"a gracious and charmingly rustic ranch that evokes the Old West and a distant, more innocent age"
"Just the Ticket"
What kinds of vacations do road warriors plan? they’re as different as the warriors themselves. by Leah Ingram
When road warriors get some downtime, they tend to define vacations very differently than the rest of the traveling public...
As the president and co-owner of Proximo Restaurants, a collection of seven unique eateries in the Washington, D.C. area, it’s no surprise that Rob Wilder is in high demand. Between fielding calls from his chefs to following up on food-related conferences, Wilder, 46, is quite plugged in. His daily armor includes a laptop, cell phone, Treo and BlackBerry, which he schleps on his frequent business trips. Recently, those trips have taken him to such diverse locales as Aspen, Colorado and Cape Town, South Africa. Wilder estimates he spends 18 hours a day dealing with the barrage of urgent calls and messages. “We’ve gotten so tech-oriented,” says Wilder, “that my wife Robin and I often communicate by Treo.”
Not surprisingly, when Wilder wants to get away from it all, he really wants to get away—he doesn’t want anyone to be able to reach him. That’s why the Wilders have taken multiple vacations to Smith Fork Ranch, a luxurious Western-style resort in a rustic location. The ranch sits between the Gunnison National Forest and the West Elk Wilderness Area in Western Colorado—nearly eight miles from the nearest town, and miles from the nearest cell phone tower.
When the Wilders are there, they are truly unplugged, but with a twist. “I think there are lots of places you can go to unplug, but the great thing about the ranch is the quality of what they do there,” says Rob, who read about the ranch in Food & Wine magazine. “They have a spectacular food and wine list, so what makes this the perfect location is being completely out of it, but being able to live as well out there.” The ranch also offers horseback riding, fly-fishing and hiking to keep his mind off the fact that he doesn’t have his BlackBerry pinging in his pocket all the time. Rob confesses that should he need to reach someone on email, there is a laptop computer stashed away in a corner of the ranch. But “it’s on dialup,” he adds, hinting that the slow connection isn’t really worth the trouble for getting reconnected on vacation.
If roughing it in the Rockies isn’t your idea of an unplugged vacation, perhaps you might enjoy the low-key luxury at the Caneel Bay Resort on St. John (caneelbay.com), part of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Located on a 170-acre peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, this 166-room resort offers seven separate beaches in the heart of the 5,000-acre Virgin Islands National Park. The only connectivity you’ll find here is putting your ear to a conch shell—there are no phones, televisions or radios in guestrooms. Instead of a wake-up call, guests receive a wake-up knock. “This was done to preserve Caneel Bay founder Laurance Rockefeller’s vision of a place to ‘disconnect to reconnect,’” says U.S. Virgin Island Hotel and Tourism Association spokesperson Luana Wheatley.
June 2006