FALL) WOMAD SRI LANKA FESTIVAL OF DRUMS.
Colombo, Kandy, and Negombo, Sri Lanka. SEPTEMBER 21–25, 2005 Get your groove on with ground-shaking rhythms outside the capital of Sri Lanka’s last independent kingdom. WOMAD (World of Music, Arts, and Dance), a UK-based charitable organization inspired by acclaimed musician Peter Gabriel, celebrates the diverse cultural expression of artists around the world with a year-round lineup of music festivals across the planet. On stage: beat-breaking shows by Cuba’s soulful Asere, Africa’s Drummers of Burundi, and more.

WINTER) FESTIVAL IN THE DESERT.
Essakane, Mali. January 13–15, 2006 The Saharan oasis of Essakane (pop. 200), in central Mali, is a duneside watering hole for Tuareg nomads and their parched camels. But for three days each winter it becomes a West African Woodstock—a global stage shared by Senegalese griots, Mauritanian choral singers, and the occasional Navajo punk band. After a punishing three-hour drive from Timbuktu, plunk down in a soft patch of sand with a plate of chicken yassa and listen up.

SPRING) COACHELLA MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL.
Indio, California. LATE APRIL 2006 Pierced goths, Hacky-Sacking hippies, and plain old music fans commingle at Coachella, an epic 48-hour, five-stage, 110-act musical menagerie every spring. Where the quartz sands of the Sonoran and Mojave deserts merge, bands like Coldplay, Radiohead, Wilco, and Nine Inch Nails compete for sonic dominance. As the volume rises, so do the temps, with highs around 100 degrees. When the desert heat fades, groupies crash in their cars—or head for the boulder-strewn campsites at nearby Joshua Tree National Park.

SUMMER) HEBRIDEAN CELTIC FESTIVAL.
Stornoway, Scotland. July 12–15, 2006 If the wheezy skirl of Highland pipes and the high-pitch squeal of fiddles set your kilt a-twirl, join 17,000 clansmen on the Outer Hebrides isle of Lewis next summer. For ten years, Celtic-music lovers have come to this craggy outpost off the northwest coast of Scotland to jig to the likes of Van Morrison, the Waterboys, the Saw Doctors, and Shooglenifty, a popular “neotrad” band. The action kicks off on the majestic Lews Castle grounds.

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“Now we won’t give in to the temptation of a path!” says my Irish guide, Michael Gibbons, as he steps defiantly off the road and plunges up to his ankles into a spongy green bog. An archaeologist by trade and self-described “expert walker and great talker” by disposition, the 45-year-old Gibbons is far more inclined to follow the ruins of a 4,000-year-old wall or a good storyline than he is a decent road or trail.

Traveling Ireland

LOVELY LONELINESS: A fairy tree near Maam Cross; Michael Gibbons and his walking crew admire cliffs near Inishbofin

Map of Ireland

Map of Ireland by Evan Hecox

I obediently follow Michael, bracing for the inevitable squish of cold bog in my already damp boots. This is the third day of our five-day trek, and by this time I’m confident that Michael knows where he’s going. This is his home turf, after all—he’s walked every patch and puddle of this rocky, soggy, wild, and ancient 800 square miles of western Ireland, known as Connemara, a region of County Galway that falls right between the rugged Atlantic coast and Lough Corrib, the country’s second-largest lake.

As the son of immigrants who left Ireland’s County Leitrim, about 80 miles northeast of Connemara, some 50 years ago to make a life in America, I’d followed the recent rise of the “New Ireland” of high-tech office parks, hip clubs, and haute cuisine with mixed feelings. Having inherited (along with a taste for good whiskey) an unabashedly romantic and wistful attachment to “the old country,” I had come with Michael on this 50-mile trek from Ireland’s outer islands to the Connemara mainland with a clear mission in mind: to make sure that my Emerald Isle of donkey carts and whitewashed thatch cottages, of turf fires and the fairy tales told around them, hadn’t entirely disappeared.

Our quest began on the remote isle of Inishmaan, a lonely six-square-mile nub of limestone inhabited by fewer than 200 souls. Tiny Inishmaan is in the center of the Aran Islands, a windswept mini-archipelago that the contemporary poet Seamus Heaney once called “the three stepping stones out of Europe.” A century or so earlier, the Irish poet and playwright J. M. Synge found his own literary inspiration here among the islanders, whose simple life he described as “perhaps the most primitive that is left in Europe.”

