(CNN) -- When it comes to taking spirited vacations, wandering a vineyard falls flat in the face of handcrafted brew. With more than 1,500 breweries across the United States, beer is not just a drink -- it's a destination.
Wooden barrels of beer are just part of the draw at The Lost Abbey Brewery in San Diego, California.

Wooden barrels of beer are just part of the draw at The Lost Abbey Brewery in San Diego, California.

"What's happened is that the old world has influenced the new world; the U.S. is now a travel destination for beer, [even] for people from outside of the country," said Julia Herz, craft beer program director at the Brewers Association.

"What's so great about beer is that you have this range," said Randy Mosher, author of "Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Best Drink." "It's from 3 percent alcohol to 20 percent, from super malty to very hoppy, and then you throw in stuff like fruit, spices -- you have an enormous range of possibilities."

With such a wide flavor profile, said Stephen Beaumont, author of "Premium Drinker's Beer Guide," beer travel is less about hanging out at the brewery and more about the tasting. In other words, don't look just for an incredible brewer, but also for an incredible city in which to drink beer.

Although it's a highly contested question that Herz calls "fodder for late-night philosophical conversations," there are a few brew towns that these beer aficionados identify as the cream of the hops.

Eat, drink and brew local

If you didn't know that Portland, Oregon, is synonymous with "Beervana," then you clearly need an introduction to the beer scene.

In July of last year, one of my oldest college friends, now an unassuming Wall Street financier, treated seven of his closest pals and their families to an all-expenses-paid rafting trip down Idaho's Salmon River. The Middle Fork of the Salmon is 104 miles of snarling, foamy delight, bucketing down 4,000 feet in elevation through more than 100 world-class rapids. It was the trip of a lifetime, in more ways than one.

Leave your wallets locked in the motel safe; you won't need them, promised the pamphlets from Adventure Sun Valley, our river outfitter. Hefty gourmet meals, masseuses in tow and hot showers on shore were part of the experience, but we still bumped up hard against the wild.

Four days in, I was clobbered in the skull and back by boulders careening off a fire-eroded, mudslide-ravaged hillside. I survived, but it's a cautionary tale for those who, like me, consider themselves experienced outdoor adventurers.

The stark beauty of the Middle Fork endures because it bisects one of the largest true wilderness areas in the United States, a place where Congress told federal land managers, "Hands off." That includes "hands off humans." You truly are on your own. It may thunder, burn and flood, and you may well get tossed, tumbled or whacked. Humans are a small component in a vast, ever-changing wilderness.

"The thing you have to keep in mind is it's a very dynamic landscape out there," said U.S. Forest Service district ranger Chris Grove, who oversees the Middle Fork part of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. That means raw, unmatched recreation, but it also means an ecosystem scoured and sculpted by wildfire, aging forest, climate change, wind and water, with sometimes violent landscape shifts. The storm that felled me created three brand new rapids, miles apart on the river.

Still, fatalities are rare. Once every several years someone drowns or is killed by a falling tree, forest officials said. More common are split lips or twisted ankles. In fact, part of what caught me off guard was that the trip was pretty darn cushy. Despite jaw-dropping whitewater, modern technology makes it possible to sit on your duff in a puffy rubber raft down the entire river, leaving the oars to lean, young guides who work their tails off in exchange for a summer in one of the more beautiful spots in North America.

"Float and Bloat," our guides jokingly dubbed clients who take in the spectacular scenery and amply sized meals.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK, Alaska

Time and the forces of nature will decide if Mount McKinley is immortal, but it's so mighty that it seemingly decides when to display its 20,320-foot-tall majesty. • The mountain is also called by its American Indian name, Denali, meaning the Great One or the High One. Indeed, it is the highest point in North America and, because of its immense bulk, on a clear day it can be seen in Anchorage, about 150 air miles away. • But that isn't often: McKinley creates its own miniclimate and usually is wreathed in clouds. Thus, at least two-thirds of the people who travel to the vast Denali National Park and Preserve — larger than Massachusetts — never get to see even the top half of the namesake mountain. • So when it does show itself — when the mountain is "out" as they say here — it inspires joy, and awe, in viewers.

Yet the same can be said for the much-easier sighting of wildlife that roams the park, including parking lots and roads. How many of us in the Lower 48 get within 20 feet of a female grizzly bear as it munches on berries? Or watch a moose cow with its youngster, grazing on a hillside, or see a caribou sitting in a patch of snow to get relief from insects?

I could have checked off all of these critters, and more, on my seen-that list during the free, narrated Tundra Wilderness Tour on my recent visit. But I also brought home pictures, and the memories.

Driver-guide Jeff Farragia took his busload of 47 on a graded but unpaved road 63 miles into the park, to Stony Hill Overlook. We were 33 miles from Denali, and clouds covered perhaps the top fifth, but it was still a spectacular sight.

I got the up-close-and-personal view, though, by plunking down $350 for a flightseeing tour. I made the one-hour flight in an eight-seat, twin-engine Piper Navajo. Pilot Dan McGregor took us within 2,000 feet of the Wickersham Wall, a 50-degree slab of snow-covered granite, at 12,000 feet up on Denali. It was dazzling.

I'm face down on a massage table looking through glass at fish swimming in the lagoon, as the Polynesian masseuse caresses me with bags of seaweed and creams made from ground pearls and deep-sea water.

Polynesian music plays softly. Waves lap the shore. Can it get any better than this? We're at the Thalasso Spa at the InterContinental Bora Bora Resort, which I'm told is the largest spa in French Polynesia, the first in the world to use water drawn from deep in the Pacific, which they tell us is extremely pure and rich in minerals. It's just an average mom-and-daughter afternoon together, or once in a lifetime, in this case.

My friend, Pam Roza, her daughter, Orlee, my daughter, Mel, and their two friends, Margaret Bylsma and Lane Washburn -- all newly minted high school grads -- have taken an afternoon off from sailing on our chartered catamaran to enjoy a little spa action, followed by a real shower. The two dads have declined our invitation to join us and are snoozing by the pool at the resort.

As if the massage isn't enough, we luxuriate in a walk-through pool that pummels our legs with jets of water. There are also treatments with deep-sea water showers, baths with deep-sea water and hydro massages, marine scrubs and mud treatments ... too bad we only have an afternoon!

Of course, my mom never took me to a spa -- I don't think she's ever been to one herself -- but I've taken my wilderness-loving daughters to spas from the Caribbean to Colorado, from Arizona to Austria from the time they were young teens, and like others their age, they are perfectly at home getting facials and massages (as long as mom's paying). It turns out they've got plenty of company.

According to the International Spa Association, 4 million teens have been to a spa. More than half of the hotel resort spas with memberships in ISA now have teen programs, and new ones that include younger children are opening all the time. An increasing number of resorts have dedicated spaces just for kids and teens -- from Scoops Kid Spas at the 10 Great Wolf Lodges around the country (choose your own sherbet scrub) to the Wild Hare Youth Spa at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort in Texas where you can create your own lip gloss.