I’m crouched on a riverbank deep in the redwoods of Mendocino County, stacking pebbles on top of each other. This is harder than it sounds—particularly at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday, in clammy 40-degree weather, before coffee, and with a cold. Yet here I am, doing a so-called rock meditation under the guidance of artist , a 28-year-old native of Boulder, Colorado, who has turned this thing you didn’t know was a thing into an avocation. Select a stone, place it on another one, press down gently to balance it, breathe, repeat. Ruskus is surrounded by his own creations—a dozen stone towers so impossibly balanced that you’d swear they were glued—while coaching a small group of students, including one very slow learner with hopelessly clogged nostrils.

It’s the first full day of Outpost, a three-day event that aims to reimagine how outdoor companies sell gear in the age of e-commerce and social media. Since its founding in 2016, Outpost has developed a reputation for being “REI meets Burning Man,” as a fellow attendee described it to me. The event brings social media influencers and journalists—and, for the first time, 40 members of the public, who payÌę$720 apiece—to wild venues to test products during activities like hikes, floats, and survival skills workshops. Companies including , , , and serve as sponsors; smaller businesses such as outfitter and solo entrepreneurs like Ruskus volunteer to gain exposure. It’s a bonanza of so-called experiential marketing, with nighttime performances—live music, comedians, films—creating a festival vibe that’s goosed by booze sponsorsÌęand, in another first this fall, weed and weed extracts. Attendees post like crazy to their social media accounts. At least that’s the hope.

Outpost got its start three years ago after Jeff Wolfe, a music industry professional working on experiential marketing events, and Caleb Morairty, a former music and entertainment executive, grew weary of traditional trade shows. For the past three decades, most endemic outdoor brands have displayed their latest wares at these events, typically held in hulking urban convention centers, where buyers for brick-and-mortar retailers seek new products and journalists look for new stories. They’re still a massive business; the outdoor industry’s largest, Outdoor Retailer, had more than 21,000 total attendees, including more than 880 brands and 5,700 buyers, at its Snow Show event, held the last weekend of January. But none of those people were actual consumers. And in 2019, brands want more opportunities to talk to their customers directly—or at least through social media intermediaries at photogenic venues. “Brands are trying to touch more consumers, especially some that are outside the usual-suspect circle,” says , who consults on marketing and business development in the outdoor industry and is the former director of Outdoor Retailer. “And they’re looking for ways to tell their story authentically.” That’s one reason these trade shows increasingly seem like relics of another era, with brands opting instead to host their own bespoke “experiences”—or (the cheaper alternative) joining boutique eventsÌęlike Outpost.

Upon arriving at his first Outdoor Retailer, Wolfe remembers being wracked with “an immense amount of anxiety. It was so loud, there were so many people, and it just wasn’t a good place to stop, think, and focus on growing my business.” He walked out the door and rescheduled all his meetings in a bar across the street. Along with Morairty and Eric Bach, co-founder of , the Airbnb of bookable campsites, Wolfe decided to try something different: Bring together brands for a big outdoor event on private land. “Get out of the fucking warehouse,” as Bach, now COO of Outpost, puts it.

The company set out to create what Wolfe calls “a really strong network of people, whether they be editors or cool creative folks that are filmmakers, photographers, filmmakers, musicians, or artists.” For the first Outpost, in October 2016, they invited 150 people to the 380-acre Chanslor Ranch in Bodega Bay, California. “We had woodworking and sake tasting and surfing in the ocean,” Bach says. “ReallyÌęit was just us throwing it out there and getting a ton of feedback and slowly optimizing the model.”

For the past two Septembers, Outpost has held its flagship show at Camp Navarro, three hours north of the Bay Area. Blog entries and news articles from the events have highlighted and ; Instagram posts have captured glowingly gorgeous participants, often in felt hats and drinking copious amounts of boutique Bulleit whiskey.

The size of Outpost events has steadily increased. In 2018, when I attended, more than 900 people descended on Navarro, almost twice as many as the year before. The company has developed its own experiential marketing agencyÌęand plans to host additional Outpost gatheringsÌęaround on both coasts this year. Wolfe has also speculated about the possibility of an Outpost retail store at future events, stocked with discounted products from brands the company works with.

Four years into their tradeshow-disruption experiment, the Outpost’s founders still appear to be knee-deep in optimizing the model. They’re trading in services with buzzy names such as “experience strategy” and “community building,” which are among the offerings on their website. In interviews, they’ve contemplated tweaking the events by going smaller, going more urban, inviting more members of the public, inviting fewer members of the public. I’ve come to Navarro in search of a proof of concept, and to find out whether the Outpost is onto a new model of selling gear to millennials or merely riding the wave of today's marketing bait.

When I started signing up for activities on Outpost’s scheduling app a week before the event, I grew dizzy with preemptive FOMO. The menu of options brought flashbacks to summer camp, with the addition of adult beverages. Eat artisanal s’mores or learn to pair whiskey and coffee? Take a sound bath or brew kombucha? If I spent an hour tie-dying my underwear, would I lose out on the quality-of-life enhancement sure to come from blending my own bug spray?

Unlike other events I’ve attended in recent years, there would be no cell service, no official app, and no name badges. There would purportedly be Wi-Fi, because how else would we fulfill our—and the event’s—social media needs? But the idea is that we’ll mostly be talking to each other instead of gazing hypnotically at our phones.

When I arrive at check-in in the Navarro parking lot, we’re all offered new loaner sleeping bags and verbal directions to our accommodations—a smattering of cabinsÌę(including mine for the weekend),Ìęteepees set up by Outpost organizers, ČčČÔ»ćÌęsites for pitching tents. Down the hill from my cabin, in a grassy area ringed by 200-foot trees, a small expo is in full swing. With all but a few of the 71 brands that have converged for the weekend displaying their gear, it looks like a mini trade show, minus all the fluorescence and concrete. The booth for , a British company making its Outpost debut, is abuzz with people stroking its canvas-blend rucksacks. “We tried Outdoor Retailer twice, and it didn’t really work for us,” says Jeffrey Bowman, the company’s creative director. “We wanted to come here for a more chill vibe and to connect with customers.” By this he means influencers, journalists, PR people, and retail buyers.

Experiential marketing hinges on a trifecta of supposed millennial priorities: social media, authenticity, and social responsibility. It'sÌęall about beautifying, then commodifying, a moment. Firms invite a small group of social media influencers and journalists to an event; attendees post about itÌęin articles ČčČÔ»ćÌęon social media, ideally to their sizable followings. Hopefully, one of the posts goes viral. “Even if you invite 100 people, if they’re talking about it to a million people, that’s a pretty big lever,” Haroutunian says. Ìę

One key appeal of experiential is the possibility of freebies: The event itself is typically gratis (lodging, meals, guides), and participating brands sometimes give out schwag. Regardless of age, “everyone is always excited to get their hands on something,” says Dana Saperstein, an event manager for Los Angeles–based experiential marketing firm Sparks who worked as a volunteer at Navarro.

For the past decade, experiential has boomed across all industries, spurred by the decline of traditional media, the spread of social media, and a panic within the advertising and marketing industries regarding millennials’ distrust of traditional advertising and desire to do things rather than buy things. Outdoor brands like , , and have recently hosted experiential marketing events, but on the whole, the outdoor industry is “still in a pretty basic phase” when it comes to the field, Haroutunian says. “It’s definitely going to keep growing, and in my view, it’s going to mature.”

At Outpost, brands underwrite the cost of the event by paying for booths at the expo and hosting parties and workshops; the cost ranges from “the low four figures” to “large integrated sponsorship opportunities in the six figures,” Wolfe says. “We rely heavily on partners, like a trade show does, but it’s selling experiences rather than square footage,” Bach says. Outpost’s organizers consider social media to be “part of the puzzle,” Wolfe says. And while they’re not overtly courting millennials, they’re at least catering to them.

On the social responsibility front, Outpost has invited the likes of nonprofits 1% for the Planet and Lighthouse for the Blind, as well as conservationist Topher White, to give talks and participate in panel discussions at Navarro, and the companyÌęplans to bring businesses with an emphasis on social and environmental responsibility to a in June.

Outpost’s timing might be ideal for harnessing trade show fatigue and skepticism. “All brands are examining the ROI on trade shows, because it’s been very hard to measure,” Haroutunian says. In the past, a primary purpose of the shows was for brands to debut and take orders for new products they’d already manufactured. But now, brands often send regional sales reps out to retailers armed with prototypes, and they manufacture only what’s ordered. So, most orders are placed pre-show, which means the days are gone when brands can simply subtract how much they spend on a show from the orders they receive to determine the investment return. (Fees at Outdoor RetailerÌęare about $12,000 to $15,000 for an average-size booth; building out the booths is an additional, often significant, expense.)

