Top mancation destinations

About seven years ago, I did a roundup of top destinations for men’s vacations, or “mancations.”
Since most of those weblinks don’t work anymore, I thought I’d revisit the topic with some fresh weblinks to articles about destinations for mancations.
So without further delay, here are some newer articles.

10 Amazing Mancation Ideas (ManTripping.com)

1. Munich Oktoberfest
2. Exotic animal hunting at the Wilderness Hunting Lodge in Tennessee
3. Las Vegas
4. Beaches and night clubs in Ibiza
5. Ski resorts in Lake Tahoe
6. Austin, Texas, for music scene and barbecue
7. Salmon fishing in Alaska
8. Indianapolis 500
9. Calgary Stampede
10. Hiking, biking, sailing and snorkeling in Hawaii

Survey: Top Mancation Picks (ManTripping.com)

1. Alaskan cruise, land and sea tour
2. Golf trip to a Florida beach resort
3. Road trip on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail
4. Ski trip to Lake Tahoe
5. Sport fishing trip to Puerto Vallarta
6. Montana dude ranch adventure

Great Getaways for Guys (AARP)

1. Austin, Texas (live music, hiking, horseback riding, etc.)
2. Monterey Peninsula, California (golfing, dining, outdoor attractions and Monterey Bay Aquarium)
3. Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin (fishing, race cars)
4. Bend, Oregon (outdoor sports, craft breweries)
5. Lexington, Kentucky (biking, bourbon tasting, horse farms)
6. Fort Lauderdale, Florida (beaches, deep sea fishing, etc.)
7. Las Vegas, Nevada (golfing, hiking and fine dining)

10 Great Mancations (Toro Magazine)

1. Daytona, Florida (golf, Nascar racing)
2. Phoenix, Arizona, and Colorado River (Cactus League baseball, river-rafting)
3. New York, New York (sports)
4. Boston, Mass. (sports, seafood)
5. Las Vegas, Nevada (gambling, nightlife)
6. Honolulu, Hawaii (surfing, fishing, diving, golf)
7. Miami, Fla. (beaches, deep-sea fishing, nightlife)
8. Montreal, Quebec (clubs, lounges, bars)
9. Vancouver, British Columbia (nature, nightlife, etc.)
10. Los Angeles, California (Hollywood)

5 Mancations To Do Before You Die (HomeWetBar.com)

1. Memphis, Tenn. (blues music, barbecue)
2. New Orleans, La. (jazz music, great food, nightlife)
3. Austin, Texas (live music, bars, food)
4. Portland, Ore. (brewpubs, nightlife)
5. Las Vegas (gambling, nightlife, shows)

Best U.S. Destinations for a Guys-Only Getaway (The Active Times)

1. Louisville, Kentucky (Kentucky Bourbon Trail)
2. Daytona Beach, Florida (Daytona 500, beaches, fishing)
3. Indianapolis, Indiana (Indianapolis 500)
4. Appalachia (Skyline Drive through Shenandoah and Blue Ridge Mountains)
5. Silverton Mountain, Colorado (skiing)
6. Las Vegas, Nevada (gambling, nightlife)
7. Ocean City, Maryland (beaches, nightlife)
8. Humboldt County, California (Redwood National Park, zip line tours)
9. North Maine Woods, Maine (canoeing)
10. New Orleans, Louisiana (jazz music, food, nightlife)
11. Grand Canyon, Arizona (white-water rafting)

Top 10 Guy Trips (ShermansTravel)

1. BBQ grilling lessons at the Culinary Institute of America in Northern California’s Napa Valley
2. Catch a baseball game in Boston
3. Drink beer in Bavaria
4. Golf in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida
5. Off-road adventure in Death Valley, Calif.
6. Party in Las Vegas
7. Play cowboy in Lajitas, Texas
8. Spa in Chicago
9. Sport fish in Panama
10. Surf in Sydney

Related resources:

Macations Wiki

Photos: Oktoberfest in Munich.

