Travel

Labor Management

Not-So-Roughing-It on Labor Day

Labor Day weekend. It’s nigh. So very nigh. And hey, good thing you made plans well in adv—we mean, good thing we went and found you five last-minute-bookable getaways for embracing the outdoors and extolling the virtues of the American worker. Or something like that...

YOUR OWN PRIVATE IDAHO

Camping. Whitewater. Idaho.

A quaint outpost of oversize tents with king-size beds, wood-burning stoves and claw-foot tubs on Idaho’s Lochsa River. Which happens to be one of North America’s most ferocious whitewater rafting spots. Just something to think about while you soak in the claw-foot tub...
Degree of Laboriousness: 5/10.

CAP IT OFF

Here’s a Beach to Camp On

A refined encampment on the Santa Barbara coastline where you’ve got 26 well-appointed safari-style tents within walking distance of the beach. Fire pit: check. Picnic tables: check. Heated swimming pool: kind of unnecessary with the ocean, but... check.
Degree of Laboriousness: 4/10.

SPRING FOR IT

A Log Cabin. With a Private Hot Spring.

Here’s a 19th-century ghost town across from Telluride that’s now a fully fledged, wi-fi-enabled wilderness retreat. Your move: the log cabin with its own private hot spring and cold plunge. Which is pretty cool. Or pretty hot.
Degree of Laboriousness: 2/10.

CHALLENGER ACCEPTED

You’re in a Tent Surrounded by Wine

A 65-acre pinot noir vineyard on Washington’s Skagit River. You’ll have a tent with a queen-size bed, an outdoor shower and your own personal firewood supply to use with the pizza oven out back. You know what goes nicely with pizza: 65 acres of wine.
Degree of Laboriousness: 1/10.

FOR THE HELI OF IT

That Time You Slept in a Helicopter

You head to Connecticut. You walk into a barn. Inside: a 17,000-pound 1968 Sikorsky Sea King Pelican HH3F helicopter. Inside that helicopter: a flat-screen TV, a full bar, a wood-burning stove and the indisputable right to demand that all cohabitants refer to you as “Goose.”
Degree of Laboriousness: –3/10.