Lynn raised $4000 and biked 3,682 miles from Virginia Beach, VA to Canon Beach, OR with 26 people ages 18 to 25. Bike & Build (www.bikeandbuild.org) organizes cross country trips to benefit affordable housing projects.

I found loads of great seasonal jobs on www.coolworks.com and applied for and accepted a summer position as the breakfast/lunch cook at Stehekin Valley Ranch in Stehekin, WA, a wilderness recreation area accessible only by air, foot or water.
What an adventure!

IMMERSION TRAVELER takes you far beyond visiting historic sights and scenic attractions enabling you to interact and connect with the people you meet and more thoroughly explore your destination. The IMMERSION TRAVELER website along with the book, BEST IMMERSION TRAVEL USA, are all about experiencing, celebrating, understanding and appreciating the diversity and uniqueness of the United States.   

For unusual trips on your next day off, extended weekend or vacation alone, with a friend, as a couple, for families or for special needs, explore immersiontraveler.com to find:

• Volunteer opportunities to help others & you too
• Very short, longer term & seasonal jobs
• Educational opportunities
• Trips near and far, long and short
• Opportunities to receive a stipend or salary or trade services
• Ways to enhance an already planned excursion to a particular location

International immersion programs immerse travelers in different cultures to study language, history, people and lifestyle. But you don’t have to travel abroad for an immersion travel adventure. Immersiontraveler.com will help you plan trips within the United States that include interaction with the people and places that make this country great. Click on CONTACT to register with your e-mail address to receive the IMMERSION TRAVELER educational, volunteering or working feature of the month. IMMERSION TRAVELER’S CLUB memberships will be available soon with discussion forums, podcasts, travel consultations, article archives, travel Q & A and everything you want and need to know to be an IMMERSION TRAVELER.

THE IMMERSION TRAVELER’S BOOK:

BEST IMMERSION TRAVEL USA (Countryman Press, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, Fall 2008) is the first time a complete listing of IMMERSION TRAVELER trips within the United States has been collected in one easy-to-use resource. This book is packed full of listings that will make you cheer “Wow! I’d love to do that!”

• Would you consider vacationing on an organic farm and working in exchange for room and board?
• Do you want to be a bus driver and wildlife tour guide in a National Park?
• How about becoming a volunteer with The Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project providing adaptive sporting events for wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans?

It’s quite different to experience a location by contributing through volunteerism or paid work than by driving through and briefly thinking “been there, done that.”

BEST IMMERSION TRAVEL USA is easy to use, organized by categories of interests and locations so that you find what you need when you need it most. Every entry begins with a personal story from someone who has experienced the activity or trip or one very similar to it. PRE-ORDER your books autographed by the author and personalized for you, your friends and family with delivery before December 24, 2008 (if received by December 20, 2008.)