Once a summer or so, I paddle my canoe to Leen’s Lodge for dinner. It’s about a half-mile up West Grand Lake from the cove where our camp is located. It takes about 20 minutes, and because I paddle out of a cove into the broad lake and from shadow to sun, I catch up […]
Travel
New Hampshire
Ellacoya State Park | Gilford, NH
With my wife, Sally, three sons and, lately, their wives and children, I’ve spent summer weekends on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, for 38 years. So, until a surprise discovery just last summer, I assumed I knew all the fun things to do around New England’s third-largest lake–including having breakfast at The Strawberry Patch in Wolfeboro […]
Maine
Portland, ME: Urban Park
I was with friends a couple of blocks off Portland‘s Back Cove, a little after 10 pm on a night when the last ferry home to Peaks Island was to depart at 10:30 pm. Getting here from the terminal on my bike had taken a little over half an hour, but that was at a […]
Vermont
Burlington, VT: Church Street
Get with gravity and walk downhill. Let your feet take you where you want to go; sometimes a late-afternoon stroll will lead you into a sublime evening. The Unitarian church on Burlington’s Pearl Street is where you turn left–still ambling downhill–to enter the mall, a.k.a. Church Street Marketplace. Here it’s the street life that commands […]
Massachusetts
Rockport, MA | Paintings
I recently visited my father’s art studio in Rockport. He had a show with a Cape Ann theme going up soon, and for some reason I asked him whether he’d ever painted Motif No. 1, the iconic red fishing shack on Bradley Wharf. I thought I knew the answer, that being no. But my dad […]
Rhode Island
Providence, RI | Wickenden Street
In an effort to persuade me to move back to Rhode Island, my future husband, Lorne, took me to a towering pile of mud in downtown Providence. “Someday,” he announced with a sweep of his arm, “this will be a beautiful river, with footbridges and music and crowds of people.” My reaction? I cried. For […]
Massachusetts
Oak Bluffs, MA: Kayaking
There’s a kayak outfit on Martha’s Vineyard that advertises, “You only know it’s an island from the water.” That rang true this day when my husband, Barry, and I dragged our kayaks into the water. His had a rudder, and he could fish while steering with his feet. My job, in my little single kayak, […]
Vermont
Mount Mansfield, VT: Hiking
Sometimes, to get to where you really want to be, you have to pass through a needle’s eye. There’s a passageway with just that name on Vermont’s Long Trail, south of Mount Mansfield‘s Forehead. It’s a pair of massive rock slabs, leaning against each other to form a portal barely big enough for a hiker […]
Massachusetts
Chatham, MA: Cape Cod Baseball
On a sultry Fourth of July evening in the Cape Cod town of Chatham, a red sun drops beyond the tall, dark trees behind the left-field scoreboard. Red-white-and-blue bunting drapes the length of the outfield fence. The evening sky, its lacy clouds edged in pink, gives the warm, feel-good sense of a Maxfield Parrish painting; […]
Rhode Island
Block Island, RI: Snorkeling
Here’s how you find snorkeling in the “garden” in the ocean near Block Island. It’s about 250 paces from my cubicle at the Block Island Times, out the back door, across Corn Neck Road, and down the sand-dune path lined with Rosa rugosa, where I come to Crescent Beach. There’s nothing between me and Portugal. […]
New Hampshire
Zealand Pond, NH: Prettiest Easy Hike
Zealand Pond is at a height of land, which is not where a pond is usually found. Hikers find the trail to it by turning off U.S. Route 302 at Zealand Campground, about two miles east of the town of Twin Mountain, and driving another two miles south into Bethlehem to park at the end […]
Connecticut
Norwalk, CT: Lockwood-Mathews Mansion
See more photos So many people I know are always awestruck whenever they visit the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island. However, as a native of Quincy, Massachusetts, home of the stately Georgian Adams homestead, it’s always a bit of a shock when I move into the Gilded Age. Still, I continue on my quest to […]