Everett Potter's Travel Report

Biking on Nantucket

Bike trails on Nantucket branch off in every direction, like the spokes on a wheel. My favorite ride, especially in the spring, is the 6-mile jaunt from town to Madaket Beach. Head out on Cliff Road. You’ll quickly meet up with the Cliff Trail as you pass the rolling meadows and red-winged blackbirds at Tupancy Links conservation land. Merge with the Madaket Trail and you might be greeted by flittering goldfinches and osprey peering out from their oversized nests. When the trail becomes sandy and you can hear the pounding surf, you know you’re getting close. On the westernmost part of the island, the beach slopes down to the crashing waves. All around you is water, as if you’re stepping off land into the great abyss. If you don’t have the energy to do the return trip, the Wave bus runs until 11:20 pm and has a front rack for two bikes.

   Steve Jermanok As a columnist for National Geographic Adventure, adventure travel expert at Budget Travel, and regular contributor on outdoor recreation for Outside, Men’s Journal, Health, and Sierra, Steve Jermanok has written more than 1,000 articles on the outdoors.He’s also authored or co-authored 11 books, including Outside Magazine’s Adventure Guide to New England and Men’s Journal’s The Great Life. His latest book is Go Now! Put Your Life on Pause and See the World. He’s currently an adventure travel expert at Away.com and blogs daily at  Active Travels.

The view from the kitchen window. Photo by Gayle Potter.

By Everett Potter

I’ve spent the past few weeks lakeside in western Maine, in a cabin — or “camp” in Maine-speak — that dates back to the 1940′s or earlier, slowing down and trying to remove myself  — if only temporarily –  from the electronic maelstrom that is daily life for many of us.

It’s a place with creaking floors, a stone fireplace and windows that swing inward to open, letting in the great outdoors. That outdoors provides red squirrels chattering noisily on a tree limb and katydids humming their particular white noise at this time of year. At night, it’s the sometimes eerie, occasionally comical cry of the loon, a cry that can reach a hysteric crescendo should something be amiss.

I confess that while there isn’t a tuft of insulation to be found inside my cabin, there is broadband. As a journalist, I am as wired as the next guy. But with the lake shimmering and sending light waves flickering across the beamed ceiling, a cormorant perched on a nearby stone, the hummingbirds that visit almost daily, and the laughter of my daughter as she paddles a canoe to a nearby island for the first time in her eight years, the electronic universe I usually inhabit has some serious competition.

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By David McKay Wilson

On our last morning in Cape May, I awoke to the smell of bacon wafting from the kitchen of our seven-bedroom vacation home, a block from the Atlantic Ocean.  Our family had gathered for our annual vacation at the New Jersey shore, and as we prepared to hit the road, my brother decided he'd prepare a pancake breakfast for 14 before we departed.

"Just doing my part," he said, as the bacon sizzled at dawn.

The Saturday morning pancakes were a fitting end to a week of sibling conviviality in a seaside community that caters to families, provides top-notch vacation homes for rent near the sprawling beach, and features the vibrant Washington Street Mall — a pedestrian strip with shops, restaurants, and ice-cream shops that teems with activity each night. It's a town where kids can safely ride bikes on city streets, dolphins frolic close to shore, and the vigilant lifeguards keep a close watch on swimmers, including my son, Tom, who was rescued one afternoon after getting caught in the undertow.

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