For those of you who don’t know what Treefort is, it’s a five day festival known for showcasing local legend musicians as well musicians from around the world. As Treefort grows in size and popularity, so does the number of ‘forts’ that overtake the city. In addition to the main forts such as Alefort and Foodfort, new forts have blossomed up that bring interests to many different people who might not just be into the music, food and beer. Yogafort, Filmfort, Hackfort, Storyfort and Kidfort are just some of the ways that the Treefort organizers have branched out to make sure the festival has something for everyone.

While not personally being a yogi, a hacker or having children (although all three are on my lengthy To-Do List), here is what I am stoked to check out this year at Treefort. Forgive my mediocre photography. I may have had a couple of tasty craft beers prior, during, and after all photos were taken.

The Music

Two years ago, while experiencing my first Treefort after moving to Idaho, the late, great Screaming Eagle of Soul, Charles Bradley brought me to tears with his passion and love that bounced off of the concrete walls that surrounded the main stage. Last year, Lizzo had me shaking my hips (it wasn’t pretty, trust me on that) as her lively, fun filled performance left the town in a buzz.

This year, 460 bands have descended upon Idaho’s capital city to play in numerous venues scattered throughout downtown Boise. On the three day weekend, the music starts early in the afternoon and rocks all night till the bars close at 2am. From small coffee houses to the main stage, Treefort prides itself on showcasing Boise’s local talent, and this year, local legends like Built to Spill, Magic Sword, Great Bait, Tree People and Jeff Crosby return to play to their longtime neighbors and newcomers. Headliners this year from outside of Boise include George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, Andrew W.K, Princess Nokia, and the Russian feminist protest punk rock group Pussyriot, who have made worldwide headlines for being jailed in Moscow due to their guerrilla protest performances in public places.

Make no mistake about it. While Treefort has something for everyone, the soul of the festival is its lively and diverse music performances. And each year, they just keep getting better and better.

The Beer

What’s better than enjoying incredible live music? Enjoying incredible live music with tasty and bold craft beer! Throughout Treefort, the ‘Alefort’ tent is always filled with beer lovers who gladly hop from one brewery to the next, tasting exclusive and rare brews that are often made in small batches, specifically for Treefort.

My favorite part of Alefort is the ‘nail pull’ event, where brewers will unleash barrel aged beer by pulling a nail out of the barrel as the happy drinker holds their tasting glass underneath. The beer is not cold, as it has been barrel aged out of a refrigerator, but, warm or cold, the Barbarian Brewery nail pull events have produced some of the finest beers I have ever tasted.

Boise, and Idaho in general, has a pretty impressive collection of breweries. Local beer makers like Barbarian Brewery, Payette Brewing, Edge Brewing, 10 Barrel and Sockeye all make impressive beers that are a hit with the fans at Alefort. Alefort is one of those places where you enter with the intention of staying 15 minutes and leave two hours later with a smile on your face and a belly full of unique and delicious beer.

The Food

With all that beer being consumed, you better make sure to have something hearty in your belly if you plan on seeing that band you love at midnight. Luckily, Foodfort has you covered. The best of the best of Boise’s exploding food scene are positioned next to Alefort and local food trucks are parked just outside the main stage, giving hungry party goers plenty of options. Over the multi day festival, you can have anything from BBQ Brisket to street tacos to bacon and sage popcorn, and everything in between.

Between the beer and the food, you would think you would gain 10 pounds over a the five day festival. But luckily, the walking between venues and constant booty shaking to the music will give you your daily fix of calorie burning.

The Location

Ah, Boise. I really do love this town. While Boise is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, it still possesses a small town vibe. It is a perfect city for outdoor enthusiasts and weekend warriors, where a casual stroll downtown will have you looking out to the Boise mountains, which are popular with mountain bikers and hikers in the summer, and skiers and snowboarders in the winter.