Florida mancation: Spring training baseball, Everglades, good food and beer

Every year or so, I like to take a man vacation, or mancation.
In March 2010, my brother Bill and I went to Arizona for Cactus League spring training baseball, the Big Sandy Shoot, a tour of the Bagdad copper mine and to walk in the desert.
In September 2011, Bill and my young son, Christopher, traveled to South Dakota for the annual Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup and to visit national parks and monuments like Mount Rushmore, the Badlands and Devil’s Tower.
This year, Bill, Christopher (now 9) and I traveled to Florida for Grapefruit League spring training baseball and to see the Everglades. It was a quick trip (March 23-27), but we packed a lot of things in it.

Day one: Nationals home game

We arrived in Orlando, Fla., on Saturday night March 23.
The next day we attended Palm Sunday mass at a Catholic church in Orlando. Afterward, we drove an hour east to Space Coast Stadium, the spring home of the Washington Nationals, in Viera, Fla.
We watched the Nationals take on the visiting Atlanta Braves. It was a sold-out game, with a lot of fans visiting from Georgia. Traffic was bad getting into the parking lots. Good thing we arrived early. A wind and rain storm ended the game in the eighth inning. The Nationals beat the Braves 11-2, with Ryan Zimmerman hitting three home runs and Wilson Ramos hitting two. (See articles by Associated Press and SB Nation.) That night, we had dinner at Brick House Tavern and Tap in Orlando. The place has great decor and specializes in meatballs, steaks and other manly eats. The words “Man Cave” are painted on the inside front wall. It also has an extensive beer selection. We sampled a couple of brews and then ordered a mini-tap at the table to dispense Hurricane Reef Caribbean, an American lager from Melbourne, Fla. The waiter called the tap a beer bong.

Day two: Disney Hollywood Studios and Nationals away game

On Monday March 25, we spent the day at Disney Hollywood Studios. I had visited the park years earlier when it was called Disney-MGM Studios. This excursion was primarily for my son, but I enjoyed the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, the Toy Story Midway Mania and the Star Wars ride.
In the evening, we attended our second Major League Baseball spring training game of the trip.
We watched the visiting Washington Nationals vs. the Houston Astros at Osceola County Stadium in Kissimmee, Fla. Twenty-year-old phenom Bryce Harper batted three-for-three in the game. But the Nats lost 6-4 after they replaced most of their starters. (See articles by the Associated Press and SB Nation.) I almost caught a foul ball, but I couldn’t make a clean, bare-handed grab.

Day three: Everglades

On Tuesday March 26, we drove three hours south to the Everglades.
We stopped at the Everglades Holiday Park near Weston, Fla. It’s a tourist trap with long wait lines. We took an airboat ride through the swamp and then watched Chris Gillette from the Animal Planet show “Gator Boys” wrestle an alligator.
Next we drove an hour south to Everglades National Park. We stopped at the Ernest Coe Visitor Center near Homestead, Fla. and then walked the Anhinga Trail, where we saw a couple dozen alligators basking in the sun. We also saw a lot of water birds such as anhinga and heron. One heron caught a big fish close to shore while we were there.
It was a beautiful spring day and we enjoyed the weather and the wildlife.
At night, we had dinner in Miami at a cozy hole-in-the-wall bar and restaurant called the Filling Station. The eatery has great burgers and a large beer menu. I had the Hamborghini, a burger topped with fried Genoa salami, provolone cheese and pesto mayo. I washed it down with a Radeberger Pilsner (Radeberg, Germany) and an Orange Blossom Pilsner (Orlando, Fla.). We spent the night in Miami and flew home the next day.

It was fun to see the Washington Nationals play in spring training. Sports Illustrated and ESPN the Magazine both have picked the Nationals to win the World Series this year, so expectations are high.
But as the Washington Post notes, beware “the curse of high expectations.”

Photos: Everglades alligator and Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper. (March 2013 photos.)