But ROI calculations for experiential marketing are also slippery. A third of brand-side marketing professionals last year by experiential marketing groupÌę said proving ROI on their events was a major challenge. Outpost’s co-founders say their primary goal is to foster “authentic” social connections among attendees. “All of a sudden, they’re new friends, and that will be way more fruitful, in my estimation, than the 15 minutes you might have at a trade show booth,” Wolfe says. “It’s a bit less targeted, a bit more ‘let’s find something that can be the spark of something new for your business.’” For brands, there’s “some level of guaranteed deliverables,” he says. “They are going to meet press, they are going to meet some of these social media influencers, and they should be able to walk away with some tangible returns. But I think the intangible is really what defines us.”

The sound bath has been canceled or moved. No one really seems to know. I’ve just finished my rock meditation, eaten breakfast, and spent a few minutes loitering in the Verve coffee tent, where attendees are nursing hangovers and bonding over topics like the best style of overalls (baggy and dirty). I head for the guest services office to partake of Outpost’s Wi-Fi. Since checking in at 3 p.m. the previous day, I’ve been able to get online only a couple of times and never when I wanted to. I’m all for scaling back my internet usage, especially when I’m hiking or camping, but like everyone here, I’m also working. Once again, I find the Wi-Fi to be down. I can’t post a lick to my Instagram accountÌęor even check my email.

Instead, I jump into Merrell’s redwoods hike as itÌędepartsÌęthe meadow and soon fall into conversation with Greg, who works in conflict resolution and lives in Washington, D.C., and is here with a friend. “It’s fun,” he says, venturing deeper into the forest in his loaner Merrells. “We’re in one of the little teepees.” Did he buy a ticket, I ask?

“I’m-not-paying-a-fucking-thousand-dollars-for-this-are-you-out-of-your-mind?” Greg blurts out. He quickly apologizes, explaining that his work in conflict resolution requires brutal honesty. But his reaction does make me wonder whether this particular experiential venue could ever be viable for the general public—a question Outpost organizers themselves were still pondering right after the Navarro weekend.

When I get back to the meadow, I meet Red Rainey, the event’s podcast producer,Ìęwho isÌębusily preparing for an interview at his al fresco radio booth:Ìęa mic set up on a picnic table. He’s wearing glacier glasses, a khaki T-shirt and pants, bulky brown boots, and a hairstyle he clearly pioneered—fauxhawk with a man bun—and he’s searching for his lost copper mug.

Navarro 2017 was Rainey’s first Outpost, and he “was just absolutely floored by the environment, quality of production, programming, and curation of people,” he says. “It’s just fucking brilliant. The people who are here are on level 11 and ready to connect with one another and hear one another out.” Outpost’s secret sauce, he says, isn’t just in the, well, boozing. “The fire pit is definitely a very magical scene at the end of the evening, when people are just gathering around and really relaxing. The Bulleit is doing its workÌęand relationships are formingÌęand bonds are created and such.” He sees all encounters—learning falconry, say, or mingling among the Airstream fleet—as “wonderful mini-expeditions and explorations.”

On my final day at Outpost, the vibe at the Verve tent is decidedly groggier. A woman wrapped in a cannabis-themed blanket recounts the half-dozen types of liquor she drank last night. “I was just in my own world,” she says. Another woman in, yes, a felt hat, is gushing over the surprise late-night performance by the EDM DJ , whom I’d seen the previous afternoon hucking himself from a rope swing into a floating inflatable lounger called a Chillbo Shwaggins.

Outpost is winding down, and so far everyone I’ve talked to is having a really a good time. But I’m wondering if the show has been a success by either Wolfe’s metric (intangibles) or the broader experiential criteria (social media shares and viral-ability). And is the Instagram-ready type of interaction with nature that’s encouraged here actually meaningful in the way outdoor excursions traditionally have been?

For Suzann Stone and Justin Seale, co-founders of a new travel apparel company calledÌę, the event hasÌębeen a resounding success. A digital strategist and product developer, respectively, the twoÌęmet at Burning Man, got married, and started their business. “We’re probably not going to make that much vending, but is it worth it to market to influencers?” Stone says they wondered before signing up for Outpost. As it turns out, the media connections they made alone, including a coveted one with the well-known off-roading magazine Overland Journal, were worth the trip. Overall, Stone says, the show has “been really, really great.”

Not everyone is as enthralled, and the main issue seems to be the lack of Wi-Fi. “The no-internet is such a problem,” one cold brew–guzzling attendee says. “I climbed a tree—oh, can’t post a picture. I shot a bow and arrow—oh, can’t post a picture. I can’t even tell my friends what I’m doing, and they would be valuable to the market.” I overhear an experiential marketer reiterating what I’ve heard, that brands’ ROI calculations depend to a degree on internet access. “It’s how many people do you bring, plus the social media impressions, which is tough hereÌębecause you get no service, plus press impressions.”

My bunkmate for the weekend, an Instagram influencer namedÌę who has amassed a following of 50,000-plusÌęby chronicling van life with her dogs, compares the weekend to a fun mini summer camp. But while she posted toÌęInstagram from Navarro at least once when she came last year, her feed has gone dark this weekend. “I don’t have much reception, so I might post stuff after the fact,” Turner says. When I look at her Instagram account the following week, and again the following month, the new shots I see are of her (very photogenic) dogs and —not at Navarro. She later tells me she posted several Instagram stories, viewable for 24 hours, and says, in retrospect, that it was “a good thing to unplug in the forest.”Ìę

For me, I’ve met dozens of cool people, added Chillbo to my gift list, and climbed a freaking redwood. Which is to say, the benefits reaped have been both tangible and intangible. I’m no social media powerhouse, so the world—and the brands—aren’t suffering from my lack of Instagram activity. Before I leave Navarro, I find myself returning for another rock meditation, this time fully caffeinated and with at least a smidge of additional patience. The stones click together more easily now.

This meditation—water trickling in the nearby creek, a hawk soaring overhead—feels like a necessary respite from the freneticism of the event. It gets me wondering again whether embracing and promoting the outdoor lifestyle with only a slight nod to a more serious, deep connection with the outdoors, other than what’s provided by faulty internet and some quiet moments clinking rocks, dilutes and diminishes the classic essence of outdoor recreation. The menu of options here is what I’d call “adventure lite”—glamping, floating in a swimming hole on a Chillbo, and 15 minutes of falconry, say, rather than more serious or immersive outdoor pursuits.

Younger people, Outpost COO Bach says, are already shying away from brands he calls “top of the mountain,” by which he means those geared toward “old white dudes climbing Everest,” as he puts it. Outpost is all about “accessible adventure,” BachÌęsays.

Or is it more about looking the part—and partaking of aprùs beverages?

A few weeks after Navarro, Wolfe explains what went wrong with the internet: There weren’t enough nodes in the central meadow, the busiest area. Nevertheless, he says, the response from brands was positive, and most have expressed interest in returning next year. “We believe something transformative happens in the woods, and the idea of having constant connectivity kind of flies in the face of that,” Wolfe says. But the realities of growing Outpost’s business have sunk in. He said they were still evaluating some of their new experiments—most notably, inviting the public. “We could sell a lot of tickets,” he says. “But whether or not that dilutes the experience, we’re not certain yet. Making sure we have a significant amount of tickets to give away to people who we know are going to provide a lot of value to the brands is pretty much key to our success.” The sure bets he’s referring to are journalists and influencers.

WhenÌęI checked back in with Wolfe last week,Ìęhe described a variedÌęroster of events for 2019: aÌęhuge oneÌęin Los AngelesÌęthat's free to members of the public, a small oneÌęin ManhattanÌęjust for industry folks, and Navarro, with a similar mix of industry attendees and the paying public as last year's gathering.ÌęIn addition to brands, journalists, and influencers, Wolfe isÌęexpecting 2,000 to 3,000 members of the public at June'sÌęOutpost Los Angeles, which will be held in the Downtown Arts District—a neighborhood as urban as urban gets.Ìę“This will be our largest and most ambitious event yet!”Ìęproclaims the listing on ticketing site Eventbrite. The future looks to involve more peopleÌęČčČÔ»ćÌęless emphasis on nature, overall, and better internet—even at Navarro.Ìę“I think it’s safe to say there won’t be a place where you can’t connect with the outside world,” WolfeÌęsays of the flagship event.Ìę“As much as that breaks my heart, it’s just the nature of the beast.”Ìę

The post Burning Man Meets REI appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

When a human-resourcesÌęteam from PatagoniaÌęflew to Atlanta last fall for an internship-recruitment session at historically black Morehouse College, many of the 50 students who attended had basicallyÌęthe same reaction: What’s Patagonia?

