The LA Times published a good article about the non-profit group Wilderness Volunteers that organizes inexpensive outdoor vacation adventures for travelers who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. Wilderness Volunteers has been organizing work trips to US public lands (National Parks, National Forests, etc.) since 1997 and past projects have included trail maintenance, painting, and building fences.

The cost of the 5-7 day trips is $259 per person which includes food and commissary equipment. Volunteers need to provide their own camping equipment and transportation to and from the trailhead but other than that everything is taken care of! Opportunities are available from Hawaii to Oregon to Utah - check the Wilderness Volunteers website for more details.

This kind of vacation is really right up my alley. I’m not a big fan of beach-type vacations where the main activity is sitting in a chair - I need to be more active than that which is why I love hiking and backpacking I suppose. I also get a real sense of pride from accomplishing something like an epic hike or even finishing a big home improvement project - an outdoor volunteer vacation could kill two birds with one stone! Plus it’s inexpensive… not a bad thing in this economy.

Related posts:

1. Do signs on hiking trails diminish the wilderness experience?
2. Voluntourism: American Hiking Society
3. Beach camping
4. More ways to save money camping
5. Hiking is inexpensive family outing

Tags: vacation, volunteer

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 7:55 am and is filed under backpacking, camping, hiking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.