Mancations: A New show debuts in June on the Travel Channel

By Mariel Kennison

Mancations: The Travel Channel’s newest and funniest series featuring two comedians traveling the country in search of action-packed, male bonding adventures. GoNOMAD spoke with the two men who are behind this new series.

Evan Mann and Gareth Reynolds, two twenty-something comedian friends, love to travel. On their new show, Mancations, they document what happens when they are allowed to go on a vacation they’ve always dreamed of and film the outcome.

“The way to make your life feel the longest is by traveling,” they agreed, “And we’re really noticing that by doing so much and having a great time, time seems to go on forever!”

The premise of Mancations is simple: two guys go on action-packed, comical, and testosterone-filled “vacations” where they put themselves in often surreal conditions so other men are inspired to do the same– or not– and women get to see what men do when they’re left to their own devices.

Testicle Festival in Montana

The show got its start through one of their first ever “mancations”; the comedians took two of their guy friends and a camera to the “Testicle Festival” in Missoula, Montana to film their adventure for Comedy Central.

The idea of such a trip blended together everything they loved- doing absurd things, making people laugh, and travel and became a reality when the Travel Channel picked up their pilot episode.

All of the places Evan and Gareth visit are accessible to men everywhere, but after seeing some of the extreme situations they get into, it may be best to let them do the dirty work and watch from the safety of your couch.

After going through Navy Seal Training Camp in Virginia, Ninja Camp in Pennsylvania, and even partaking in Civil War re-enactments, the guys admit they’ve been put through the wringer. Although they had their doubts about the difficulty of doing a reenactment, the friends were surprised when they felt like more than just grown men pretending to be long-gone soldiers. “It actually felt like we were in a war movie,” Gareth said.

“We might do things we wouldn’t do without a camera on us, but by going to cool places off the beaten path, people really get an experience of what it’s like to be right along side us, living vicariously through what we do,” Evan explained. Though they’re certainly not the first travelers who dare to veer off the beaten path, they are some of the funniest ones doing it with a camera crew!

During the first season, the show will travel around the United States, exploring vacation options they didn’t even know existed before researching places they had always wanted to go.

Ninja Camp

A perfect example is the Ninja Camp they attended in the Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvania. It may have started as the ideal “guy-only retreat,” but Ninja Camp, where ninjas-to-be are taught by an actual sensei, is a real-life possibility for a guy and his buddies.

Though many of the activities Evan and Gareth choose to do might seem geared more toward the male traveler, women are already responding well to the show’s premise. The vacations may not be a woman’s first choice, but she will definitely be entertained watching how they play out.

In the future, the men of Mancations hope to expand their horizons and go in search of more male-bonding activities abroad. As Gareth put it, “There’s so much we discovered in the States that we didn’t know about; going international would multiply that by a thousand. I’m practically salivating at the opportunity to see the running of the bulls.”

Whether Evan and Gareth inspire you to follow in their adventurous footsteps or their crazy antics just make you laugh, be sure to catch their first-ever episode airing on the Travel Channel on Sunday June 5 at 9 pm est.