It was the company’s first event at Morehouse, and “for a lot of the students, Patagonia was a newer brand,” says recruitmentÌęmanager DeannaÌęLloyd.

Longtime browsers of the PatagoniaÌęcatalogÌęprobably won’t beÌęsurprised to learnÌęthat the company’s workforceÌęis exceedingly homogeneous. “The majority of our employees are white,” Lloyd concedes. It’s a similar story throughout the gear industry. But Patagonia, REI, the North Face, and a handful of others are attempting to change that byÌęrethinking their business models and hiring practices. Given the degree to which people of color and members of the LGBTQ community are underrepresented in outdoor-industry jobs, it’s a formidable task. And whileÌęassessing progress is difficult at thisÌęstage, experts say there’s a long way to go.

Statistics regarding diversity at gear companies are hard to come by. But according to aÌę by łÙłó±đÌęadvocacy group Green 2.0Ìęon the racial makeup of environmental organizations, people of color comprise a distressingly low 12 to 15 percent. (The data is based on a survey of more than 300 nonprofits, government agencies, and grant foundations.) Those numbers “would most likely be mirrored in the outdoor industry, if not worse, in my own personal experience,” says Ava Holliday, founding partner of łÙłó±đÌę, a consulting firmÌęthat advises outdoor companies and environmental groups in their diversity and inclusionÌęefforts.

Holliday cites aÌę“clear business case” for diversity and inclusion: łÙłó±đÌę predicts thatÌęby 2044,Ìępeople of color will be the majority. Without a diverse workforce, she adds, product quality will suffer. “How will a gear company figure out how to make outdoorÌęclothing for trans peopleÌęwithout trans voices in the company?” she asks. Not to mention that if the industry wants to help preserve public lands, it will need to do its part to create a more inclusive playground and rally that majority to safeguard the environment.

Patagonia is acutely aware of the country’s changing demographics. “It’s the reality,” Lloyd says. “We need to pay attention to it in all aspects of our work and make sure that Patagonia remains relevant in those conversations, from a mission standpoint and from a product standpoint.”

Diversity hiring is a crucial step in dismantling the exclusivity endemic to the industry. “It’s really important that people open their eyes to what’s out there and how the world is changing, to create more opportunities for people to come to the table,” says Eboni Preston, director of programs for łÙłó±đÌęÌę(GYF), which works to introduceÌęunderrepresented communities to environmental advocacy.

Many gear companies haveÌę, and some are making strides toward diversity in their advertising and marketing. REI’s numerous diversity initiatives include the popular 2017ÌęÌęcampaign, which featured stories of female adventurers, many of them women of color. And recent North Face ads have highlighted athletes from diverse backgrounds, includingÌę, members of the .Ìę

But for some companies, diversity ends there.ÌęThere’s a difference between making ad campaigns more inclusive and hiring a diverse group of employees in design, product-management, and executive roles. ThoseÌęthat aren'tÌęfully invested in inclusivity hiring risk engaging in a version of so-called greenwashing—creating the appearance of diversity through marketing campaigns without making a real effort behind the scenes. That’s happening atÌęsome major brands, says , a business consultant who advises clients on diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies, or DEI—human-relations-speak for hiring people of color, LGBTQ people, and women. Haroutunian is also aÌęformer director of Outdoor Retailer, the gear industry’s biggest trade show.Ìę“From a marketing standpoint, they’re reaching out and showing a different face,” he says. “Internally, though, they’re still being run by the usual suspects.”

Holliday concurs. “There are quite a few brand ambassadors and social-media influencers being featured,” she says, adding thatÌę. “But when we go and work with companies, I don‘t see that much racial diversity in łÙłó±đÌęstaff.”

Changing an entrenched culture isn’t easy. One reason is that employers typically don’t look beyond a small, insular pool of prospective hires—the vast majority of whom are white. “At a lot of these companies, people were hiredÌębecause they were buddies,” says Deanne Buck, executive director ofÌę, a nonprofit formerly dedicated to gender equality that recently shifted its focus to underrepresented groups in general. “You got in because you knew someone or raced with them.” The result is an industry that’s “hyper-networked,” in Lloyd’s parlance.

Compounding the problem is that smaller brands often lack HR staff, or even a single recruiter, not to mention formalized DEI practices. And many larger businesses have been slow to make equitable hiring a priority. “If they’ve been doing it the same way for a long timeÌęand they’re successful, they don’t necessarily see a reason to change,” says Haroutunian.

Still, many companies are making progress. Canadian gear retailerÌę began a DEI program in 2009 that filtered into its marketing materials in 2012. “When we changed the brand, we had a lot of negative sentiment in social media,” MEC’s chief executive David Labistour said in aÌę. But the company continued to thrive; revenues spiked 10 percent in 2012 and have continued to steadily grow. In 2015, sales were $282 million, a 9 percent increase over the previous year.

Last summer, MEC deepened its commitment to diversity, according toÌęnew HR directorÌęNahal Yousefian. The focus is on helping staffers recognize unconscious bias, which Yousefian hopes will spur change driven by employees themselves. “Instead of a centralized HR department coming up with a policy renewal every year, people are actively out there, engaged and ensuring the barriers are removed,” she says.

Patagonia partnered with the Greening Youth Foundation, which is helping bringÌępeople of color into the apparel brand’s competitive summer internship program;Ìęthe Atlanta recruitmentÌętrip last fallÌęwas sparked by a former GYF intern who attended Morehouse.ÌęThis year, 9,000 applicants vied for 18 internships. Patagonia selected two black interns through GYF in 2017, and this year it chose one. (Lloyd notes that there were additional interns of color that the company recruited by its ownÌęefforts.) Patagonia hasn’t hired any former GYF interns to permanent positions, but it did hire one as a seasonal worker this summer. Lloyd says that a scarcity of entry-level positions—or positions of any kind—means that “we don’t guarantee employment for our interns.”

Still, Lloyd considers Patagonia’s recruitment effortsÌęsuccessful, pointing out that three times as many people of color applied to the internship program this year as in 2017. “We have been able to reach a more diverse candidate pool,” she says.

REI has long been an industry leader in diversity hiring, according to Haroutunian. REI’sÌę it “a workplace where everyone is welcome and everyone is comfortable being who they are,” and it broadcasts REI’s support of marriage equality. The site also offers aÌę at the company’s racial diversity: currently, 18 percent of its workforce and 30 percent of its board of directors are people of color, and in 2017, it increased the ranks of executives of color from zero to 6 percent.

For the past decade or so, REI has been “standing on the gas pedal, making changes to various elements of their business, including marketing and outreach, recruitment, and their real estate strategy,” says Haroutunian. That included putting stores in urban centers like Las Vegas, Houston, and Washington, D.C.

To reach a range of communities, the company partnered withÌę,łÙłó±đÌę ČčČÔ»ćÌę, and the urban cycling festivalÌę. ItÌęalso teamed up with —a group that has partnerships with about a dozen other gear businesses, including Columbia,ÌęKeen, Klean Kanteen, Osprey, and Patagonia. Similarly, Polartec's sponsorships includeÌęthe adaptive outdoor recreation group ÌęČčČÔ»ćÌę, a nonprofit that makes apparel for people with disabilities, and the North Face linked up withÌęÌęand the .

Among the other companies with dedicated diversity programs isÌęMassachusetts-basedÌęPolartec, whichÌępays its interns—most of whom are Hispanic students at a nearby private Catholic high school—by covering their tuition. It also posts job listings on 40 websites in an effort to go “beyond LinkedIn, Facebook, and some of the locations where [the applicants are] a little more homogeneous,” says Breanne Buzay, Polartec’s vice president of human resources. This year, Keen began a partnership with the Greening Youth Foundation for its summer internship program. The North Face’s Explore Fund gives grants to groups that are underrepresented in the outdoors; through its parent company, VF Corporation, it posts job openings on more than 800 employment sites, and it recently sent recruiters to the diversity summitÌę.

Assembling a diverse staff comes naturally to a few companies, including the Philadelphia gear and apparel brČčČÔ»ćÌę and retailerÌęÌęin Costa Mesa, California. Both pull from racially diverse pools of people living in łÙłó±đÌęsurrounding communities.

With 45 employees, Gear Coop is a small, minority-owned business without an HR department or formal hiring protocols of any kind. But its owner, Terry Lee, says the company has informally made “deliberate diversity decisions.” Every department of the company has women and minorities on staff—mostly AsianÌęand Latino—he says, adding that Gear Coop’s LGBTQ workers have historically comprised between 5 and 15 percent of its overall workforce.

