From the Travel Gear Blog, I learned about the Exped Wallcreeper sleeping bag pictured here.

It has lots of handy features to thwart common camping problems. For example, the crap, I have to pee and it’s freezing outside and I don’t feel like completely shimmying out of my sleeping bag problem. Or the similarly common crap, I need to grab something outside my sleeping bag, but I am all snug inside it and it is a hassle to emerge problem. Or the oh how I wish my sleeping bag were really a blanket right now problem. The bag has arm holes (so you can wear your sleeping bag like a gigantic parka), exterior pockets to warm exposed hands, a bottom opening for your feet (so you can walk around camp while still in bag), a full length zipper and a hood with an elastic cord. Cost: $169.

REI is offering its members 20 percent off one item with the checkout code PERK4U. You’ll also have to enter your member number (free sign up) to get the discount. Good through April 1, 2007.

Just flying to Africa on a full fare ticket could cost you as much as Friendly Planet’s 12-day Kenya Safari deal. Through March 30, 2007, Friendly Planet is offering the 12-day trip for $2799/person with round trip airfare from JFK on Emirates Airlines. The cost covers accommodations at mid-market safari lodges (meaning not budget, but also not super luxury), meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner daily), guided game drives, sightseeing tours and all transportation within Kenya. There are also optional three-day add-ons for stops in Tanzania and Dubai - great for travelers who want to tack more countries onto the trip. After all, if you’re going all the way to Africa, you might as well see as much as you can of the world while you’re there. You could pay more for a luxury safari experience at private game lodges elsewhere, but for those on tighter budgets, this deal looks like an excellent value.

I’ve noticed an interesting thing lately. More and more places are coming up with travel experiences that, well, don’t have anything to do with fun or relaxation. We’ve blogged about volunteer vacations, but what about vacations, tours and overnight experiences that allow you do something altogether unpalatable? Like scare yourself silly in a prison. Or attempt a border-crossing between the U.S. and Mexico. Or get up close and personal with toxic waste. I’ve decided to list some of the ones I’ve found:

1. Caminata Nocturna: This 4-hour nighttime hike takes interested travelers along the same route illegal immigrants might use to enter the U.S. from Mexico. You even get chased by fake border control police in the pitch black darkness.

2. Toxic Tour: California-based Communities for a Better Environment takes tour participants to refineries, chemical sites, “brownfields” and other areas to educate them about the environmental and social impacts of pollution.

3. Liepaja Prison: How about an overnight in a Latvian prison once run by the KGB? They even give you a faux medical exam when you arrive for your stay.

4. Street Retreats: A San Francisco organization offers day-long experiences living on the streets like the city’s many homeless. You can stand in soup kitchen lines, panhandle and try to get into drop-in centers.

5. Reality Tours: The tours offered by San Francisco’s Global Exchange can involve anything from visiting a landmine field in Afghanistan to meeting with coffee farmers in the Andes. The offerings are educationally-driven, but do include cultural excursions to prominent museums and historical sites.

6. Slum Tours: Tourists can visit the small alleys of Mumbai’s famous Dharavi slum. An extended tour option includes visits to the Red Light district, open air laundry and a home for boys.

Looking for a vacation experience that’s, well, about more than sitting on your duff sipping cocktails and humming the Pina Colada song to yourself? Of course you are. Responsible Travel has eco-friendly and volunteer vacations from over 200 tour companies. Whether you’re looking to spend your next vacation volunteering in a South African township, doing wildlife conservation in the Amazon or just relaxing in environmentally-friendly accommodations, this site is a great place to start looking. One to bookmark!

Perhaps you can’t head off on your next adventure for a while. In the meantime, you can scratch your travel itch by reading about foreign lands and surprising journeys chronicled in NPR’s Books for Armchair Travel and Adventure by Librarian Nancy Pearl.

Whether you reach them by backcountry skiing in winter or hiking in summer, Vail’s network of mountain huts offer rustic, relatively inexpensive accommodations that get you away from the hubbub of the ritzy resort town below. And while rustic does mean rustic, some of the huts are equipped with self-service saunas (i.e. you build the fire), bunk beds, kitchens and wood-burning stoves. Some huts sleep as many as 20, while others are ideal for smaller groups or families with as few as three adventurers. Rates range from $18.75/person to $276 for an entire cabin.

From the Business Week feature linked below, I learned about an interesting way to kill time at Germany’s Frankfurt, Berlin or Bremen airports. Lufthansa offers three-hour flight training sessions in their very own ProFlight simulators (pictured) through the Lufthansa Flight Training Center. The simulators mimic take-off, flight and landing for a variety of airplanes, including the Boeing 737 and 747 and Airbus 320 and 340. The cost depends on which plane you choose, but ranges from 249 euros to 325 euros (aprox. $429) per session. To purchase tickets in advance, you can do so online via this translated page (be prepared for muddled English), Proflight Ticket Sales.

Five Cures for Terminal Boredom

Lonely Planet’s Bluelist 2007 is one of those books avid travelers will want to read - both to find inspiration for future travels and to find out what destinations and activities other adventurous travelers are raving about. In addition to covering “the 11 most popular travel destinations” in the world, the book describes 400+ travel experiences (like seeing Egypt’s pyramids by hot air balloon) and explores more unusual travel trends like celebrity death tourism (i.e. visiting celebrities’ graves) and disaster aid tourism.

When you buy the new 2007 edition, Lonely Planet will throw last year’s edition in for free. Cost: $19.99.

If there’s one accessory I’d suggest for any winter sports or outdoor enthusiast, it’s a set of two-way rechargeable radios like Motorola’s T6500R handhelds. Even if you only hit the mountain with one other person, they can be really useful if you ski/ride at different paces or prefer different terrain. If you need to take a sudden pee or beer break, no problem. If someone falls, help is just a Roger Dogder away. Having a set of these onhand also guarantees you’ll be able to reach the people you’re with when cell phones fail. And who really wants to be fumbling with a tiny cell phone on wet snow anyway?