Previous mancations posts: 

Arizona ‘mancation’: Part 1 – Desert drive and the Bagdad copper mine (March 2010)

The Big Sandy Shoot: Arizona ‘mancation’ (March 2010)

Baseball spring training: Arizona ‘mancation’ (March 2010)

Exploring Phoenix: Arizona ‘mancation’ Part 4 (March 2010)

South Dakota mancation: National parks and the great buffalo roundup (Sept. 2011)

South Dakota mancation: National parks and the great buffalo roundup

I recently took a four-day mancation to South Dakota with my brother Bill and my 8-year-old son, Chris. It was a short trip, but jam-packed with the kinds of things guys enjoy.
We flew into Rapid City, S.D., on Saturday morning Sept. 24 after an unplanned overnight stay in Denver. (Our plane from Washington, D.C., was delayed because of mechanical problems and we missed our connecting flight that Friday night.)
On our first day, we drove across the state line to see Devil’s Tower National Monument in northeastern Wyoming. The huge column of rock is a spectacular, one-of-a-kind sight. No wonder Steven Spielberg chose to film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” there.
The weather was warm and sunny and a number of climbers were ascending the tower. We took the paved path to the pile of boulders at the base of the tower, admired the view, took some pictures and moved on. After all, we had a schedule to keep.
After lunch at the hard rocking Ponderosa Cafe in Hulett, Wyo., we drove to historic Deadwood, S.D. We stopped by Saloon #10, a bar and museum that celebrates Old West figures like Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. There, actors reenact the fatal shooting of Hickok. I got to play one of the poker players at the table where Wild Bill was shot in the back. I even had a few lines of dialogue.
On Sunday Sept. 25, we drove out east to odd-ball tourist trap Wall Drug in Wall, S.D. After picking up some souvenirs, we drove to the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site.
We experienced the Cold War arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union up close by visiting a silo containing a decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missile. Hundreds of such weapons of mass destruction used to dot the landscape of South Dakota and the Great Plains. Many have since been dismantled. But others remain as a deterrent to aggressors of the U.S.
After that we toured Badlands National Park. The otherworldly landscape was amazing. The park is a geological oddity and a great place to find fossils. It’s not very hospitable to life. Signs warn of rattlesnakes. Even the cute prairie dogs carry the plague.
We then drove west to Custer, S.D., for the night. We ate pizza at Pizza Works, a pizzeria housed in an old opera house and silent movie theater. It was the restaurant’s last night of operation for the tourist season. They will reopen next May.
On Monday Sept. 26, we got up early and drove to Custer State Park in Custer, S.D., to witness the annual Black Hills buffalo roundup. This event was the reason we timed our trip when we did.
The Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup is an awesome Old West experience. Cowboys and cowgirls on horseback (and in pickup trucks) drive a herd of about 1,300 American bison over the hills and into large corrals. The roundup is critical to maintaining a strong and healthy herd because the park can only support so many buffalo during the winter.
After the roundup, park staff sort, brand and vaccinate the herd for the buffalo sale, held in November. Every year the park auctions off 200 to 500 head of live buffalo. They’re purchased to supplement an existing herd, to start a herd or to eat.
We didn’t stick around to see the bison up close in their holding pens. Instead we drove to Wind Cave National Park to the south. Wind Cave was the first cave to be designated a national park. It features one of the longest cave systems in the world and notable for its rare boxwork calcite formations.
After that, we made a pilgrimage to Mount Rushmore National Monument. Chris and I saw the monument from the sky days earlier on our flight to Rapid City. Now we got to see it up close.
Seeing Mount Rushmore is a patriotic experience. The 50 state flags line the entry way and columns note when each state was admitted to the union. The sculptures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt are fantastic in their scale and detail. We hiked the base of the monument to get a closer look.
With our trip nearing an end, we drove back to Rapid City. We stopped at Dinosaur Park, a quirky attraction on Skyline Drive overlooking the city. The park was dedicated in May 1936 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The seven dinosaur sculptures were constructed by the city of Rapid City and the Works Progress Administration.
We then drove to downtown Rapid City where we took some goofy pictures with the presidential statues that mark the street corners. I also admired an alley that blazed with color from graffiti artists appropriated named Art Alley.
We had dinner at the Firehouse Brewing Co., where I ate a buffalo burger. You can’t go to South Dakota without eating some bison meat. Then it was back to the hotel to rest before our early morning flights out of town.
Now it’s time to plan next year’s mancation.