“Every time I go to Outdoor Retailer, I’m reminded of how nondiverse the outdoor industry is,” says Brian Linton, founder and CEO of United by Blue. Back homeÌęit’s a different story. “Not that we’re perfectÌęor a full representation of what diversity means to the outdoor industry, but we’re based in Philadelphia, and we’re naturally in a position to be more diverse.”

Linton says 10 percent of United by Blue staff are people of color or LGBTQ. He believes his company’s focus on the urban outdoors helpsÌęattract a diverse workforce. “We appeal to people that are all walks of life,” he says. “It’s not just about going out and climbing El Capitan or trying to doÌęextreme adventures. It’s a very approachable brand, and therefore it’s an approachable company for a diverse group of people.”

That philosophy is echoed at REI. “They’ve had a long-term strategy of broadening their appeal,” Haroutunian says of the retail co-op. “And they walked away from their hardcore customer long ago.” To help lure people of all abilities, REI carries a wide range of products—including newbie-friendly used gear and a less expensive house-branded line. The company has seenÌę; in 2017, sales were $2.6Ìębillion, a 2.5 percent increase over the previous year.

That REI’s diversity numbers are impressive compared with other gear companies underscores how far the outdoor industry still needs to go. The industry lags behind the hotel, health care, and telecommunications fields, and even some tech companies, according to . People of color make up 81 percent of Foot Locker’s workforce (compared with REI's 18 percent) and 33 percent of the executive echelon at Dropbox (versus REI's 6 percent).

Marketing campaigns, outreach and partnership programs, and DEI efforts help. What else can companies do? They can recruit widely—way beyond their buddy networks. They canÌęuse more inclusive language in job postings and reevaluate the skills they require. “What qualifications are necessaryÌęand what are things folks can learn on the job?” as Holliday puts it. That extends to college degrees and experience in the outdoor industry. Removing some requirements can openÌęup the talent pool.

Creating a welcoming company culture is also important. “Whether it’s a person of color or a transgender person, they should feel like it’s an equitable workplace, with equal opportunities for a fulfilling career,” says Camber Outdoors’ Deanne Buck. “You definitely don’t want people coming in and leaving because they don’t feel like there’s a good opportunity for them.”

One way to retainÌęa diverse workforce is through sponsorships—mentoring programs in whichÌęestablished employees introduceÌęnewcomers to higher-ups, putting them on the radar for future projects.

REI and MEC have been working on equity and inclusion hiring for about a decade, but it’s early days for most of the industry. Some companies are taking small steps and hatching plans for future initiatives. Others talk a big game but have shown limited results. Many say they consider DEI a priority, even if they won’t divulge specific policies or plans.

Camber Outdoors’ recent shift to the full range of underrepresented groups wasÌęprompted in part by the realization that its efforts were benefiting only a subset of women. “Using the wordÌęwomenÌęin our missionÌędidn't account for the complex and varied experiences of women,” Buck says. “We were leaving women of color out of the conversations and the solutions.” The group’s new focus is on developing programs to help gear companies create “leadership teams that reflect our population and demographics,” she says. To that end, Camber Outdoors is bringing together members of the industry to develop a set of DEI standards—for instance, that all final-candidate pools for director-level positions include two women and two people of color.

Patagonia is working with the Avarna Group to help develop its DEI initiatives. “This is a long-term process,” Lloyd says. The company intends to expand its GYF internship program; this fallÌęit plans to embark onÌęa southeastern tourÌętargeting more historically black universities.

GYF interns receive broad experience at Patagonia, working in the design, compliance, and marketing departments, among others, according toÌęGYF program director Eboni Preston. In other words, they aren’t being placed solely in high-visibilityÌędepartmentsÌęto maximizeÌęthe optics. “Not to be funny, but no, the black kids aren’t all going to marketing,” says Preston.Ìę“They’ve spread the diversity across Patagonia as a whole.”

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Stefan Ytterborn doesn’t have a background in motorcycles—or any real affinity for them. “When there’s a guy passing me in the street, roaring by on his Ducati, I’m like, ‘Don’t. Get off my back. Don’t disturb me,’” he says. The Swedish-born entrepreneur, best known for founding safety-gear innovator , is drawn more to surfing the bone-tingling waters of the Baltic Sea and tending to his rose garden.

This would seem to be a liability for someone starting a new motorcycle company, as Ytterborn is doing. In January, his startup, Cake, introduced a new electric off-road motorcycle at the Outdoor Retailer trade show in Denver. Called the Kalk, it’s half as hefty as a regular motorcycle, weighing just under 155 pounds, and it can travel—silently—up to 50 miles on a battery charge.

With Cake, Ytterborn is attempting to create a new category of product, Ă  la the iPad, the SUP, and, of course, the mountain bike. Whether a new type of motorcycle rider will emerge, drawn to the diminutive frame and lighter environmental impact, remains to be seen. And whether women, who are , will flock to the Kalk is also an open question.

Despite the rise in female ridership, there’s been a decline in efforts to market motorcycles to women, says Genevieve Schmitt, founder of female-focused motorcycle site . That may be in part because women still comprise just 14 percent of the motorcycling population. The industry’s sales overall have plummeted by half in the past ten years, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council.

And, in fact, Cake is not explicitly trying to woo female riders. The bike is for “anybody who’s attracted to it,” Ytterborn says. “I don’t believe in genders. I don’t believe in age. I believe in neutrality.” But the Kalk’s slight stature and a marketing approach that’s female-friendly—though inadvertently so—might just help recruit women riders.

The Kalk looks like the love child of a mountain bike and a motocross bike that was conceived at an Ikea store (a former Ytterborn client from his pre-POC career in design and branding). The frame, body, and chainstays are metallic; the stanchions are golden; and the saddle, fork, and fenders are white. The bike is noticeably sleeker and less burly than its moto predecessors but not as svelte as its mountain forebears. Whereas bike, perhaps the closest counterpart, has distinctly motocross DNA, Ytterborn considers the Kalk to be 70 percent downhill or enduro mountain bike and 30 percent motorbike.

The Kalk was designed to minimize environmental impact, with its carbon fiber body, alloy frame, lightweight suspension system, and tires that are fatter than a mountain bike’s but without the sharp, soil-shredding edges of a motorbike’s. The electric motor shaves off weight, further reducing the Kalk’s impression on the trail and making for a simpler ride. Instead of changing gears and clutching, you choose from three driving modes—for easy riding, long-distance cruising, and, well, going bananas. “If you want to do double flips, you go for button number three,” Ytterborn says.

He compares riding the Kalk to the sensation of skiing (he’s a former racer) and says others have likened it to surfing between trees. Since the Kalk is noiseless, a couple riders can, for instance, negotiate singletrack at a relatively high speed while carrying on a conversation or accelerate to 50 mph (the bike’s maximum speed) without disrupting the peace at all.

Since the Kalk does have a motor, it won’t be welcome on trails that ban motorized vehicles—a fact that makes the bike more appealing to anti-e-bike stalwarts like Mike Kazimer. Conflicts arise when electric mountain bikes show up on trails designated just for hiking and mountain biking, says Kazimer, technical editor of the mountain biking news site . “People say, ‘I can pedal this, it’s not motorized,’” he says. But with an electric motorcycle, there shouldn’t be ambiguity or misunderstandings. “It can go where motorcycles go, end of story.”

In fact, Ytterborn foresees entirely new trail systems for the Cake breed. “The bikes will need their own trails, unless there is unlimited access to the backcountry and no crowds,” he says. “It’s not our ambition to promote the use of noisy combustion engines in the wild. We are against disturbance and pollution.”

Ytterborn’s interest in motorized two-wheel off-road vehicles was sparked several years ago at a sports trade show, where he discovered an innovative new Swiss bike. “I could see myself quietly exploring the Outback” with it, he says. Then, in 2015, he became fixated on lightweight electric motorbikes and started buying up every such bike he could find, amassing a collection of about 14. They were composed of a homemade part here, a manufactured part there, as he remembers it, welded together by young entrepreneurial companies “in love with the idea of taking electric to a new level,” Ytterborn says. (He declined to name the companies.)

Ytterborn took these bikes on meditative, solitude-filled journeys that helped fuel his growing conviction that the days of the combustion engine are numbered—as in, he thinks it will be obsolete in just ten to 14 years. “It’s not my belief or my dogma,” Ytterborn says. “It’s going to happen.”

(For context, in European countries that would ban cars and combustion engines by 2025 to 2030. But in 2017, just in the United States, according to the electric vehicle news site InsideEVs. And California Governor Jerry Brown’s to get 5 million zero-emissions vehicles onto roads by 2030 is roundly considered ambitious.)

These electric-bike rambles coincided with the end of Ytterborn’s 12-year run at POC Sports, the company he founded out of concern for his sons’ safety during their ski-racing days. Investment management firm Investcorp bought POC for a reported in 2015. Ytterborn had stayed on as CEO, but quickly “everything became a little too corporate and too political for my personal agenda,” he says.

