing up. He or she might have some good suggestions for record keeping or helping you stay on track with expenses. They may also help you determine the validity of the deduction.

Go to a travel medicine specialist before your trip, get a complete work out and any shots you need. Do this well in advance of the journey. Take care of yourself so you can help others effectively.

For more information on how real life and taxes work together go Bonnie’s website, www.taxpertise.com and get advice from Harley the dawg.

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Valentine’s Day is a good excuse to spread the love and keep it up. Now that my daughters are off on their own, I continue the Valentine Volunteer tradition in a variety locally and sometimes further away. There are a number of websites that will help you match your interests and availability with local organizations in need of volunteers.

My mother doesn’t travel much anymore but she volunteers three days a week running the gift shop for a nursing home in Richmond, Virginia. Marsha, who lives in New York City, takes her miniature poodle, Chester, to visit senior citizens each week. If you have an afternoon or morning, consider assisting cleaning up or replanting a local park. For a day, you could respond to letters from prisoners, advocate for your favorite animal, or guide handicapped visitors through a museum.

I’m an animal lover but my lifestyle right now isn’t conducive to having pets of my own. Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, Utah is located in the center of the Golden Circle: the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and Lake Powell. Best Friends offers visitors a unique volunteer vacation year round. Animal lovers can visit the sanctuary, where you can stay on-site in cabins and spend the weekend volunteering at the Sanctuary taking animals on walks, feeding them or ‘borrowing’ an animal for an overnight visit in your cabin/cottage. There are 1,700 animals on-site at the Sanctuary, including dogs, cats, birds, pot-bellied pigs and horses.

Valentine’s volunteering can also be a great incentive to travel and one of the most amazing trips I’ve ever taken was to Brazil and the Amazon. I very much want to return to help save the pink dolphins. Beautiful and rare pink dolphins are found dead along the banks daily. Many current and new programs are organizing to educate communities, raise fines, and protect these animals and their habitats.

Fauna Forever Tambopata (FFT), is a wildlife research, conservation, and training project in the Amazon rainforest of Tambopata, Peru, an area with the highest biodiversity levels of any rainforest on earth. Home to endangered species such as the giant river otter, pink dolphin, harpy eagle, bush dog, black caiman, and jaguar, the region has thousands of species of plants and butterflies, and hundreds of species of birds and mammals. FFT participants choose a team that focuses on mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, or insects, and learn field methods and how to identify the species sampled. Volunteers also attend presentations by FFT staff and participate in discussions about the Amazon rainforest with conservation groups, government and grass- roots organizations, and communities.

When I think of Valentine’s Day as a loving and giving Volunteer day or extended activity, I feel warm and fuzzy inside, loved and loving myself, which is truly what this holiday, and most of our days, should be. Enjoy yours, to receive, do new things in new places, and give.

For more information:

VolunteerMatch.org

DoSomething.org

NetworkForGood.org

Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, Utah

Fauna Forever

Sheryl Kayne is a writer, adventurer, performer, educator, and public speaker. She is the author of Volunteer Vacations Across America and Immersion Travel USA: The Best and Most Meaningful Volunteering, Living, and Learning Excursions (Countryman Press, a division of W. W. Norton and Company). Sheryl would love to hear from you at ImmersionTravel@aol.com.

More SingleMindedWomen.com Volunteer Articles

April is National Volunteer Month: What are you going to do?

A Volunteer Vacation Can Trump the Eat, Pray, Love Adventure

Save the World and Deduct the Cost

Despite being swathed in dirt, sweaty, and loaded down with gear, a ruggedly handsome similarly burdened trekker sends a smile and a look heavy with interest your way. Back at the resort, the same guy stretches out on a poolside lounge chair two umbrellas down from you and you can’t believe your luck. Meeting a guy while vacationing abroad is the stuff “Eat, Pray, Love” dreams are made of. And you’ve already got a couple of great opening lines to choose from: “Say, didn’t I see you in the jungle yesterday?” or “Aren’t you dying from all these mosquito bites?”

The vacation meet-up scenario may be perfect for a romantic whirlwind hook-up, a quick goodbye, and perhaps a nostalgic friending on Facebook weeks after you’ve unpacked your bags. But if you want to see said man again, and he happens to live on another continent, this is where things get tricky. From this point on, dating involves hefty expense, jet lag, and itineraries.

I met a lovely English bloke while trekking in Malaysia. After a few Skype chats, I simply had to see him again. I didn’t care that he lived in England or that apart from a brief chat over margaritas at a gorgeous resort in Borneo’s Sabah peninsula, we hadn’t spent any time together. We had never been in the same room alone together, but we started planning how and where to make that happen.

It could have been his place or mine, but as we saw it, we had the whole world to choose from. Our first date was a weekend holiday in Edinburgh. Our second was a ten-day tour of Peru including a 50km hike on the Inca trail. Our subsequent dates were Orlando, Florida, New York City, and Ottawa, Ontario. I’ll call them “dates”, but each trip was really a series of dates crammed into a short length of time. More accurately, our vacations could also be referred to as “megadates”, each with its own highs and lows. Here’s what we learned:

We all have way too much stuff. I have stuff at my mother’s, in the attic, in my office at home and my office at work. Everywhere I go I seem to have a pile of my stuff. When I really thought about it, I realized there wasn’t really anyone on my list who needed the stuff I was giving them, except maybe the growing children whose sizes are still rapidly changing. I left growing kids on my list and will buy them clothing in the sizes requested by their parents.