New wiki website devoted to mancations

Last week I suggested that somebody should create a wiki devoted to mancations. Today I decided that that person was me.
A wiki is a website that allows many people to collaborate on writing and editing content. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is the best known wiki.
I set up the Mancation Wiki at Wikia, an advertising-supported wiki service. I put up the basic framework tonight and plan to add content to it in the days and weeks ahead. I’m hoping that other people discover it and share their knowledge about fun mancations as well.
Mancations are man vacations. They can range from short weekend trips out of town to longer road trips or traveling to exotic destinations. They can revolve around the great outdoors, sports, thrill seeking or geeky pursuits.

Top mancation destinations

Continuing on the theme of mancations (i.e. man vacations), here are some online lists of suggested trips.

Top 10 Guy Trips (ShermansTravel)

1. Catch a baseball game in Boston
2. Cook in Napa
3. Drink beer in Bavaria
4. Golf in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
5. Off-road in Death Valley
6. Party in Las Vegas
7. Play cowboy in Lajitas, Texas
8. Spa in Chicago
9. Sport fish in Panama
10. Surf in Sydney

Top 6 Mancations (Adventure: Your Travel Blog)

1. Road trip: Los Angeles to Grand Canyon to Las Vegas
2. Homeplace Ranch, Alberta, Canada
3. Thailand hike, bike and kayak
4. Japan’s Furano Ski Resort
5. Legend Golf & Safari Resort in South Africa
6. Shark diving in South Africa

Top 5 Mancations (Party Travel World)

1. Daytona Beach, Fla.
2. Kentucky Bourbon Trail
3. Crystal Lake, Michigan
4. Las Vegas
5. Tampa, Fla.

Top 10 ‘Mancations’ (TripAdvisor)

1. Las Vegas
2. New York City
3. Miami, Fla.
4. New Orleans
5. Denver
6. Kailua, Hawaii
7. Louisville, Ky.
8. Portland, Maine
9. Savannah, Ga.
10. Milwaukee, Wis.

Top 15 Geekiest Vacations (eWeek.com)

Here are the first 10 on the list:

1. National Computer Museum in Mountain View, Calif.
2. Tour of Silicon Valley tech landmarks (HP Garage and Googleplex, in Palo Alto, Calif.; Yahoo headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.; and the Intel Museum in Santa Clara, Calif.)
3. World Science Fiction Convention
4. Movie and TV show locations (New Zealand, “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy; Snoqualmie Falls in Snoqualmie, Wash., “Twin Peaks.”)
5. The Queen Mary 2
6. National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Udvar-Hazy Center in Dulles, Va.
7. International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.
8. The Quark Bar in Las Vegas
9. Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala.
10. The Star Wars Odyssey Tour

Top 20 Mancations (The Man Truth)

1. Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited island in the world, located in the south Atlantic Ocean
2. Comic-Con in San Diego, Calif.
3. The Burning Man Festival in Black Rock Desert, Nev.
4. Angels Falls, Venezuela
5. Mardi Gras in New Orleans, La.
6. New Year’s Eve Celebration, Times Square, New York City
7. Trans-Siberian Railway, which connects Moscow with the Russian Far East
8. Cattle drive
9. Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo.
10. Las Vegas
11. African Safari
12. Redneck Games in East Dublin, Ga.
13. Skiing in Colorado
14. Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio
15. Grand Canyon
16. Tomatina in Bunol, Spain
17. Polar Bear Plunge, Coney Island, New York
18. Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain
19. The Battle of the Oranges in Ivrea, Italy
20. Queenstown, New Zealand