When his involvement in POC came to an end, in September 2016, Ytterborn threw himself into zero-emissions worldwide domination. Since existing mountain bike parts weren’t sturdy enough and moto parts were too heavy, he decided to have the Kalk designed and manufactured from the ground up. The drivetrain is made from European parts, the lithium-ion batteries are from the Czech Republic, and all other parts are manufactured in China.

Ytterborn used nearly $1 million of his own money to finance Cake for the first year; he then raised an additional $3 million from outside investors. He is now in the midst of raising another $9 million to $12 million (also from third parties) and says he’ll also continue investing his own money. Ytterborn predicts the company will be profitable by 2022.

An initial crop of 50 limited-edition Kalk bikes, priced at $14,000, sold out last week and will be delivered to customers beginning in June 2018. Cake is now going into full production of the bike. Street-legal versions of the Kalk are expected to roll out in fall 2019.

The Kalk’s price tag is significantly higher than most electric bikes—and even many motorcycles. Ytterborn points to the technology in the motor, battery, and controller to explain the expense. That said, the Kalk is only slightly more expensive than Alta’s Redshift ($10,495 to $13,495) and the off-road offerings from Santa Cruz–based electric motorcycle maker ($8,495 to $13,995).

To help spread the word about the Kalk and get butts in saddles, Ytterborn says he’s in discussions with ski resorts to set up off-season rental programs—akin to downhill mountain bike rentals but with the added capacity for long-distance forays into adjacent swaths of wilderness.

The company also plans to establish “hubs” in several suburban areas of the United States and Europe, where prospective customers can visit showrooms and take bikes for spins on practice tracks. California, Tennessee, Munich, and London are all possible sites, Ytterborn says. The hubs will send “satellite” trucks—rolling showrooms loaded with bikes for the public to try out—to cycling shows, music festivals, and sporting events.

It’s possible that marketing the Kalk as a new category of product could hasten Cake’s success. In this era when we’re hit with hundreds, if not thousands of marketing messages each day, “the need for categories is more important than it ever has been,” says Al Ramadan, co-founder and partner of Silicon Valley–based category design firm Play Bigger and co-author of . (Ramadan also co-founded the now-defunct online adventure sports site Quokka.)

To succeed in pioneering a new category, an entrepreneur must identify a problem that plagues people, Ramadan says. Our advertising-addled brains filter out the noise by asking, “Do I have this problem?” If the answer is no, we move on. If it’s yes, and the entrepreneur can anchor the conversation around that issue and offer a solution, “the category takes off,” he says.

Language is also key to luring customers to a new product category, Ramadan says. Names should be buzzy, like iPad or smartphone or 5-Hour Energy. Here, Ytterborn might run into trouble. The goal should be: “‘I don’t even know what it is, but it sounds so cool that I’ve got to have one,’” Ramadan says. Electric off-road motorcycle? Not so much.

And the problem Cake is tackling—emissions reduction—could prove too broad and too popular among other entrepreneurs. Several companies are aiming to take on the same issue, among them Zero Motorcycles, which takes its name from the zero-emissions concept. On its website, Zero touts its bikes’ ability to reduce “CO2 and noxious fumes emissions while also saving oil reserves.” (Alta, on the other hand, insists it created an electric motorbike purely for performance reasons.)

But fortunately for Cake, there’s another pressing concern it holds a unique solution for: “Getting 30 miles away from society without having a 50-pound backpack and three days’ time,” as Ramadan puts it. “That is a legitimate problem people have.”

An additional conundrum for women is that off-road motorcycles are typically more difficult for them to ride because the bikes have longer suspensions and higher seats. Since women are, on average, 5.5 inches shorter than men, , they often can’t comfortably keep both feet on the ground when their off-road bike is stopped, says Schmitt of WomenRidersNow.com. At 36 inches of standover height (the distance from the ground to the top of the top tube), the Kalk’s seat is notably high—perhaps even intimidatingly so for women, she says. (Women’s pants inseams typically range from 30 to 34 inches.) But the bike’s slight profile and weight could offset the height issue. Experienced female riders, in particular, would likely be able to keep one foot on the ground for balance when the Kalk is stationary, Schmitt says.

The Kalk might be poised to cultivate a broader female ridership as well. The company’s website prominently features video of a pair of riders zipping along the Swedish coastline, one of them a woman with blonde wisps tumbling from her helmet. This bodes well, Schmitt says. “Women come to the sport when they see other women doing it.” The image of a petite woman on a bike, for instance, is more likely to help recruit smaller women. “If she’s petite, I might be able to handle the bike, too,” is how Schmitt describes the effect.

Despite Ytterborn’s gender-neutral bent, he is convinced women will be drawn to the Kalk partly because it happens to be less overtly masculine. Whereas traditional motorcycle are “loud, aggressive, macho, dirty,” as he puts it, Ytterborn believes the Kalk is more approachable. “It’s light, it’s clean, it’s not complicated to ride, and it’s totally silent. It doesn’t have that roaring, don’t touch me, get off my back vibe.”

These same qualities may well lure a surprising contingent of men. Kazimer of Pinkbike is open to the Kalk despite his aversion both to e-bikes and off-road motorbikes, which he finds too noisy and full of hassles. “An electric motorcycle like this, it’d be pretty fun,” he says. “It’s quiet. You can zip around. I totally understand the appeal of it.”

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Pacific Brewery Binge

San Francisco, CA to Portland, OR Road Trip Map

Oregon to California Road Trip Map

There are more than 20 worthy breweries between San Francisco and Portland. Your mission: Find a driver and hit as many as possible. Start out at the Marin Brewing Company (), in Larkspur, California, for a medium-bodied Mt. Tam Pale Ale. Thirty miles up the coast, in Petaluma, a cold Sirius Ale from the Lagunitas Brewing Company () is the ideal lubricant for canine schadenfreude—the World’s Ugliest Dog contest takes place here in late June. Three hours to the north, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company () makes one of the world’s best pale ales, and its concert stage consistently hosts alt-country A-listers such as Gillian Welch. After cutting through Mendocino National Forest’s dirt roads for chilly surf and the Lost Coast Brewery’s crisp Great White beer () in Eureka, head for Portland. Try not to get a stiff neck—the westward views of sea lions and Pacific surf are spectacular. Miles : 810 Days : 4 Theme Song: “Hands on the Wheel,” Willie Nelson

WISE GUIDE
Packing: Keep your stuff—bins, stoves, bags, boxes—in cubes, such as Mountainsmith’s zip-top cubes (), whenever possible. Bikes and fishing rods go in last. Truck stops: Are for truckers (and those desperate times when you need a WHY RATION PASSION? I’M A LOVE MACHINE! hat). Traveling with pets: Bring valerian root. It smells terrible, but tests performed by editors show it puts a barking dog to sleep. Gas mileage: To conserve energy, keep to freeways, accelerate slowly, and limit braking by staying two car lengths behind the vehicle in front of you. On the highway, windows up with A/C on is more efficient than windows down with no A/C. Radio: Stick with your iPod radio converter—or Pioneer’s new iPod-and-satellite-radio-compatible stereos ()—until Clear Channel updates its classic-rock playlist. (Note to Clear Channel: Songs from the seventies aren’t classic anymore. They’re oldies.) Maps: Google Maps is great, if you can get Google; for back roads, don’t forget paper.

Southern Dip

Wilmington, NC to St. Augustine, FL

Wilmington, NC to St. Augustine, FL Road Trip Map

Southern Dip
Yes, the Southeast is obscenely hot in July. That’s why you should stick to the water. Start in Wilmington, North Carolina, and follow the coast into South Carolina on U.S. 17, which practically dunks you in the ocean near the tiny town of Pawleys Island. Stop in Tybee Island, Georgia, and before crashing at the De­Soto Beach Hotel (doubles, $160; ), feast on blue crab. The Crab Shack () serves it, but it tastes better when you’ve caught it yourself off the rocks at the end of the beach. (Bring a net and use raw chicken for bait.) Two hours down the road, at Jekyll Island, hop into a sea kayak to explore tidal marshes—herons and egrets flock to the island’s western shore (guiding from Tidelands Nature Center; ). At trip’s end, bypass the packed beaches in St. Augustine, Florida, and drive 2.5 miles south to Anastasia State Park, just past the local alligator farm. Cast some live shrimp into the surf and you should catch redfish for dinner (tackle available at Island Joe’s camp store; 904-461-9322). Miles: 500 Days: 3 Theme Song: “Un­clou­dy Day,” Willie Nelson

Take Two

Drive that 4×4 500 miles to a national forest and it’ll run you more than $200 in gas, round-trip. My advice: Opt for an on-/off-road motorcycle. They’re comfortable on highways, thanks to their upright riding position, and are more nimble on dirt than any truck. Kawasaki’s KLR 650 ($5,200; ) stretches a gallon 60 miles. Besides, riding a bike is just more fun. I’ve driven a Bentley through Tuscany, and it didn’t compare to the thrill of working my $500 BMW R90/6 through ten miles of curves outside San Jose. Find a motorcycle driving school through the Motorcycle Safety Foundation ().

