The members of Travel Alliance Partners (TAP) are always coming up with new itineraries to showcase and explore little-known regions and take advantage of the hottest ticket in town. These new tours allow travelers to speak with the spirit world in a Nevada ghost town, get goose bumps listening to a gospel choir in Arkansas or “ooh” in awe at the aspens that paint Colorado’s Rocky Mountains gold.
Ghost Towns of Old Nevada
AP member Sports Leisure Vacations’ Ghost Towns of Old Nevada itinerary showcases Nevada’s ghost towns, but guests may also get to meet some ghosts.
“I’m still not exactly sure about all of this, but I still cannot explain some of the things we’ve seen and found,” said president and founder Mark Hoffmann.
The company first ran the itinerary this past spring and is offering it twice in 2016: again in March and with a second departure in October, when guests will spend Halloween night in the historic and possibly haunted Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah.
The six-day trip departs from Sacramento, California, and travels to Las Vegas, hitting up Old West ghost towns where visitors will find old miners’ cabins, abandoned post offices and deserted train stations. Goodsprings’ claim to fame is the 100-year-old saloon where Clark Gable awaited word about Carol Lombard’s plane crash.
“He sat there and burned a hole in the bar with his cigar,” Hoffmann said.
Travelers use a “ghost box” to try to communicate with spirits during the Goodsprings Ghost Hunt, led by Robert George Allen, a retired entertainer and member of the Ghost Hunters Hall of Fame who also started the Haunted Vegas tour.
“When the box starts blinking, there’s a spiritual presence, and you can ask the spirit [yes or no] questions: ‘Did you live here? Did you work here?’” Hoffmann said, adding that you don’t have to believe it to still enjoy the experience. “It doesn’t matter if you believe in it or not; it’s fun, and the point of traveling is to have fun.”
In Las Vegas, the group tours the Neon Museum, which saves Sin City’s old neon signs, and takes Allen’s Haunted Vegas tour. Guests also visit the Techatticup Mine, where “the mine owner says it’s not haunted, and everyone who works for him says it is,” Hoffmann said.
Southern Jukebox Tour
Judy Johnson grew up in the South, and when you grow up in a place, you sometimes stop seeing it. But when she led a group of wealthy Australians on a custom tour of the South and its musical heritage, she was astounded by their response. These millionaires, who could go anywhere in the world, couldn’t stop talking about sitting in a square in Helena, Arkansas, eating fried catfish nuggets and listening to blues musicians perform.
“They sat out there under those trees in that hot sun and listened to that music, and the whole time for the rest of that trip, they went back to that,” said Johnson, owner of TAP partner Let’s Go Travelin’.
That inspired Johnson to put together the Southern Jukebox Tour that winds from Nashville to Memphis, Tennessee, then south along the Mississippi Blues Trail to New Orleans, Louisiana, exposing travelers to the roots, growth and current state of country, blues, gospel, rock ’n’ roll, Cajun and zydeco music in the South.
In Nashville, guests visit the historic Ryman Auditorium and the County Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and spend an evening at the Grand Ole Opry. The group stops in Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of Elvis Presley, before moving on to Memphis, where travelers tour Graceland, visit Sun Studio and Stax Museum of American Soul Music and enjoy a night on Beale Street.
In Helena, Arkansas, home of the King Biscuit Time radio show, guests visit a church to listen to a choir sing Southern gospel. Clarksdale, Mississippi, is where legend says Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of highways 61 and 49. The group will either lunch at Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero in Clarksdale or the Ebony Club in Indianola, Mississippi, where they also visit the B.B. King Museum.