Man Tripping: Best website devoted to mancations

I have yet to find the perfect website devoted to man vacations, a.k.a. mancations.
My ideal mancation website would offer a combination of once-in-a-lifetime trips with more realistic extended weekend outings. It would include lots of choices for mancations, organized by themes, such as sports, the great outdoors, thrill-seeking and geeky pursuits.
It also would pull together resources from others, including links to mancation stories in the mainstream press and a wiki that users could help write.
I’ve only found a handful of mancation resource websites. The best is Man Tripping, subtitled “Mancations and Guys Weekends,” by James Hills of Elgin, Ill. You can find some good ideas for mancations among the many posts on the site. (Examples: Oktoberfest in Munich, the Lake Placid Bobsled Experience, South Dakota’s Black Hills Buffalo Roundup and a even Cleveland mancation.)
Man Tripping could be better organized, however. It would be great to have an index page listing mancation ideas, instead of having to dig through blog posts under the categories from pull-down menus. Plus, how about organizing mancation ideas by region, especially in the U.S.? Also, a calendar of upcoming festivals and events would be nice for planning purposes.
But Man Tripping does a good job of getting you thinking about types of mancations. And that Black Hills Buffalo Roundup sounds like a lot of fun to me.

Photo courtesy of Custer State Park.

Mancations subject of new TV travel show

Man vacations are the subject of a new Travel Channel TV program called “Mancations,” which premieres tonight.
It stars comedic duo Evan Mann and Gareth Reynolds. The pilot was shot at ManCation Nation in Parker, Ariz., which promotes itself as a place to “Load your gun rack, pack up your backpack and get your sack back,” according to MSNBC.
After taking my first mancation in over 10 years last March, I’m thinking about ideas for my next one.
Possibilities include tornado chasing on the Great Plains, climbing Half Dome at Yosemite National Park, camping at Yellowstone National Park and rock climbing at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.
The big categories for mancations are: thrill-seeking, the great outdoors, sports and major events.
In the thrill-seeking category, I’d put whitewater rafting, skydiving, racecar driving, and running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.
The great outdoors category would include camping, hunting, fishing, hiking, canoeing, etc. It also would take in exotic destinations like the Wonders of the World.
Sports would cover such mancations as visiting baseball spring training, golf vacations, touring Major League ballparks, and going to the Olympics or the Super Bowl.
Major events would run the gamut from Oktoberfest in Munich, Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Tomatina in Bunol, Spain. This category also would include music festivals like South by Southwest, Lollapalooza, Coachella, Bonnaroo and the Pitchfork Music Festival. The category also would cover Comic-Con and the Adult Entertainment Expo.
Some websites have cropped up to capitalize on the mancation trend. I’ll write about that next time.

Photo from the Travel Channel show "Mancations." Cutline: Evan, Gareth and expert lumberjack Andrew Cole swing their axes at the Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show.

Finding a focus for your blog

The best blogs are focused. They cover one topic obsessively. And you always know what to expect when you visit them.
I have yet to find a topic that I’d be willing to write about exclusively. My interests are too varied. But I can’t help to think my efforts would be better spent on something with a bigger payoff. Instead of blogging for my own amusement and as a creative outlet, I could be freelancing or writing a book or doing a blog that’s at least commercially viable.
Tech-media-tainment is still just an experiment for me. (As is my on-again-off-again video blog One Stop Video.) TMT covers entertainment, pop culture, personal technology and media from a man’s perspective. So there’s a little too much emphasis on pretty women, adolescent humor, sports and such.
One blog I like to check out from time to time is One Man’s Blog by John Pozadzides. He writes about whatever tickles his fancy and his blog gets hundreds of thousands of unique visitors and around half a million page views a month.
Of course, John P. is a seasoned tech executive and entrepreneur. And I’m just an ink-stained wretch in my day job.
Over the last two years, I’ve toyed with doing blogs on everything from cool Web lists to dumb song lyrics.
There are lots of aggregators of interesting Web lists. (I wrote about several of them in May, including Listverse. A new one is Listicles.)
As for dumb song lyrics, I don’t think I’m as current on pop music as I’d need to be for a blog on the subject.
I’ve also thought about doing a blog on fatal animal attacks worldwide. I’m fascinated by cases of lions, tigers and bears jumping out of the woods and randomly killing people. Morbid, I know, but interesting.
And finally there’s no good blog on mancations – vacations for men. I’d like to see a blog about interesting vacations for the guys and not just trips to Las Vegas or golfing on Hilton Head.
A mancation blog is still a possibility for me. But I have so many other interests. Picking one is hard.