Lake Loop

Duluth, MN and Michigan’s UP

Lake Loop
Stretched out, Lake Superior’s twisty coastline would extend from New York to Los Angeles. Lucky for you, the circumnavigational route we’ve picked is considerably shorter. Starting in Duluth, Minnesota, cruise east along Wisconsin’s coastal wetlands and into Michigan’s pine-covered Upper Peninsula. After hiking in the surprisingly rugged Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, spend a night in one of the park’s rustic cabins ($60; ). (Call ahead and request the private, waterside Buckshot Cabin.) On the Ontario side of the lake, Pukaskwa National Park is home to 75 miles of coastline—almost all of it deserted. Pitch a tent on the yellow-sand beaches at the mouth of the Willow River (backcountry camping permits, $10; pc.gc.ca). Back in Minnesota, be sure to stop at Palisade Head, a 300-foot cliff rising directly from the shores of Superior in Tettegouche State Park. Put your kayak in at Silver Bay, paddle beneath the cliff, observe the climbers dangling above, and hitchhike back. Before driving the last 50 miles to Duluth, fuel up at Our Place, in Finland (5195 Hefflefinger Rd.), where a bartender who calls himself the Moose Whisperer serves up the best pancakes in the world—or at least in northern Minnesota. Miles: 1,090 Days: 4 Theme Song: “In the Garden,” Willie Nelson

Heading for Trouble

Jackson, WY to Las Vegas, NV

Jackson, WY to Las Vegas, NV Road Trip Map

Heading for Trouble
The best way to work off the feel-good vibes of a mountain-town eco-retreat? Gambling in Vegas. After soaking in a solar-heated hot tub at Hotel Terra (doubles, $320; ), in Jackson, Wyo­ming, hit the road with a fly rod in tow and mischief on your mind. The Green River is your guide—find it, follow it, and then fish it in the town of Dutch John, Utah. Stay in a cabin at the top of Flaming Gorge (doubles, $105; ). Below, the river swirls between 2,000-foot red-rock walls, holding as many as 14,000 trout per mile (guiding from Trout Creek Flies; ). After turning south and white-knuckling it on “the Hogsback,” a narrow ridgeline on Scenic Byway 12, stop for a hike in Zion National Park. Now you should be ready for a few martinis in Vegas. Stay at Red Rock Casino (doubles, $180; ), the only joint in town offering guided river trips on the Colorado, from Hoover Dam through the Black Canyon. After floating, gamble and listen to old rock stars on the casino circuit—Peter Frampton plays July 11. Miles: 1,055 Days: 5 Theme Song: “The Troublemaker,” Willie Nelson

DIY AAA

Mechanics are great, when they’re nearby. But when they’re many dirt miles away? Heed these tips from Bob Burns, lead instructor at the Land Rover Experience Driving School. 1. Get a tune-up before you go. 2. Learn to read a map—GPS doesn’t always work (start at , a free online tutorial). 3. Bring a tire kit. A patch kit can fix small holes from nails or bolts and is more reliable than self-patching goo (Stop & Go Tire Mobility Kit, $130; ). 4. To learn how to fix a leaking gas tank with bar soap, sign up for a course with Burns (from $200; ). 5. If that’s too hardcore for you, buy a Haynes Repair Manual for your vehicle’s make and model ().

High-Desert Drift

Santa Fe, NM to Texas

Santa Fe, NM to Texas Road Trip Map

High-Desert Drift
You’ll want two things as you drive through the stark, beautiful desert of West Texas and southern New Mexico: Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy and air-conditioning. After steaking it up in El Paso—the $14 filet mignon at Billy Crews () is arguably the best deal in Texas—make a beeline to Big Bend National Park. July’s 100-degree temperatures make a flatwater float down the Rio Grande your best option (guides available from the Far Flung Outdoor Center; ). Next stop, Marfa, the country’s funkiest artists’ enclave. Tour the Chinati Foundation’s land-art installations, which loom surreally over vast parched fields (). Thirty miles south of town, stay at Cibolo Creek Ranch, a group of luxurious yet rugged Civil War–era adobe forts equipped with private Jacuzzis (doubles, $475; ). Then cruise north through the yucca-studded Chihuahuan Desert and the dusty Guadalupe Mountains—U.S. 62 tops out at 5,534-foot, see-forever Guadalupe Pass. After crossing into southern New Mexico, hit Roswell’s International UFO Museum, and if it happens to be July 4 weekend, sign up for the Alien Chase 10K (), where chances are good you’ll get passed by an alarmingly fit dude in a chartreuse unitard. Miles: 750 Days: 4 Theme Song: “Across the Borderline,” Willie Nelson

Dirty Driving

Driving a sedan doesn’t mean you can’t navigate the occasional dirt road. Here’s a thinking man’s primer to light off-roading.1. Get the right tires: For all-wheel-drive wagons, like Subarus and Volvos, go with the slim, sturdy All-Terrain T/A (from $150; ). 2. Don’t straddle obstacles: Place your tires on rocks, not around them. 3. On sand: Slightly deflate your tires. 4. Bring a jack: A five-foot Hi-Lift jack and tow chain can help you change a tire and can jerk most cars out of a ditch ($68; amazon.com). 5. Don’t drive straight up hills: If you ascend diagonally, you won’t drag your bumper. 6. Listen up: If you hear a funny sound, get out and check—or risk spooning with your travel buddy all night, the way executive editor Michael Roberts and senior editor John Bradley swear they didn’t after puncturing an oil pan just outside New Mexico’s Pecos Wilderness last summer.

Appalachian Trail Cheat

Hanover, NH to Rockland, ME

Hanover, NH to Rockland, ME Road Trip Map

Appalachian Trail Cheat
Be honest with yourself: You’re not taking the summer off to hike the Appalachian Trail. The next best thing? Drive it. Start in Han­over, New Hampshire, where the AT begins to trace the White Mountains, drive to Lincoln, and follow the 37-mile Kancamagus Highway through scenery that’s more Rockies than New England. In Jackson, avoid the line of cars ascending Mount Washington. Instead, take a real climbing lesson with North Face–sponsored guide Mark Synnott, who leads multi-pitch climbs up 700-foot Cathedral Ledge (). Crash at the Wildcat Inn and Tavern (doubles, $80; ), unless it’s Tuesday—open-mike night—in which case you’ll want to stay in nearby North Conway. July is prime feeding time in Maine, and blueberry stands are ubiquitous as you make the 80-mile drive up the coast on Route 1 along Penobscot Bay. Stop in Rockland for the Maine Lobster Festival (), in late July. Once you’ve overdosed on crustacean, head five minutes south to the 183-year-old Owls Head Lighthouse. From the tower, look out on the rugged coastline; from the rocky beach below, kayak out to the Muscle Ridge Islands, where seals play in the shallows (rentals at Water Walker Sea Kayaks; ). Miles: 305 Days: 3 Theme Song: “The Party’s Over,” Willie Nelson

Fine Cheese

In a world of corn palaces, two roadside clichés stand out. Both are so awesomely awful that they must be seen. And both, bizarrely, involve big rocks.

The House on the Rock

Legend has it that the House on the Rock, in Spring Green, Wisconsin, started as an F-You to Frank Lloyd Wright, who once slandered builder Alex Jordan, saying he wasn’t fit to design a chicken coop. In retaliation, Jordan’s son built a Wright parody atop a rock six miles south of Wright’s home. Today, a half-century of construction has morphed the original 14-room house into a 17-building, 2.5-mile-long test of mental health. The HOTR’s path winds through shag-carpeted halls crammed with immense collections of beer steins, cogs, firearms, armor, and model angels; a building crammed with ailing dolls; and a hall dedicated to tarnished pipe organs. Push on and you’ll find the world’s largest carousel, a 14-foot cannon, and a school-bus-size sea monster fighting a giant squid ().

