Turn your vacation into a full-body recalibration with these performance-enhancing getaways

Wanna live where the action is? The goal: Trails out the back door, a serious Saturday-morning peloton, whitewater just up the road, and neighbors eager to join in. Our source: The best adventure athletes in America, who tell us where they live and why. The result: 20 places where locals work, train, and play hard. Start packing now.

The best beaches for practicing your moves offer gentle waves and a no-pressure atmosphere. Here, over 20 of the best beginner breaks in the country to get your feet wet.

Don't just hike—follow in the footsteps of famous explorers and naturalists

Q: Do you know of any great alpine backpacking destinations in Baja? Advice from the Experts For more wisdom from the Adventure Adviser, and the chance to ask your own questions, CLICK HERE.travel questions answered —Cory Whitney, Bar Harbor, Maine Adventure Adviser: A: A four-day backpacking trip up Baja’s…

Combine your next visit to a national park with a bonus raid on a great state park or national forest—and get twice the escape

Our word-of-mouth report: adventure lodges that belong on your radar screen

Our Towns: An Introduction

Amy Bechtel was there, and then she simply wasn't

The most wanted man in America survived five years in the North Carolina woods, eating salamanders, sleeping on the cold ground, and stalking deer. Or so he says. Spend a night in his secret mountain hideaway and you get the feeling there's more to this story.

Today's topic: We rank the Top 40 schools where you can hit the books AND the backcountry. Your assignment: Rappel off that ivory tower and take our cram course on America's most adrenaline-friendly colleges. You'll come for your B.A. (Bachelor of Adventure) and want to stay for life.

1. Havasu Falls, Supai, Arizona Hike two miles to this perfect turquoise pool, with year-round 72-degree water, in Havasu Canyon. All About H2O The wet stuff is always there for us—it grows our food, puts splash and spirit in our adventure, and (by the way) keeps us alive.

Sea kayaking along the Eastern Seaboard

Mama's boys, beware: Portsmouth Island is nature untethered

Here's the Beef

A new way to navigate the Tar Heel state

The United States of Adventure

Up a creek? Find the right trip—raft, sea kayak, or canoe—and the right adventure level for your family.

Looping through Appalachia on a four-state spin

32 YEARS AGO this summer, my pal, the crime novelist Jim Crumley, his overeducated farmer friend from Arkansas, Harold McDuffy, and yours truly hiked six miles to Bowman Lake in Glacier National Park. For someone who had spent most of his life in the desert country of southeastern Oregon, this…

Go overboard this summer on 32 of North America's wildest waterways

THE STARTING POINT: What follows are six elemental landscapes—forest, desert, inland waterfront, prairie, mountain, and coast—featuring 18 blissfully unsullied locales, from Alaska to Florida, Arizona to Maine. Clear into the next state: The view from North Carolina, near the town of Tyron, into South Carolina. THE COST: Our survey…