Photo: Beautiful view of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, possible site of my next mancation.

Ingredients for a good ‘mancation’: The great outdoors, sports and machine guns

I recently took a “mancation” to shoot machine guns in the desert, watch Cactus League baseball, visit a copper mine and explore Phoenix.
For the uninitiated, a mancation is a man vacation. Just the guys. No day spas or shopping or things women might enjoy. Mancations are about manly stuff – thrill seeking, adolescent fun, maybe some geeky things.
The possibilities are endless.
They range from the mundane (golf vacations) to the extreme (running with the bulls in Pamplona).
The concept of mancations has been featured in such movies as “City Slickers” and “The Bucket List.”
I’ve taken a few mancations in my life. My college roommate Scott and I drove from Chicago to Key West, Fla., in December 1988 and rode the rapids on the Upper Gauley River in West Virginia in September 1998. I also explored China with my brother Bill in May 1999.
Obviously it’s been awhile since my last mancation.
But here’s my list of guidelines for mancations:

10 Mancation Rules

1. No women allowed. (Duh.)
2. No shopping excursions, spas, theaters, and other activities popular with ladies.
3. No getting dressed up. No fancy restaurants or events.
4. Shaving not necessary. Grow that beard if you want.
5. Red meat diet. (Steaks, burgers, etc.) No vegetarians.
6. Beer.
7. No talking about your feelings.
8. Limited contact back home. (i.e. Calls to wife or girlfriend.)
9. Activities must include one or more of the following: the great outdoors, sports, big machines, and other macho stuff.
10. Have fun.

Photo: Riding the rapids on the Upper Gauley River in West Virginia.

Exploring Phoenix: Arizona ‘mancation’ Part 4

While in Phoenix last weekend, we sampled some of the many things the region has to offer this time of year.

South Mountain Park

High on the list of things to do in Phoenix is a visit to South Mountain Park. At more than 16,000 acres, it’s the largest city park in the U.S. The desert preserve includes 51 miles of trails for hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding.
We took a hike to enjoy the fresh air. We saw some Indian petroglyphs, cactus-dwelling birds and spring desert flowers.
We also drove up the winding mountain road to Dobbins Lookout, elevation 2,330 feet, for some great views of Phoenix and the surrounding area.
On my last visit to the park several years ago I saw chuckwallas, the largest iguanid lizards native to the U.S., sunbathing on some rocks. Chuckwallas can reach up to 16 inches in length. Unfortunately I didn’t see any of the lizards on my brief visit to the park this time.

Restaurants
We sampled some great Mexican food at Los Olivos in Scottsdale. The historic restaurant was a favorite of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, according to an article on Associated Content.
We also had a terrific steak dinner at Monti’s La Casa Vieja Steakhouse in Tempe. It’s another restaurant that’s steeped in history.
For some kitschy fun, we ate at the original Bill Johnson’s Big Apple Restaurant, a cowboy-themed eatery established in 1956, in Phoenix. The waitresses wear gun belts with six shooters. It’s a hoot.

McCain-Palin rally

Speaking of hoots, when I heard that Sen. John McCain was reuniting with his running mate Sarah Palin from their failed 2008 presidential bid for a rally, I couldn’t resist attending.
McCain is in a tough reelection battle, facing a Republican primary challenge from radio talk show host and former U.S. Congressman J. D. Hayworth. He invited the former Alaska governor to speak at rallies in Tucson and Mesa last weekend.
We attended the Saturday rally in Mesa and watched Palin whip up the crowd with her fiery rhetoric and folksy charm. She was interrupted by two protesters who were promptly dragged out of the auditorium – one by his hair.
I’m not a fan of either political figure, but it was entertaining to be at the event, which was attended by 3,000 people.