At first glance, little appears to have changed on Inishmaan since Synge lived here. Our first day, we set off on a three-mile hike from the island’s ferry pier through An Cora, the main village, and up to the ruins of Dún Fearbhaigh, the 3,000-year-old Iron Age fort that looms over the village. We wind our way up narrow cobbled paths through a maze of mortarless stone walls built and rebuilt by generations of islanders to shield their sheep and potatoes from unrelenting winds. We pass rows of overturned curraghs, boats that Aran fishermen have used for centuries to fish and trap lobsters. These days the lobsters are caught and flown straight to Paris’s finest restaurants.

As we walk, I graze on ripe wild blackberries while attempting to make sense of signs that appear only in Gaelic, the ancient Celtic tongue that remains the lingua franca of Inishmaan and most of Connemara. (One faded pub sign reads is fearrde thú guinness—”Guinness is good for you.”) Back in Synge’s day, says Michael, “English was a language you’d only talk to a pig or a dog in.” Given the way some of the locals eye us as they say hello, I suspect not much has changed.

Back in An Cora, we run into Tarlach de Blacam, a dapper ex-Dubliner in his mid-fifties who runs a shop selling the islands’ famous fine knits. Tarlach came to Inishmaan more than 35 years ago to study Gaelic, fell in love with the place, and decided to stay forever. “Back then it was dark,” he recalls fondly. “No electricity. Just the flickering of fires and candles.” Only toward the end of our conversation do we learn that his shop is just the showroom for a profitable export business, Inis Meáin Knitting Company (Inis Meáin being the Gaelic spelling for the island). “I’m off to New York tomorrow to meet with Saks Fifth Avenue,” he adds casually as he shakes hands and rushes to catch the ferry.

Following a night of drinking and good craic (pronounced “crack” but translated as harmless Irish “fun”) at Teach Ostan Inis Meáin, one of the island’s two pubs, I go about repairing my liver the Irish way: with a binge breakfast of sausages, rashers (bacon), eggs, and black pudding, a congealed pig’s-blood product cleverly disguised as another sausage. Afterwards, a ferry shuttles us back to the mainland—a few pounds heavier than when we arrived.

Three hours later we find ourselves climbing hills and sloshing through peat bogs near Maam Cross, a crossroads ten miles south of the coast. The area was made famous as the setting for the 1952 John Wayne classic The Quiet Man. The skeletal ruins of long-abandoned cottages and remnants of old potato furrows fill the landscape. “Believe it or not,” says Michael, “this was once one of the most densely populated parts of Europe—before the famine hit,” referring to the devastating potato blight that claimed more than half a million lives and sent boatloads of emigrants to America between 1845 and 1850.

These days, points out Michael, it’s mostly cities like Dublin that are booming, thanks to the “Celtic Tiger,” the nickname given to Ireland’s raging economy, which, since the early nineties, has ranked among the fastest-growing in Europe. With the help of expats moving in from the United States and England to fill high-tech jobs at places like Dell, Intel, and Microsoft, Ireland’s population tops four million for the first time since 1872.

As we stumble up a green hillside between Maam Cross and the village of Recess, Michael grabs my shoulder. “Careful, now, of the fairy tree!” I wipe rain from my glasses and scan the dense mist, half expecting to see a Lucky Charms look-alike flitting about. Instead there’s a single wind-pummeled tree sprouting through moss and rocks on an otherwise barren hillside. “Locals will tell you fairies live under trees like that,” says Michael. “They’ll never cut one down, for fear of retribution. In some cases they’ve even diverted highways around them.” In a country that’s hurtling into modernity, I find it comforting to think that the placement of high-speed motorways can still be dictated by concerns of fairy displacement.

After two days of bog-tromping through lashing rain, we drag ourselves, dripping and hungry, into the Lough Inagh Lodge Hotel, a sprawling 125-year-old Tudor-style mansion nestled next to the Twelve Bens and Maamturks Mountains, just 42 miles west of Galway, and surrounded by some of the best fly-fishing streams in all of Europe. The rosy-cheeked lodge owner, showing true Irish hospitality, stuffs our wet boots with newspaper, sets them by the fire, and leads us into an oak-paneled pub decorated with a taxidermy zoo. “Slainte!” he says, offering up the traditional Gaelic toast along with a frothy pint of Guinness and a lunch of native smoked salmon on brown bread and a crabmeat-and-avocado salad.