The Hole ‘n the Rock

This 14-room, 50,000-cubic-foot cave home in Moab, Utah, was blasted by ex–con artist and taxidermist Albert Christensen as a Sisyphean labor of sorrow after his Mount Rushmore–scale carving of FDR was dynamited by government agents in 1941. The place remains intact 50 years after Christensen died (he was laid to rest out front, by the parking lot). On display are his stuffed donkey, sundry oil portraits of Jesus, and a bathtub purportedly chiseled from sandstone by his wife, Gladys. I go to jelly when the teenage tour guide says, “On your left is Albert’s Sermon on the Mount, his most famous work.” Albert never made it into the Louvre, but his monument endures, a Watts Tower of the canyons, one man’s lonely trudge toward immortality. Admission is five bucks, and that includes the emu petting zoo ().

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PORTSMOUTH ISLAND, NORTH CAROLINA – On a weekend last summer, while the rest of the beachgoing world descended upon overrun sand traps like Nags Head and Virginia Beach, I took a 4×4 and a shortboard and made for Portsmouth Island. There are a few selling points to this skinny, 18-mile-long barrier island in the northernmost part of North Carolina's Cape Lookout National Seashore. The surf, for one—you can catch punchy beach-break waves all along the eastern, Atlantic-facing shore. The fishing's not bad, either—bring a spinning rod and some shrimp and you'll pull in as much drum as you can eat. Also, the whole damn place is uninhabited. Except for a smattering of cabins near its middle, all that's to be found is miles of sea oats and dunes and the Atlantic coast's finest, most surprisingly reachable beach camping. There's not a paved road on the entire island, so the Park Service permits beach driving, which does wonders for people who secretly harbor redneck alter egos, like me.

Malia Jones

Malia Jones, your guide to summer. Check out more of Malia, including an interview, photo gallery, and exclusive video.

Ìę

Fly into Wilmington (US Airways flies direct from LaGuardia in less than two hours), rent a vehicle, and drive the three hours to the town of Atlantic. Go to Morris Marina and catch a 40-minute ferry ride to Portsmouth Island (round-trip, $14 per person or $75 per vehicle; ), but don't board before renting a kayak at the marina ($150 for three days). Portsmouth offers only a few lodging options with roofs and walls, such as the unfortunately named Kabin Kamps (from $100; ). Pass the cabins by, head for the beach on the eastern shore, and pitch your tent above the high-tide line. Paddle out to the west side of the island and explore the miles of tidal marshes. Upon returning to your campsite, you'll notice, well, nothing. No lifeguard towers, no Rollerblades, no wafting scent of hair gel mixed with sunscreen. Just a big, white beach that's all your own.

The Easiest Catch

fly-fishing rock creek, montana

Hats off to Montana fly-fishing

MISSOULA, MONTANA – There are fishing purists who throw fits if another angler comes within 100 feet. In general I agree with this principle. But not in June, not in southwestern Montana. As fat, ugly salmonflies hatch and die by the thousands on Rock Creek, some 20 miles east of Missoula, the trout spend a good month slapping the surface of the 52-mile freestone river, and they don't care how many orange or yellow stonefly imitators are floating over their heads or how many hacks are elbowing for backcasting room on the shoreline.ÌęSo go, fight for space, get tangled in the cottonwoods, splash around. You'll still catch fish. Purists: There might be some open water above mile 21 on Rock Creek Road, where the holes in the road turn back sedans.

Fly into Missoula, secure a vehicle with four-wheel drive, and rent a fully furnished cabin on the creek (from $95; ).ÌęFor fishing advice delivered by a gravel-voiced old-timer who knows every riffle on the river, stop at Doug Persico's Rock Creek Fisherman's Mercantile, just off I-90 (). Warm up in town with the aspiring novelists at the Old Post Pub, where the food is bad, the music is slightly better, the waitstaff are beautiful, and the hatch chart on the wall is to be trusted, for the most part (). Afterwards, drink and gamble around the corner at the Oxford Saloon. If you're still on the poker table at 4 a.m., the bartender will serve you a free chicken-fried steak ().

Lights Out

How Not to Spend Summer

Collecting prize money for killing gophers at the Gopher Count festival, in Viola, Minnesota, June 19

Spitting seeds for four days at the Watermelon Thump, in Luling, Texas, June 26–29.

Literally watching paint dry at the National Fence Painting Championship, in Hannibal, Missouri, July 3–5.

Calling mosquitoes at the Great Texas Mosquito Festival, in Clute, Texas, July 24–26; contestants try to lure the biggest bug with their voices.

—CLAIRE NAPIER GALOFARO

GRAND CANYON, ARIZONA – The summer solstice at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is a throng of shuttle buses, clicking cameras, and vendors hawking I GC booty shorts. But on the less frequented North Rim, there's a nighttime solstice party where you can watch the skies erupt in peace. Under the orchestration of Arizona's Saguaro Astronomy Club, a score of astronomers from across the country converge to set up powerful telescopes on the terrace of the Grand Canyon Lodge, a castle-like stone building perched on the edge of the canyon (doubles, $100; ). For eight nights, more than 100 people—hikers, amateur stargazers, passersby—stop for a quick peek through a scope and end up staying, starstruck, as late as 5 a.m. Since the Grand Canyon has one of America's darkest night skies, you can see Saturn's rings, storms on Jupiter, and millions of stars glittering like galactic bling. Exploit the extra daylight with a quad-busting, nine-mile round-trip hike on the North Kaibab Trail to the Roaring Springs waterfall, 3,050 feet down the canyon. Afterwards, refuel with the lodge's brand-new Grand Cookout dinners. The chuck-wagon-style beef brisket, roasted chicken, and fresh-baked biscuits will sate the most astronomical of appetites ($35 per person). Nearest airport: Flagstaff, Arizona, a somewhat daunting 200 miles away.

Flatwater Freedom

GRAND MARAIS, MINNESOTA – The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is one of the largest wilderness areas east of the Rockies. It's also one of the most heavily trafficked: More than 200,000 people ply its 1,200 miles of routes annually. So while the weather's best in late summer, I go toward the end of June, when the water is cool, the smallmouth are biting, the blackflies are disappearing, and the Boy Scouts hoping to earn their tree-carving badges have yet to arrive.

Fly into Duluth and pick up a canoe on your way to Grand Marais at Sawbill Canoe Outfitters ($85 for three days; ). There are nearly 80 entry points to the Boundary Waters; ignore most of them and enter at East Bearskin Lake, 26 miles from Grand Marais up the Gunflint Trail highway (entry permits, $16 per person; ). A 2.5-mile paddle plus a short portage lead to Alder Lake, where there's a perfect camping spot on the tip of the main peninsula. Bring a lightweight rod and cast a Rapala into the rocks just offshore. With any luck, you'll catch dinner to fry over the fire. The next night, stay six miles away in a lakeside cabin at the Old Northwoods Lodge, bear-and-lumberjack kitsch at its finest (doubles, $120; ). Before leaving, dine on Lake Superior trout at the Angry Trout Café (), a refurbished fishing shanty on the harbor in Grand Marais.

The Backyard

ANYWHERE, USA – Look, I'm a patriot. I like beer. And having mostly overcome a scarring childhood incident involving a bottle rocket, the San Francisco police, and a hefty insurance claim by a downstairs neighbor, I like fireworks again. So don't get the wrong idea when I tell you to stay home on the Fourth of July. But for God's sake, do stay home. Something like 41 million Americans will celebrate by going somewhere, making this the busiest travel period of the summer. Even if you're the kind that digs the woozy high of flirt-flirt honking as your convertible crawls through a carbon monoxide haze—which, I think, makes you a high schooler—consider that July 4 is traditionally the deadliest day of the year on our nation's roads. The second-deadliest? July 3. And anyway, I've devised the ultimate at-home party: a few friends, lots of beer, barbecue (see The Guide, page 65), and a kiddie pool. You can add bottle rockets—just don't shoot any into the neighbor's window.

Great Green North

STRATEGY: THE WELL-PACKED WEEKENDER

Seven items to have at the ready:
1. Rubbermaid’s 75-quart DuraChill Cooler, which keeps beer cold for almost a week ($43; rubbermaid). 2. Sweat- and waterproof K2 Endurance Sunblock ($13; ). 3. Patagonia’s wrinkle-free Vitaliti polo shirt, which looks better at dinner after you’ve worn it hiking ($55; ).4. Smith’s gold-rimmed Bellaire sunglasses ($100; ). 5. Hi-Tec’s V-Lite Radar II eVent light hikers, which can double as trail runners, since they’re built onrunning lasts ($120; ). Drive west an hour to Baddeck and set up camp at the Chanterelle Country Inn, a solar-heated B&B where the organic dinners mean wild mushrooms, fresh mussels from the harbor out back, and, until July 15, lobster; for the rest of the month you're stuck with the snow crab (doubles, US$158, including breakfast; ). Then load up your bike and drive out to 200-year-old Acadian villages, through Highlands National Park, and, if 18 percent grades don't dissuade you, to the majestic north end, where you can take a guided sea-kayak tour through pilot whale feed zones (US$100; ). Before leaving Baddeck, unwind at a ceilidh, the old Celtic precursor to the rave, with fiddles, tin whistles, and (in place of ecstasy) the island's own single-malt whiskies.

