Visiting Skydive Chicago was absolutely one of the best Mancations I have ever taken.

If you are looking for a high adrenaline trip skydiving with Skydive Chicago is the place to go. Skydive Chicago is located just west of the city in Ottawa, IL. Not only is this Chicago's Premier Dropzone but as far as I am concerned, they are also the BEST! With a 220 acre mega resort, top notch skydive instructors, and a vast amount of non-skydiving activites this is an ideal trip for guys looking for the ultimate adrenaline rush!

You can go whitewater rafting in the midwest? ABSOLUTELY! At Wildman's Whitewater Ranch in Niagara, WI, you can spend the morning surfing the rapids, and the afternoon enjoying a challenging rock climb, or perhaps a competative game of paintball!

Are you looking for a place where guys can go to get away from all the stresses of home life - spouses, children, weekend projects etc? How about visiting a place not to far away, a place where you can sleep in, play a round of golf or two, take a nap, eat wings, drink beer and enjoy a night of poker or billiards, all while enjoying a big game on the TV.

That's exactly what Carroll Valley Resort offers and it is located in the small Pennsylvania town of Carroll Valley, just outside of Gettysburg.

With gas more than $4 per gallon here in Chicago, I unfortunately had to cut back on my some of my travel plans. Unfortunately my trip to Detroit this weekend to see the Red Bull Air Race is going to have to wait until next year (I hope they return, or better yet, come to Chicago instead!). However, it made me start to think about some great guys weekend / mancation ideas that might not even involve traveling.

The term staycation has become a buzzword recently, mostly in reference to families cutting back on their family vacations … instead of packing everyone up and going to Florida the family will stay at home or near home and have a staycation instead.

But what about us guys?

What is the mancation equivalent of a staycation?

Camping Trip with the Guys:

So you may need a little bit of gas to drive to the campground, but for the most part, no matter where in the country you live there is probably a camp ground within an hour drive. Once at the camp ground, your gas guzzeling is over as you celebrate being a guy by hiking, fishing, boating, and generally enjoying the great outdoors.

Bird Watching:

Think of this as hunting with cameras and binoculars! Unlike hunting, there is no open or closed season, and there are great places to find beautiful and unique birds all around the country - even in urban areas.

Help Build a Home:

Since you are now starting to feel the pinch of high gas prices, imagine what it feels like to not be able to afford a home! There are projects all around the country, from Habitat for Humanity and other organizations.

Buy Something Fun and Throw a Guys-only House Party:

Instead of traveling at all, how about buying something cool for the home and throwing a party around it. This could be a new grill, home arcade machine, a margarita machine, kegerator, even an outdoor pool table. The money you could have lost on gas you can now enjoy for years to come. Just remember to buy something made in the USA where possible!

Are you sitting at home reading this blog, looking at all the super cool mancation ideas and wondering where to start or how to plan the perfect mancation?

Don’t worry, these tips should help!

Last night I was thinking to myself about what it means to take a mancation and this morning I decided to look around at the different places online that have attempted to define the subject. What I saw left me a bit distressed because for some reason "mancation" is often synonymous with the worst aspects of being a guy... or at least the more primal.

One of the biggest areas that I didn't see any coverage was Mancations for Geeks. Actually this subject came to me from a PR person for the upcoming ZERO1 festival in San Jose and made me (a proud card-carrying geek myself!) wonder what other Geek Mancation ideas I could find.

Are you sitting at home reading this blog, looking at all the super cool mancation ideas and wondering where to start or how to plan the perfect mancation? Don’t worry, these tips should help!

Remember when you were a kid?

Did your dad take you to the ballpark and you wondered what it would look like if you could explore the whole thing and see the areas only the players could see? Well, you don’t need to be a kid, you just need to visit Chicago’s Wrigley Field!

Father and son trips don’t have to be about nostalgia, but on some level that is what being a father is all about – passing down knowledge and experiences to the next generation.

That’s why a visit to your local railroad museum would make a great father son trip. Luckily for me, (and others of you in Chicago) there are several great ways to see trains in the Chicago area. One such place is the Fox River Trolley Museum.

While I like to focus most of our articles on the great guys weekends and mancation ideas right here at home, there are of course plenty of super cool places to go and things to do outside of the US as well.

One of our readers, Roger LaPlante of Leesburg, Virginia sent this awesome account of his father and son (Joshua LaPlante) mancation trip to Bunol Spain for the Valencia region's annual "tomato party" known as the La Tomatina Festival.

Are you ready for the ultimate outdoors mancation? Does hiking and fishing sound like fun? Well, if you are like me, stuck in hot and humid Chicago right now, then maybe it might be time to think about heading off to western Wyoming for a visit to the Grand Teton National park.

Unless you are stuck in Lapland, Northern Canada or Siberia, you probably don't think of visiting a ski resort as a great summertime destination for your next mancation. However, these winter playgrounds can also be fantastic year-round mancation destinations offering hiking, biking, art, music, spas, and tons of other great things to do for a mancation. One of these areas that looks like a great destination for guys is the Taos Ski Valley, in Taos, New Mexico.

Hotel Sax Chicago is now "Hotel Chicago Downtown"... Are you looking for the ultimate mancation hotel in the Windy City? Well Hotel Sax Chicago should top your list of choices! Imagine a luxury hotel that combines pretty much everything that us guys could want for a mancation... awesome electronics, including Xbox 360's, wide screen HDTV's, super chic rock and roll styled decor, and depending on your room they might even give you a Microsoft Zune to borrow during your stay.

We men tend to make things up to give our lives meaning, we do stupid handshakes, code words, even flock to exclusive clubs to make ourselves feel important. So what about mancation rituals? At the risk of making our wives and girlfriends embarrassed, I wanted to share with other guys some of the fun and wacky stuff guys do to celebrate guys weekends or mancations. I had a chance to chat with several experienced guys who love taking mancations. Here are some of the rituals and traditions they shared with me:

The south east coast is littered with great golf resorts, but last year when I was attending a wedding on Isle of Palms I came across Wild Dunes and it stuck out as something special. It didn't feel like every other golf resort and now that I found out they have some great mancation packages I am even more excited!

Plus when you combine golf with the historic southern charm and luxury of Charleston itself you simply can't go wrong.

Elizabeth Kelly, Marketing Communications Manager at Wild Dunes Resort, was nice enough to answer some of our questions and talk about some of the great mancation and guys weekend activities at this great South Carolina golf resort.

This mancation story was submitted to us by Tim Woods, a Man Tripping reader who wanted to share with us a story about his annual mancation taking place in the Catskill Mountains of New York.