A van whisks us from lunch westward to the port town of Cleggan, 30 minutes away, where we switch to a ferry and chug 40 minutes over gut-churning swells to arrive on Inishbofin, the “Island of the White Cow.” We head off to catch the sunset over the Atlantic, walking a hillside through what Michael calls a “relic landscape.” Three-thousand-year-old walls—half-submerged in fields of clover—lead to the doorsteps of what he identifies as the remains of ancient homes. “Welcome to your Bronze Age B&B!” he announces as we cross the lichen-covered threshold.

As we leave Connemara the next day and drive the 80 miles back to Shannon Airport, sheep meadows are replaced by Dunnes department stores and a billboard touts Guinness, with its 198 calories, as the hip, low-calorie beer of choice for the young, waistline-conscious Irish.

In my five days in Ireland, I never spotted a single donkey cart, and the only thatch cottages I encountered were on the verge of becoming archaeological. But what I found instead was a thriving, vital Ireland where ancient ways have found modern expression, where fairies are still a force to be reckoned with, and where the Guinness is just as good for you as it ever was.

To bog-tromp and fairy-spot with a true master, contact Michael Gibbons at Walking Ireland, in Clifden, Connemara’s largest town. Michael offers everything from half-day rambles to an epic ten-day circuit of Ireland’s sacred mountains, with prices beginning at $27. You can count on wet boots, spectacular vistas, and good craic. 011-353-95-21492, The best of old and new Ireland can be found under one splendid roof, at the Lough Inagh Lodge Hotel in Recess, where room and board for two begin at $268 per night, depending on the season. 011-353-95-34706,

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“Damn! That was a bow shot! I knew I shoulda brought my bow.” Jim Cummings, our guide, had locked eyes with a fat, antlered deer munching sagebrush on the river’s edge. Armed only with a canoe paddle, Jim watched as the animal traipsed uphill, white tail bobbing. “Old Lewis and Clark would’ve had that buck on a spit by now,” he said as we paddled on.

lewis and clark, missouri river

Unlike Jim, a native Montanan with a Yosemite Sam mustache and a permanent cheek-bulge of Skoal, I’d never thought of a deer as potential dinner. Like many East Coasters, I was raised on a Hollywood version of the West. My image of Lewis and Clark was tainted early by the 1955 film The Far Horizons, in which Charlton Heston played William Clark against Fred MacMurray’s wussy Meriwether Lewis. Despite this handicapped historical interpretation, the 2004–2006 bicentennial of Lewis and Clark’s journey gave me the chance to experience the real deal.

When the two men left Camp Dubois, near St. Louis, in May 1804, about two-thirds of Americans lived within 50 miles of the Atlantic. The West, for them, was a mysterious Land Before Time, home to prehistoric mammoths and lost tribes of blue-eyed Welshmen. President Jefferson had just bought a sizable chunk of this never-never land from the French for about three cents an acre—the Louisiana Purchase cost $15 million—and wanted to know what kind of deal he’d gotten. And so Jefferson charged his assistant Lewis, the buff former Army captain Clark, and their 40-plus-man Corps of Discovery with a daunting mission: to locate a direct, navigable passage from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

Like Lewis and Clark, I headed west with grand ambitions. I was determined to see a slice of America and tap into the innocent wonder that gushes from the pages of the duo’s expedition journals. I wanted to have the experience without the “help” of interpretive markers, scenic overlooks, and commemorative Lewis and Clark candy bars. (Yes, they exist.) And because the majority of their epic unfolded along the course of the Missouri River, a paddling trip seemed the way to go.

I talked my brother Joe into coming along to play Lewis to my Clark. Jim’s buddy Dan, a coffee buyer from Seattle, rounded out our four-man corps. We paddled the Hummer of canoes, a 34-foot replica of the skin-over-frame boats used by 19th-century fur trappers. Our four-day outing would take us along 50 miles of Montana’s Upper Missouri River, from Virgelle to Judith Landing, the same stretch that Lewis and Clark covered between May 29 and June 1, 1805.

We put in, our first day, by an old ferry landing in Virgelle (population two) and headed east downriver—opposite the direction the Corps of Discovery went. “Only a fool would go upriver in a canoe if he didn’t have to,” Jim stated matter-of-factly when I looked confused. In an unfortunate Ken Burns moment, I mused aloud about heading east toward the past, rather than toward America’s future, as Lewis and Clark had done. “Just paddle,” said Jim, spitting tobacco juice into the muddy current.