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The Uncrowded Mountain Town

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TELLURIDE, COLORADO – Between the weekends of Memorial Day and Labor Day, the town of Telluride hosts no fewer than 15 festivals. Think about that. On any given Saturday, you might have to share this remote outpost's epic hiking trails, casual restaurants, and approximately 23 parking spaces with either hordes of slamgrass fans (the Bluegrass Festival), a gaggle of oeno­philes (the Wine Festival), or an army of downward-doggers (the Yoga Festival). But crowds are the last thing you want to see here. Placed at the dead end of a box canyon and surrounded by 14,000-foot peaks, Telluride offers as good a setting as any town in America for a quiet summer idyll. So there's only one celebration worth attending: The Nothing Festival. For three days, there are zero planned events—but something incredible does happen. Hotels open up (try the Telluride Mountainside Inn; doubles, $119; ), Main Street empties out, and a few visitors breathe easy. How to spend those days? Just bring your hiking boots and follow the directions on telluridenothingfestival.com: “Thank you for not participating.” Nearest airport: Montrose, Colorado, 70 miles away.

America's Oktoberfest

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PORTLAND, OREGON – Nothing says summer like 60,000 people raising glasses of beer into the air and letting loose a spontaneous cheer that makes Yankee Stadium sound like the baking section at Borders. Welcome to the OBF, or Oregon Brewers Festival, which takes place every July in Portland's Tom McCall Waterfront Park. With 72 participating breweries from around the country, it's the finest outdoor tasting in the world that doesn't require speaking German. The beer's cold and often of the hard-to-get variety—I'm partial to Allagash White, a spicy Belgian-style wheat beer. By the end of the day, the local blues bands sound much better than they are, and as the sun sets, those cheers grow longer and a hell of a lot more infectious. The wise visitor, though, doesn't spend all four days at the festival: With more than 270 miles of bike routes in the city, plus Forest Park, the nation's largest urban forest, Portland offers ample opportunity to work up a healthy thirst (rentals, $28 for a half day; ). Freshen up at the Heathman Hotel and browse their library, which contains first editions signed by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut (doubles, $230; ). Then go drink up and scream ($5 for an official mug, $4 per beer; ).

The Non-Hamptons

LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK – For discerning New Yorkers, the North Fork of Long Island has long provided a much more relaxing escape than the Botox-injected Hamptons side. But as word gets out that North Fork wineries like Bedell are rivaling their cousins in Napa, there is some concern among locals that things may not stay so quaint. My suggestion? Stay home and pretend to visit. A few things you could imagine and then brag about at the watercooler: sailing from Preston's dock, in Greenport, on a restored 1906 schooner while slurping down fresh oysters (day trips on the schooner Mary E, $38; ); tromping through Shelter Island's vast nature preserve; kiteboarding Peconic Bay ($100 per hour with Island Riders; ); bathing with locally made goat's-milk soap at the North Fork Table & Inn (doubles, $275; ); or riding the 40-mile North Fork bikeway toward Orient Point beach with the sun and salt water on your face (daylong rentals, $28 at the Bike Stop, in Greenport; ). Your co-workers will be none the wiser, and I won't get in trouble for letting the secret out. Nearest airport: MacArthur Airport, 50 miles from Greenport.

True Grass

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GRAND TARGHEE, WYOMING – Perhaps you're one of those people who holds to the misguided notion that bluegrass music is for hippies. If so, you may be familiar with Telluride's annual jam-o-rama, which is a great party and a good place to go if you like Hacky Sacks and Ani DiFranco. Real bluegrass festivals, on the other hand, are about impromptu circles of fiddlers and banjo pickers in which solos are passed around with far more reserve than whiskey.

Go to Targhee and you'll see. Fifty miles across Teton Pass from Jackson Hole, at Grand Targhee Resort, the Grand Targhee Bluegrass Festival (three-day pass, $125; ) hosts 6,500 people over the course of the weekend, compared with the 10,000 who choke Telluride per day. Mountain-town favorite Tim O'Brien headlines, but listen closely to Tony Trischka's Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular. The two banjos (never a good idea) can be abrasive, but Trischka plays with Michael Daves, a Georgia-born guitarist with a gut-wrenching high tenor that's far more Joe Strummer than Jack Johnson. For a break, ride Targhee's new lift-accessed mountain-bike park. If you can score a room in the resort (doubles, $125), look for the headliners picking and passing bottles in the lobby, and don't say a word.ÌęNearest airport: Jackson Hole.

Moon Paddle

[photo size="full"]1498501[/photo] [sidebar hed="STRATEGY: THE SURPRISE DIRECT FLIGHT"] Easy routes to the regional airports mentioned in this story: Delta flies from Atlanta to Jackson Hole in just under six hours (from $370; ). Continental flies from Houston and Dallas to Montrose, Colorado (from $400; ). Allegiant Air flies regularly from Las Vegas to Duluth (from $270; ) and Missoula ($140). And barring any planning hiccups, Horizon Air will offer direct service from Los Angeles to Flagstaff starting this June ($200; ).

TOMALES BAY, CALIFORNIA – It wouldn't be hard to miss the coastal village of Marshall, an hour north of San Francisco on Highway 1—only 100 or so people live here, and the place looks kind of scrappy. But gritty is in these days, and last summer, restaurateur Pat Kuleto turned Marshall into the home of the North Coast's most serenely stylish digs. Nick's Cove & Cottages is a cluster of gussied-up fisherman's cabins, complete with water-view decks and bedside cheese plates. Next door, Nick's roadhouse serves oysters caught out front and pinot noir from up the road. But the reason to go is the full moon on Saturday the 16th: As night falls, kayak due west from your cabin, past Hog Island, and visit Tomales Point's tule elk herd (daylong rentals from Point Reyes–based Blue Waters Kayaking, $60; ). When you return to shore, moonlit wine tasting and oyster slurping await on the deck of your cabin (doubles, $300; ). Nearest airport: San Francisco.

Lightning Show

walter de maria's lightning field

MOTHER NATURE’S LASER SHOW: Walter de Maria’s Lightning Field

QUEMADO, NEW MEXICO – Whoever named the two-diner town of Quemado (translation: “Burnt”), in southwestern New Mexico, had a way with words. The place attracts a fair amount of lightning strikes. That's why sculptor Walter De Maria put his installation, the Lightning Field, which combines highbrow art with one of the last great remote landscapes in America, nearby.

Fly into Albuquerque, rent a car, and drive three hours southwest to Quemado. At a small white gallery-like space that could be in SoHo, you'll await a grizzled cowboy who drives precariously fast in his truck and drops you off 45 minutes later at a three-bedroom cabin overlooking the fields. Your provisions: enchiladas, whatever libations you've brought, and orders to wander. The installation consists of a surreal one-mile grid of 400 stainless-steel poles in the lightning-happy high desert. The display is best viewed from the back porch, with a cold Negra Modelo in hand. Book far in advance—you can rent the cabin for only one night ($250 per person with maximum six-person occupancy; ). What to do with the rest of the weekend? Doesn't really matter, if you're lucky enough to see lightning strike out the back door. But there are plenty of weird attractions around that could exist only in New Mexico—the Very Large Array of radio telescopes, near Socorro, for instance.ÌęSpend the next night in the emerging artsy town of Truth or Consequences and soak at the Sierra Grande Lodge (doubles, $130; ).

Treasure Island

SANTA CATALINA, CALIFORNIA – In the early days of Hollywood, Santa Catalina Island's sand coves doubled as Tahiti and its mountains stood in for the Wild West. A 76-square-mile island located 25 miles southwest of Los Angeles, Catalina has retained its flair for drama because 88 percent of the place is a land trust. Charter a sailboat on the mainland in Marina del Rey (from $100 per day; ), five miles from LAX, and sail five hours to Catalina. Catalina's port town of Two Harbors provides immediate access to the island's 50-mile network of rugged hiking and mountain-biking trails (daylong bike rentals from Two Harbors Dive & Recreation Center, $53; 310-510-4272). For cozier digs than the berths on your boat, stay at the Banning House Lodge, which has 11 ocean-view rooms (doubles, $216; 800-626-1496). To branch out from the sails and trails, sign up for Two Harbors' annual buffalo-chip contest, during which townsfolk gather at the pier to throw buffalo dung onto the beach. The record toss—187 feet—is waiting to be broken.

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The Knee Farm

Get your fresh-grown cartilage

Taking Up That Slopeside Slack Time

Routines

The Tuck Jump

Standards

A Positive Impact

Prescriptions

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