Otherwise, each and every one of my gifts this year is lovingly and personally selected with meaning and significance. My goal is to definitely make a difference and not just add more stuff to the pile. Years ago, I worked in the public relations and direct marketing departments of Save the Children Federation. They have some wonderful holiday gifts in every imaginable price range.

Here are some of my favorites in the under $50 category:

• For $10 infant/newborn gift package that includes diapers, wipes and clothing;
• $20 provides a child with an emergency evacuation backpack or an emergency hygiene kit;
• $40, purchase a goat for a family in Ethiopia.

For every gift you select, a gift card is sent to notify the person being honored and gifted.

Save the Children’s five most popular gift items for 2010 are:

• Educate a girl for $65 and keep her in school, with the books and supplies that she needs for one full year.
• In the United States, $30 buys healthy snacks for kids in school and $30 delivers a soccer ball to an impoverished area where toys and supplies are rare.
• You can also provide ready to use food for $70 and $100 provides badly needed water in rural areas.

My friend Marta has a wonderful tradition in her home. Every year she selects a different organization. “I look for groups that support other women, by selling their products or providing money and services to support new businesses,” says Marta, age 49, single mother of three daughters. This year she’s supporting gifts made by women in Nepal for sale through www.globaldaughter.com and took a trip. Volunteer vacations can be a very inexpensive way to visit new places, to get involved, and give back. Particularly in the United States, many volunteer vacations are free, with participants paying only for the transportation, and often the trip is tax deductible.

Casting For Recovery (CFR) provides fly fishing retreats for women who have or have had breast cancer. These no-cost retreats are offered at various locations across the country and promote and support both mental and physical healing. CFR needs female volunteers over the age of 21 to work as weekend retreat staff; river helpers, greeters, and cooks. (www.castingforrecovery.org)

Volunteer with Adventures in Preservation to support community development and save architectural heritage around the globe: Preserve a historic landmark in Gloucester, Virginia or renovate classrooms in Morocco.

Clear hiking trails on Catalina Island or volunteer with the Wolf Recovery project while visiting the Grand Canyon — the options are endless, and so are the benefits to the volunteer, the visitor, and the visited.

Volunteer vacations are group trips, so you don’t need to know someone else who wants to do what you want to do – you can follow your passion. Just remember, when traveling or hanging out at home, you really don’t need much stuff. The most important things you can take with you on your next trip are an open mind, a big smile, and a willingness to help, learn, connect, and

Thanks to a lull in my travels – a rare but welcome event – I found myself at home in Boston for a few weeks in July. My goal: Get out with my shoes and take a walking tour of Boston! The truebalance 850 challenge has me excited to lace up my shoes in the morning and get walking, but not just because of the exercise. In the three weeks I’ve been wearing the shoes I’ve actually started to notice a change in how my legs look. I have more definition in my calves and thighs, and while I haven’t lost inches I’ve found the definition has given me a new reason to wear shorts.

Armed with a few Saturdays in the city, I decided to branch out and hit the ‘burbs. I grabbed a friend, jumped in the car and drove to Danvers for some fresh fruit picking at Conners Farm. Connors has been a Massachusetts institution since 1904 when the Conners family started farming on the open acres. It began as a “truck farm” meaning that all of the crops were trucked into Boston to be sold wholesale.  Over the years, the Conners family tried to sell corn on their own by creating a small roadside stand on part of the property.  The success of the ‘corn farm’ was so great, the Conners family continued to grow and plant various fruits and vegetables for visitors. Today,  the farm includes 140 acres of corn, tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, squash, pumpkins, apples, peaches, cut flowers and more. On this particular day, blueberries and raspberries were ripe and we grabbed our baskets and went out to the fields. We baked in the oppressive Boston heat and when the baskets were sufficiently full, we headed home for some baking of the sweet kind.

At the end of the day, I had burned a sufficient amount of calories, consumed a good amount of fresh baked blueberry cake, and had taken my tennis shoes for a new walk in a familiar destination.

Moral of the story: When you get bored of your surroundings, lace up your shoes and head out for something new in your city. It’s a great way to experience a familiar destination and, if you’re like me, you’ll have something tasty to look forward to in the end.

Want to be part of the TravelFIT challenge and try for a chance to win your own pair of New Balance truebalance 850 and a travel gift bag from Passport Boutique? Click here for more info.

Stay up to date with the TravelFIT Challenge:
TravelFIT Challenge: What Drives Your Travel & Fitness Passion?
Week 1: TravelFIT: Santa Monica
Week 2: TravelFIT: What Happens When You Don’t Stretch
Week 3: TravelFIT: Berry Picking in Boston

But what if you could charm your teen into a South Beach vacation that made her more pleasant to be around? That’s the premise behind The Ritz-Carlton’s new Charm Camp concept – a day-long introduction to all things polite, appropriate and, well, charming.

The Ritz-Carlton is synonymous with excellence, loyalty, and perfection, so it seems only fitting the hotel is teaching teens how to exude the same behaviors. But, there’s more to this camp than perfect posture and tea party etiquette. Intrigued (and, if you asked my mother, also possibly in need a few refreshers), I went to South Beach to take in a day of Charm Camp at the Ritz-Carlton.

South Beach, Miami, isn’t the first place you’d think to hold anything resembling old-school etiquette. Just driving down Collins Avenue transports one to a world that would make your grandmother cringe. Tiny bikinis, half-naked men with feather headdresses and endless umbrella-clad cocktails line South Beach, offering an entirely new definition of “charming” to newcomers. But the gals at The Ritz-Carlton South Beach know that times have changed – as have our teens – and they created a program that not only appeals to their social side, it helps them relate to their parents.