After a half-day of easy paddling, we set up our camp on a low ridge above Little Sandy Creek, one of the many well-spaced campsites along the river designated by the Bureau of Land Management. Lewis and Clark passed this spot on June 1, 1805, as they made their way toward the confluence of the Missouri and the Marias, where they were to face a crucial decision about which river to take west. Jim shared his philosophy on tracking Lewis and Clark that night over a blazing fire and bourbon.

“Folks come downriver expecting to see the warm embers from Lewis and Clark’s fires. I tell ’em this isn’t Disney World, so they’re gonna have to use a little more imagination.” He fueled ours by reading aloud some of his favorite journal passages, like Lewis’s description upon seeing the Great Falls of the Missouri: “I wished … that I might be enabled to give to the enlightened world some just idea of this truly magnificent and sublimely grand object which has, from the commencement of time, been concealed from the view of civilized man.”

As we glided along, mile after placid mile, it was hard to imagine this as the same section of river where Lewis, as he vividly described, struggled around rocky points (“the water drives with great force”) and where safe passage required “much labor and infinite risk.” For us it was a cakewalk, especially with the current in our favor. But we soon learned that the old Missouri still has a few tricks up its sleeve.

After enduring a night of lashing rain coupled with chinook winds, we broke camp at Eagle Creek, the Corps’s May 31, 1805, campsite, and paddled right into a 40-mile-per-hour headwind. “There’s sheep walkin’ today,” yelled Jim from the stern. As I scanned the banks for livestock, Jim explained that it was just an old river saying for the whitecaps on the water.

At a sharp bend in the river, water plumes lashed our faces, threatening to spin our canoe around. After an hour of muscle-burning paddling, we pulled ashore. Using towropes and sloshing through knee-deep water, we guided the canoe around the bend—finally—and into calmer waters. This technique, known as cordelling, was an almost daily penance for the Corps as they struggled upriver against a much wilder Missouri.

Along with enduring a hint of the hardship the Corps experienced, we were awed by some of the same natural wonders that had inspired them. For 25 twisty miles, the bizarre sandstone formations of the White Cliffs loomed over us, resembling melted gargoyles. And at several points on the river we stopped, disembarked, and hiked through slot canyons with names like Butcherknife Coulee. Up on a windblown ridge, we traced circle after circle of weathered stones, the lonely remnants of a Native American tepee village.

The highs and lows of our trip offered no comparison to those experienced by Lewis and Clark. They gnawed on greasy beaver tail; we savored cornmeal-encrusted salmon. They were allotted a gill (four ounces) of “ardent spirits” per man daily; we allotted ourselves, well, more. They suffered from boils, dysentery, and dislocated bones; I broke a nail opening a beer can.

In the end, though, my hopes of experiencing Lewis and Clark’s West were almost realized. The Missouri River scenery has lost none of its beauty, but we’ve sadly lost the perspective of innocence. It’s impossible to tap into the sense of danger and imminent discovery that must have gripped those pioneers.

Armed with guidebooks and maps, my back to the Pacific Ocean, I mostly knew what was coming and how I might feel once I arrived there. And I couldn’t escape the hard fact that, in even the deepest slot canyon, I was still within 70 miles or so of the nearest Big Mac.

The westward journey of the Corps reached its ultimate goal in November 1805, when the weary travelers finally came within sight of the Pacific. Clark summed up his relief succinctly: “O! the joy.” With no ocean at the end of our own trail, we sought our joy at the bottom of a glass in the Sip-N-Dip Lounge, fittingly located just upstairs from Clark and Lewie’s Pub & Grill in the city of Great Falls. While a team of well-fed, sequined “mermaids” frolicked in a pool tank situated behind the retro tiki bar, we toasted the intrepid group of explorers who had unwittingly brought us to this point.

“Just think,” I said, waving to a particularly shimmery swimming mermaid. “If it weren’t for old Lewis and Clark, none of this would have been possible.

Millions of Americans are expected to hit the Lewis and Clark Trail from Missouri to Oregon in the next two years. The National Council of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial () is coordinating events, and each state has its own array of festivities. Here are some of the best events and activities to help you reblaze the trail.