Photos: South Mountain Park (top), and Sarah Palin and John McCain at the March 27 rally in Mesa, Ariz. (Photo from the McCain reelection campaign)

Baseball spring training: Arizona ‘mancation’

The Phoenix area has become a Mecca for baseball fans thanks to Cactus League spring training for Major League Baseball.
Fifteen teams play in Arizona’s Cactus League, the same number as play in Florida’s Grapefruit League.
Most Cactus League teams play in the Phoenix metro area. The Valley of the Sun is the winter home to 13 baseball teams. Two other teams are based in Tucson to the south.
The top draw is the Chicago Cubs, thanks to hometown fans wanting to escape the harsh winters in Chi-town. Plus, the Cubs, loveable losers that they are, have a large nationwide fan base.
This year’s Cactus League schedule runs from March 3 through April 3.
My brother Bill and I watched the Cubs play the San Diego Padres split squad on Saturday March 27. The game was played at HoHoKam Park in Mesa, Ariz., the Cubs’ home away from Wrigley Field.
It was an enjoyable game, despite a noisy group of drunken Padres fans and the fact that it ended in a 2-2 tie.
The official attendance was 13,462, a record for HoHoKam Park. But it may have been broken since. The three home games after ours were all reported sellouts, according to Bleed Cubbie Blue.
Cactus League baseball is obviously a boon to the local economy. But with rising ticket prices, outrageous rental car rates and pricey hotel rooms, you can’t help but feel fans are being taken advantage of.
Last year, Cactus League spring training attracted 1.57 million baseball fans and contributed an estimated $359 million to the Arizona economy.

Next: Exploring Phoenix

The Big Sandy Shoot: Arizona ‘mancation’

The Big Sandy Shoot is the largest machine gun shoot in the U.S.
Sponsored by MG Shooters, it’s held twice a year in the Arizona desert about three hours northwest of Phoenix.
I attended the first day of the March 26-28 shoot with my brother Bill. It’s held at the Big Sandy Range, located several miles outside of Wikieup, Ariz., a wayside of a couple shops, a BBQ restaurant and gas station oasis in the desert.
Competitive shooters and other gun enthusiasts camp out at the site for the weekend and reserve shooting spots on the hill overlooking the target range. But curious amateurs such as me can just show up and pay a $25 spectator fee and rent machine guns on site.
To get to the Big Sandy Range, you have to drive on dirt roads, up a steep rise or two and across a wash that is sometimes a creek. I’d recommend driving an SUV to the site just to be safe. We drove a Jeep Liberty through the creek and some thick patches of sand that cars might get stuck in. The range is located about four and a half miles off U.S. 93 northeast of Wikieup.
The folks from MG Shooters and event attendees were friendly and helpful. The people we met were quick to offer advice and answer questions we had. For instance, what’s a tracer? It’s a round of ammunition used for night shooting. The round contains phosphorous that creates a streak of light in the sky, allowing the shooter to see where their bullets go. We didn’t stay for the night shoot, but were told the tracer fire and flares create quite a light show.
We had a good time watching some of the expert marksmen show off their stuff, hitting metal targets like steel plates and oil drums in the distance. One group launched bowling balls from a cannon. Occasionally someone would fly a remote-controlled airplane across the range for the shooters to fire at. No one knocked it down while we were there.
My trigger finger was itching so I headed over to the MG Shooters gun rental booth.
I tried out the .50 caliber Browning machine gun ($4 per round) and the .30 caliber Browning (20 rounds for $25). It was a kick to shoot the guns, but my aim wasn’t so hot.
Then I tried my luck with the sub machine guns: the MPK Walther and the M16 (both $25 for a 20-round magazine). Of the two, I preferred the M16, with which I was surprisingly accurate. The weapon felt very comfortable in my hands and was a breeze to control.
MG Shooters had eight different sub machine guns to rent, including the AK 47 and Uzi.
I can now cross “shoot a machine gun” off my to-do list.
Overall, the Big Sandy Shoot was a blast. The next one is scheduled for October.