And Treefort capitalizes on the local’s love for their town. Would it be easier to hold Treefort in some big fairground, centralizing everything, a la Coachella? Sure, but then it wouldn’t be Treefort. What makes Treefort so unique in the music festival world is that it is a true ‘downtown’ music festival, that literally takes over the entire downtown for those five days. And no one here minds. Quite the opposite. We welcome the madness because Treefort is safe, fun, and great for the local economy. While there is never a bad time to visit Boise, I am hard pressed to find a better time to visit than Treefort.

The Community

While I have made Treefort out to sound like this mega festival that is so big, it needs an entire downtown and almost 20 venues to hold everyone, nothing is further from the truth. While Treefort has grown considerably since its inception, I am still amazed how SMALL it often feels when in the thick of it. The organizers have done everything right. Having so many venues and so many options prevents any one place from becoming too overcrowded at any time. I only had to wait in line a couple of times last year, and that was mainly to my poor planning by not getting to a popular band’s show BEFORE they went on stage.

But no matter how big the festival gets, there is always a sense of community everywhere you go. Local companies set up their stands and find ways to help the local community while showing off their latest products. Take the local clothing store Wear Boise for example. Stop by their stand, step into a photo booth with a bunch of adorable dogs, and proceeds will go to the much loved Idaho Humane Society (we LOVE our four legged fur friends here.)

This is far from the only example. Boise is a close knit community made up of a diverse group of people. And as you walk through the festival, you will see old friends hugging each other, new friends laughing together, and everyone smiling as one.

This is Boise. This is Treefort. And we aren’t going anywhere.

The post 5 Reasons Why I Am Stoked For Treefort Music Festival in Boise, Idaho appeared first on Resource Travel.

Photo by Marshall Birnbaum

The world’s first snow artist, Beck first began his work 2004.  At the time he was a freelance orienteer map maker and wanted a form of exercise that didn’t hurt his troubled feet.  Living in the French Alps, the snow presented a natural canvas, though Beck, prior to that moment, didn’t consider himself much of an artist.  “I only do snow drawings.  I wouldn’t take paint brushes and paint a picture if I didn’t have good snow. Lots of people are much better at a painting than I am.”

Photo by Marshall Birnbaum

Perhaps this is why he even surprised himself with the results the first time.  Five years later, he decided he wanted to take his work more seriously.  He put more effort into building a portfolio of his art and creating an online presence.  Fourteen years and over 250 snow pieces later, he nows makes a living from it.  He has done two Ted talks, created a clothing line, printed a book, and has traveled the world creating his designs.

Most recently, Beck created a piece in Target Field in Minnesota, home of the Minnesota Twins, for The Great Northern, an annual 10-day winter celebration in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.  He shared with Resource Travel his thoughts about working in a baseball field compared to a mountain slope.

“It was a very different feeling.  All the background noise from the city surrounding it,” Simon said.  “I didn’t really know how deep the snow was either.  At one edge the snow was really quite shallow and I wasn’t sure how much it would be usable.”

Beck, usually relying on direct sunlight to see his lines in the indistinctive snow’s surface, found it hard to see his work: “The most annoying thing about making that piece in Target Field was that the stands surround the field and they caused these really deep shadows and you’re going in and out of shadows all the time.”

Despite the difficulties, Beck, humble in his work, said he still found it to be “a respectfully good result.”

The results are better than that.  Stunning, really.  And though the artwork itself may be similar to other pieces he’s made in the mountains, the juxtapositions of his work, framed by the stadium’s metal and concrete core, creates an illusion of natural creation. It’s beautiful.

Beck’s reasons for creating his designs has varied of the years—from being commissioned, to enjoyment, to working in a fantastic location, to exercise.  But trying to push forth a message about the environment, as he hopes to do with his work, is no doubt one of his most important motivations.

“I think people need to look after the planet we got better than we are doing so.  Control ourselves somehow,” Beck said.  A portion of the sales from his clothing line, which feature images of his designs, is donated to the nonprofit Protect Our Winters: “We need to face the problems we are causing rather than trying solve them by escaping somewhere else.  We are here, we have a nice planet that looks after us and we gotta look after it a bit more.  It’s a team effort, we gotta help it and it’s gotta help us.”