Anytime: Take a copy of Lewis and Clark’s journals and a map and go in search of the collapsible canoe they buried, and allegedly never retrieved, somewhere near the city of Great Falls, Montana. Or grab your GPS unit, log on to , and treasure-hunt along their trail with the aid of 21st-century technology. At last visit, the Web site listed a cache at Fort Mandan, North Dakota, containing a copy of the journals and Lewis and Clark souvenirs.

June 19–23: Catch first sight of the Pacific from the same perspective Lewis and Clark had on Paddle Columbia: The Lewis and Clark Voyage, a 90-mile trip on Oregon’s Willamette and lower Columbia rivers. River Discovery (503-890-1683, ), a nonprofit dedicated to hands-on education about river history and ecology, will organize some 100 canoes and kayaks to re-create the last stretch of Lewis and Clark’s journey west. The five-day trip costs $595 per person, including interpretive speakers, history lessons, all meals, and shuttles for your luggage. Rent a canoe or kayak for $125.

June 26–28 and July 4–5: In 1804, Lewis and Clark celebrated their first Independence Day west of the Mississippi with an extra ration of whiskey, a corn dinner, and celebratory gunfire. Kansas City will bump the party up a notch: Festivities planned by the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau of Greater Kansas City (800-264-1563, ) include an air show, Native American dance, historical reenactments, and fireworks over the Missouri.

June 12–July 30: For hardcore fans who think doing only segments of the trail is for wimps, there’s Timberline ���ϳԹ���s’ (303-368-4418, ) Lewis and Clark Odyssey, a 3,300-mile bike trip from Wood River, Illinois, to Astoria, Oregon. For 48 days (and $9,000) you’ll be part of a bike posse drafting inn-to-inn behind Airstreams across America.

August–October: Immerse yourself in Sioux cultures and traditions at the Oceti-Sakowin Experience, throughout South Dakota. The nine tribes of the South Dakota Sioux (605-245-2265, ), descendants of some of the people who saved Lewis’s and Clark’s skins countless times (and on occasion challenged them), will hold historic reenactments, storytelling sessions, musical performances, and an art auction.

September 14–19: Hike the Bitterroot Mountains, on the Idaho-Montana state line, described in September 1805 by a member of the Corps of Discovery as those “most terrible mountains.” Led by Lewis and Clark Trail ���ϳԹ���s (800-366-6246, ), you’ll use topo maps and compasses to navigate a path near the old Lolo Trail through pine forests and huckleberry bushes. The Corps was forced to eat candles and melt snow for water. For $1,125, you’ll undoubtedly fare better, but keep some extra candles on hand just in case.

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CYCLING THE AEGEAN

The whitewash wonders of Greece

ISLAND HOPPING IN GREECE AND TURKEY—ON TWO WHEELS
After 30 miles of biking along the jagged shores of the Aegean Sea, my seven companions and I rolled into Güllük, a sleepy port on the southwest coast of Turkey, about 600 road miles south of Istanbul. We walked into a bar, where a grizzly fisherman put down his glass of raki, an aniseed-flavored Turkish alcohol, and swaggered up to us, laughing. “Good!” he roared, gold teeth flashing, while plucking at my spandex tights. “�ձ������ü��!“—thank you—I yelled back, striking my best superhero pose. The bar erupted, raki spilling everywhere.
Güllük was our second stop on a trip that began at an ancient mausoleum in the Turkish town of Bodrum and ended ten days and 350 miles later at a nude beach on the Greek island of Naxos. A bike route that begins with crypts and ends with public nudity might seem odd, but in Greece and Turkey the ghosts of the past and the pleasures of the present happily coexist. Combining small portions allowed us to explore two cultures, and our criteria were simple: ocean views and ancient ruins.
After an olive-and-tomato breakfast in Güllük, we continued north and soon hit the Laba Dagi Mountains. We’d creep uphill, negotiating a steady slalom of sheep dung, and then race down the other side at 40 mph before hitting the next hill. At the end of our second 40-mile day we turned off the main road at a rotting wooden sign that indicated the village of Kapikiri. Instantly, trucks gave way to donkey carts, tinkling cowbells replaced blaring horns, and pantaloon-wearing women harvested vegetables in boulder-strewn fields. Dead tired, we checked into the Pelikan Pansiyon, a rustic inn just beyond the village’s medieval walls, and slept until we had to pedal off early the next morning. Over the next two days we worked our way 50 miles north through mountains and along ragged coast to the port town of Kusadasi, our launching point for Greece.