Next: Cactus League baseball

Arizona ‘mancation’: Part 1 – Desert drive and the Bagdad copper mine

I just got back from taking a “mancation” (man vacation) to Phoenix with my brother Bill. Phoenix had two main things that interested me: baseball spring training and relatively close proximity to the twice-a-year Big Sandy Shoot – the largest machine gun shoot in the U.S. Additional pluses for the Valley of the Sun included great weather (a nice break from the cold, rainy East Coast this time of year) and the wide open spaces of the American West. Desert drive The spring Big Sandy Shoot was held Friday March 26 through Sunday March 28 outside of Wikieup, Ariz., about a three-hour drive northwest of Phoenix. We drove up Friday morning in our rented Jeep Liberty SUV. The drive along U.S. 93 is beautiful. The terrain includes vast stretches of Sonoran desert with saguaro cactus in the lower elevations and Joshua trees in the higher regions. The spring desert was blooming with wild flowers and cactus flowers in yellow, purple, blue and red. Along the highway are magnificent buttes of giant boulders and majestic mountains. Once outside of the Phoenix metro area, we drove through the little towns of Wittmann and Morristown; Wickenberg, an Old West town known for its ranches; Nothing, aptly named since there’s nothing there but a roadside shack selling pizza cooked in a wood-fired oven; and ultimately Wikieup, which features a large modern Shell gas station, an Indian jewelry shop and the Eat at Joe’s BBQ. Before the Big Sandy Shoot, we took a detour off U.S. 93 to visit Bagdad, Ariz. Bagdad copper mine

Bagdad is one of two company towns in Arizona. It’s owned by the mining company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. The town was built to serve the Bagdad copper mine, a large open-pit mining operation that employs 1,200 people. The town has a population of 2,500. Gigantic 300-ton trucks built by Caterpillar Inc. work the mine 24 hours a day. Each Caterpillar 793 can carry its own weight in ore, said Ramon Parra Jr., our tour guide and a retired mine worker. The mine has 25 such trucks each costing $3.5 million. But that fleet’s small compared with other mine operations, including Freeport-McMoRan’s mine in Morenci, Ariz. The Bagdad mine produces an average of more than 160 million pounds of copper each year. Ore from the Bagdad mine is crushed and pulverized to the consistency of flour. The metals are removed with chemicals. It takes 1 ton (2,000 pounds) of ore at the mine to get 6 pounds of copper. The Bagdad mine also yields smaller amounts of gold. A third mineral obtained from the mine is molybdenum, or moly, which is used to improve the physical properties of steel. An electronic billboard at the mine displays the current price of copper and other minerals as well as the Freeport-McMoRan stock for employees. Many workers are shareholders in Freeport, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol FCX. Freeport-McMoRan produces 250-pound sheets of copper on site that are trucked out for further processing and to make products like copper wire to transmit electricity. The sheets are 99.99% pure. Most of the copper produced at the Bagdad mine is destined for China, which is rapidly building up a modern infrastructure. Miners had to remove 1,000 feet of overburden (worthless rock) to get to the rich copper seams. They’ve since dug another 1,000 feet down. The company estimates that it could dig another 2,000 feet deeper to extract copper ore. That would put the floor of the open pit mine at sea level. The mine could have 100 years of productive use left, Parra said. From an overlook, the giant trucks look like Tonka toys as they slowly drive in and out of the mine. The sides of the mine look like stairs. Each of these stairs or “benches” is 50 feet deep. Freeport-McMoRan started offering free tours of the mine to interested people to show environmentalists how they were managing the land. A large area of the property is a dump for tailings, what’s left at the tail end of mineral extraction. These materials contain sulfuric acid and other chemicals harmful to living things. But Freeport-McMoRan says it goes to great lengths to recycle its chemicals and waste water and keep them contained. It later makes the land suitable for life again by adding a surface layer of “organics.” “This is reality. This isn’t the Garden of Eden,” Parra said. “It’s messy, I agree. But somebody’s got to do it.” Cities wouldn’t be able to power homes and businesses without the copper it mines, he says.

Next: The Big Sandy Shoot