Whether that be in the geometric design, the process of the work itself, or the message he tries to push forth, his artwork, so extraordinary and beautiful, warrants further investigation.  And at the very least, he hopes, his designs, composed purely of the environment, should make one consider the implications of human negligence in this world.

No matter how you look at it, Simon Beck is doing something both amazing and unique.

Follow Simon Beck’s art on his Instagram & Facebook and grab a copy of his is book here.

Photo 1 & 2 by Marshall Birnbaum

All other photos from Simon Beck’s Facebook

The post The Story Behind Simon Beck’s Stunning Snow Art appeared first on Resource Travel.

CLICK TO ENLARGE: Samuel Barsky in front of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, London’s Tower Bridge and in New York City’s Times Square.

Barsky of course also quickly caught the eye of Resource Travel. So we reached out for an interview, eager to find out how, when and why he got into this thing that has now made him famous.

I started knitting in 1999, with two solid colored sweaters and a multicolored sweater from a commercially available pattern. After that, I decided to design my own. As I was looking at the graph paper, struggling to decide how it should look, I got the idea that I could knit a picture without a graph.

CLICK TO ENLARGE: No more knitting commercial patterns or graphs after Samuel Barsky switched to real life objects.

Many years later, long after Barsky got married, he rediscovered a small collection of pictures of himself wearing some of his sweaters in the places or around the objects they represented. He realized there was a significance to this, and conceived the idea to start doing this for all of his sweaters.

Anything that crosses my eyes is a potential sweater. In the past, I often made a sweater after having been at some place. Now, since I want to have a picture there while wearing it, I try to knit such pictures befóre I get there.

CLICK TO ENLARGE: Sam Barsky’s knitting has taken him (and sometimes his wife) from the Niagara Falls to Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.

Each sweater takes, give or take, about a month to make. Since Barsky is disabled, he doesn’t have a regular day job, but since he puts so much time and effort in his knitting, he considers it to be his de facto profession.

I keep all my sweaters and wear them myself. But I share pictures of them for others to see. And I occasionally lend them out to be displayed somewhere, such as a museum or gallery.

CLICK TO ENLARGE: Curvy roads, war tanks, pirate ships… Sam Barsky has done it all!

Barsky tells Resource Travel he likes to travel as much as he likes to knit. He doesn’t really have one favorite destination, and his plans for the future is to just “keep on doing what I’m doing.” Eventually, he does want to make his work available for sale in some form, but his main intention is to keep inspiring people and to teach his skills to others by giving speeches, doing TV appearances or giving interviews.

Glad we could help with the latter, Mr. Barsky!

CLICK TO ENLARGE: Proudly showing a sweater showing the sweaters he already made, in front of those sweaters.

Want to see more of Sam Barsky’s knittings and travels? You can follow everything on his Facebook Page.

The post Man Knits Sweaters of Famous Travel Destinations And Then Visits Them appeared first on Resource Travel.

*Disclaimer, and we can’t believe we have to say it. But this is an organized production by professionals. Do NOT actually try this, unless federal crimes, great bodily injury and very sore muscles when you wake up tomorrow sound appealing to you.*

The post Try This Next Time You Are Late For Your Flight appeared first on Resource Travel.

Just launched at the end of November, Netflix Offline Viewing means you can spend the long hours of purgatory on international flights getting amped up for your adventure. Our Editor-in-Chief Michael Bonocore and I teamed up to help you know what to download before you forget to check in properly and get sandwiched in the middle seat on the 16-hour San Francisco to Dubai flight.

Only some movies and tv shows are available to download, so we scoured the list to find the best candidates for your next travel day:

Jordana’s Picks

Tales by Light

You may have seen us mention this series before… With brilliant cinematography, interesting international stories, and behind the scenes access to acclaimed travel photographers, Tales by Light is an obvious choice for your travel day entertainment.

