Whether Ranch or Spa, It’s Time to Book for Summer

Tired of the same old vacation? Here are five novel ideas for summer that must be booked ahead:

* Ranch vacations. The price for seven nights on an authentic working ranch in Texas is $425, plus $40 for the round-trip airport transfer from nearby Amarillo. At the Bar H Ranch in Clarendon, you can help with mainly herding cattle) or simply relax on horseback, play volleyball, read on a porch by the pool or try your luck at the fishing hole--for half of what Colorado ranches charge for accommodations and all meals. Why so cheap? “This is Texas,” the chief cowhand told me.

Similar arrangements are $500 at Red Willow Ranch at Williams Lake in British Columbia, a one-hour flight from Vancouver.

In both cases, add 15% gratuity, 7% tax and a small supplement (about $60) for single people traveling alone. Children pay less.

Call Hidden Trails, telephone (888) 987-2457, Internet https://www.hiddentrails.com.

* New-Aging. A week at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y., a two-hour drive north of New York City, costs as little as $371, including three bountiful vegan meals daily, plus optional workshops on such themes as personal relationships, art/dance and spirituality.

Omega’s seminars (starting at $150 for two days) make a stay here generally more expensive than at several other personal-growth centers. Lodgings are $53 a day in dorms, $49 per person in two-person tents and $82 in double-occupancy cabins--and for those rates you also receive three meals a day, meditation, yoga and recreation facilities. Stays of a weekend to a month are open to all ages. Tel. (800) 944-1001, Internet https://www.eomega.org.

* Sierra outings: A summer or fall week or two in the great outdoors can be enjoyed for $56 to $89 a day. The Sierra Club’s 350 trips are of varying lengths, mostly one or two weeks. Led by member-specialists of this conservationist activist organization, they range from $56 a day for, say, exploring the Rockies in Montana or hiking Shenandoah Mountain in Virginia, to $89 a day river-rafting in Upstate New York. Call the Sierra Club at (415) 977-5522.

* Arts and crafts. Perfect your skills at Penland School in North Carolina. One- and two-week classes run in summer and fall in such areas as lithography, metalwork, jewelry making, photography, collage and drawing. The cost for lodgings and all meals: $514 for one week, $955 for two weeks in a dorm, $578/$1,095 in a double, $689/$1,280 in a single.

Write or call Penland School, P.O. Box 37, Penland, NC 28765; tel. (828) 765-2359.

* Health break. A week at the Seventh-day Adventists’ Black Hills Health and Education Center in Hermosa, S.D. ($500), or Poland Spring Institute in Maine ($750) includes room, vegan meals, exercise and instruction. Without religious proselyting--which they say they scrupulously avoid--the staff at these health centers will try to improve your physical lifestyle by using the century-old approaches (the Kellogg brothers were Seventh-day Adventists) of this fitness-conscious church.

For information on Black Hills, tel. (605) 255-4101; for Poland Spring, tel. (207) 998- 2894.