It’s mom’s turn to have some reel fun

Why does Dad get to have all the fun? This Mother’s Day, take mom fishing, or send her on a hike along Peru’s Inca Trail. Or maybe she just wants to explore Timbuktu or perhaps even retrace the route the protagonists took in Dan Brown’s best-selling thriller, “The Da Vinci Code.”

To my surprise — and hopefully yours, too — the options seem endless these days for women who have a sense of adventure or simply want to see different parts of the world — with or without men in tow. Some travel groups exclusively offer women-only trips. Others schedule a mix of coed and women-only sojourns. Accommodations range from camping to first-class hotels. All appear to be packed full of adventure. Most err on the pricey side.

Mom’s gone fishin’
Now that mom is going fishing, don’t just send her on any old angler adventure. Hook her with some real women at Victor, Idaho-based Reel Women, where guides have been teaching women how to fly fish since 1992. Five female and five male guides lead coed and women-only expeditions in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and the Bahamas.

“I think if you asked a man about a ‘guys’ trip, they would say it has own club feeling. The same goes for the gals,” says Lori-Ann Murphy, the company’s co-founder, who says the women’s expeditions attract anglers ages 25 to 85.

Murphy also taught Meryl Streep the tricks of the trade for her appearance in the movie, “The River Wild.” Good enough for Streep, good enough for mom.

Basic fly-fishing school costs $450 and departs out of Teton Valley, Idaho or Willow Creek, Mont. (Airfare to/from Idaho or Montana are not included.) In the two-day course, mom will learn how to identify aquatic insects, select a fly, tie knots, cast, shoot a line and “how to fight and land a fish,” according to the trip description online.

Lengthier trips tackle more turf. On the four days/five nights Montana sampler, $1,795, anglers stay in a cottage built in 1914, complete with a sun porch and a fly-tying bench. Yoga or massages are available for an extra fee on the Jackson Hole sampler priced at $1,995. Murphy leads the women-only bone-fishing trip in the Bahamas at a cost of $2,189. (A bonefish is a slender silver-scaled fish found in tropical and subtropical seas of the worlds, such as Florida and the Bahamas.)

Leave Dad behind
Women-only trips are “about empowering women,” not excluding men, says Carole Latimer, who founded Call of the Wild in 1978. The Berkeley-based company organizes about 24 treks a year in California, other parts of the Southwest, Peru, Mexico and New Zealand.

“I think they feel we create a safe environment for women to try something they’ve never done before and have fun doing it,” says Latimer.

And “middle aged” moms should feel right at home in the wilderness. “Many of our clients are in their 50s and 60s, and have never even spent the night outside before or gone on an adventure travel trip until they sign up for a Call of the Wild trip,” she adds.

Trips within the United States range from $365 for a three days/two nights backpacking trip in Yosemite National Park to an eight-day backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevadas — with mule pack assistance — which ends with a summit of Mt. Whitney at 14,495 feet, the highest point in the continental United States. International trips start at $1,895 for a week in the Amazon to $3,995 for a 10-day multi-sport experience in New Zealand. (Trips do not include transportation to/from starting destination.) The Mt. Whitney summit is one of the most popular. This year, there’s even a waiting list for the ascent with pack mules.

Shop the world

AP Visit sites like the Taj Mahal in Agra, India save time for shopping, as well with the Women's Travel Club.

Mom has to be a member of the Women’s Travel Club (WTC) to travel with this club. But membership only costs $35 a year and the group offers about 25 trips a year to close to 20 countries, ranging in price from $1,000 to $5,000. In the last few years, the club has traveled to Wales, Ireland, India, Turkey as well as Timbuktu, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Phyllis Stoller, who founded the WTC in 1992, readily admits these trips are not just about experiencing other cultures. “Everybody pretends they go on these exotic vacations for intellectual stimulation, but shopping is also a big part of the adventure,” say Stoller.

So Stoller incorporates shopping time in many of the trips. New York excursions feature shopping time in Soho as well as visits to The Met and MoMa, she adds.

Bargains drive all sorts of people to be frenetic, says Stoller, whose tours attract a mix of big city newspaper editors to small town homemakers. “Wherever there’s a bargain, everybody is interested.

“Shopping is a way for women to get to know each other and chat,” says Stoller.

The WTC also organizes themed trip, such as “seven museums in five days” or a “royal” journey, which includes tea at The Ritz and a visit to Spencer House.