Wildest Islands

With ten episodes to watch, this series introduces islands all over the world, highlighting the various relationships between man and nature from location to location.  Whether you’re traveling to the Caribbean or the Falklands, there’s a relevant episode waiting to get your geared up for your adventure.

Chef’s Table

Foodies rejoice!  Prep for the culinary delights of international travel with this Netflix original series! Follow international chefs as they prepare and introduce regional foods that will make your airplane tuna sandwich look like cat food and cardboard.

Last Chance to See

From the BBC, this series follows Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine as they travel the world in search of animals on the verge of extinction.  Last Chance to See is a follow up to a radio series and book by the same title produced almost 30 years ago by Carwardine and author Douglas Adams.  With incredible access to such rare animals, this series just might empower you to help fight for the natural areas along your adventure.

An Idiot Abroad

Step into the shoes of a bad tourist for this wonderfully un-PC show.  Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant send their vapid friend and a completely inexperienced traveler, Karl Pilkington, on wide-ranging international adventures.  His intimidation by street foods in China and fear of getting hooked on eating toads will keep you laughing the whole flight.  Settle in for some easy, light-hearted watching.

Bonus Viewing: Sense8

Ok, this one isn’t exactly a travel show, but if you’re looking for binge-worthy, action-filled viewing for a long day of travel, this visually astounding series is the perfect escape.  It follows the lives of eight psychically connected characters living in amazing locations all over the world.  This show will make you long to visit all of the filming locations, from busy colorful streets in India, to starkly beautiful mountaintops in Iceland.  

Michael’s Picks

Unbranded

What happens when four college buddies decide to ride 16 wild mustangs from Mexico to Canada? Unbranded is the film festival acclaimed documentary that details the challenging 3,000-mile ride through some of the harshest terrain in the American West. Being a west coast, mountain-obsessed photographer, this film is right up my alley.

 India’s Frontier Railways

For years, India’s railway system has been romanticized in Hollywood films like ‘The Darjeeling Limited’, but India’s extensive and historical railway system is full of real people, real stops, real stations, and most of all, real life. This hard to stop watching documentary series gives viewers a glimpse at the railway behind the Hollywood glamor.

Wild North

I am pretty much obsessed with anything Norway. But in two trips to the Arctic country, I have yet to see much wildlife. Obviously, I am looking in all the wrong places, as the filmmakers behind Wild North show us that Norway is home to some of the world’s most amazing and diverse wildlife.

The Cuba Libre Story

I may be biased, since I just returned home from my second trip to Cuba. This trip came at a historic time, as I was in the country during the nine-day mourning period for Fidel Castro’s death. During this time, alcohol, music, and dancing were outlawed by the government. It was a surreal scene walking through Havana and not hearing the constant beat of Sol music or seeing the sidewalk cafes full of tourists drinking Mojitos. For anyone who has been to Cuba, it’s a fascinating country with a fascinating history, both the good and bad. This 8-part series digs into the history of the small island nation just 90 miles south of Florida.

Bonus!

180° South

This is only on the bonus section because it isn’t available for download yet. But BEFORE you embark on your next epic adventure, this film follows a group of mountaineers (who also surf) as they retrace the 1968 journey of  Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia. It’s an inspiring and fun film that shouldn’t be missed. But hopefully Netflix makes this available for download soon, as this is one that was meant for the window seat of a Dreamliner because you can’t sleep from all of the adrenaline rushing through your veins.

Bonus! Bonus!

Anything Anthony Bourdain

Again, not available for download…but anything with his face in it needs to be seen by everyone with an itch for travel, food, humor, and adventure.

So, how did we do? Did we miss any must-see wanderlust? Let us know your favorite travel shows on Netflix and we might include them in our next installment!

The post 9 Netflix Travel Shows to Download for Your Next Flight appeared first on Resource Travel.