Greek ferries were made for bike touring. On a bike, you’re always the first on and the first off, blowing past waiting cars. On deck, you’re treated to an intimate view of Greek life: grandmothers unwrap tin foiled family feasts while teenage lovers neck behind the snack bar. After two hours, we stepped onto the sultry island of Samos, famous for its orchids and sweet wine. We ditched our panniers at the Hotel Samos, near the ferry terminal in the main town of Vathí, and set off to explore.
Ten miles over the island’s hilly spine we arrived in Pythagorio, where Pythagoras, the man who tormented generations of students with a2+b2=c2, was born 2,500 years ago. From Pythagorio we headed west, winding through olive groves and hill towns on one of the best 20-mile rides of our lives.
After sampling Samos, we jumped a ferry west to the Cyclades Islands and disembarked five hours later on Naxos, a windswept island that supplied the ancient world with marble. Checking into the Hotel Adriani was like dropping in on friends. The cheerful owners, father and son, welcomed us with a toast of kitron, a lemony elixir distilled only on the island.
The next morning, four of us biked 20 grueling mountain miles to Apollonas, on the island’s lonely northern tip, only to find that all the residents had left to attend a funeral. We headed back, parched and slightly delirious, stopping at a nude beach. With the cove to ourselves, we stretched out on the hot pebbles and soaked up the fading warmth of dusk. In that sublime moment I felt—like the bohemian writer Lawrence Durrell before me—”rocked and cherished by the present and past alike.”

Hiking the Dingle Peninsula

Getting lost—and found—on Ireland’s ancient tangle of trails

Rock on: a coastal vista along the trail

The path cut through undulating hillsides of green gorse and purple heather. Sheep danced away as we neared. We had walked alone for hours—lost—when two hikers appeared ahead. We prayed that they were shepherds who could guide us back to civilization, but instead we met two schoolteachers from New Hampshire, also lost. Our lyrical guidebook, The Dingle Way Companion, read, “Cross the field diagonally, clear a stile set in a stone wall and drop down through boughs of fuchsia, entwined as if in prayer. . . .”
Recreational hiking is still an emerging sport in Ireland, where working the fields once left little time for constitutionals. Nobody knows that better than Joss Lynam, the 78-year-old author and patriarch of Irish hiking, who led the push to expand the National Waymarked Ways (just Ways, for short), which link about 1,910 miles of ancient bog paths, goat spoors, and fisherman’s trails. “If you’re chasing sheep over the hills five days a week, you don’t want to do it on the weekend,” said Lynam. That’s changing. In 1991 there were only 12 Ways. Today there are 33. But Lyman was no help to us now, and in a late-afternoon routine that we repeated daily, we hitchhiked, wet, hungry, and happy back to our hotel.
There are no huts along the Ways, but farmers allow camping, and trails often pass through or near towns with hotels, hostels, and B&Bs. On this trip last fall, my wife and I fell for the village of Dingle and its cobblestone streets; blue, green, and orange row houses; and dark pubs. So instead of hiking the entire 95-mile Dingle Way, which hugs the perimeter of southwest Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula, we stayed for three days on the outskirts of town at spacious, modern Greenmount House, an inn with ocean views. We took daily hikes averaging 14 miles, crossing green fields and stark beaches. Mornings began with a buffet of smoked salmon and homemade breads and jams before we headed west from the inn through intermittent rain. We would survey Dingle’s harbor, looking for the wild but fish-begging dolphin named Fungi, then pick a direction and go.
On the flanks of 1,693-foot Mount Eagle, about five miles west of Dingle, we stood among the cattle and wildflowers, watching the morning mist rise to reveal craggy islands to the west and 3,000-foot Brandon Mountain to the north. We stopped to pluck blackberries. We stopped at the medieval ruins of Menard Castle and Celtic stone huts called clochain. We stopped to watch gannets dive from their cliffs into the water below, and we stopped to check the “guidebook.” Eventually we found a road and stuck out our thumbs.
On our final day, we walked through spongy, shoe-sucking peat bogs to the tip of Dingle Peninsula. Atop sandstone cliffs we looked down 500 feet to islets and caves. Later, when we were lost—again—we stumbled onto Kruger’s pub. After an hour of listening to the Gaelic tongue of farmers, we forged on, content to let the landscape lead the way. Finding our inn was a bit less important after the pub’s cool Guinness and hot whiskey.

Mountain Biking in Provence

Meet the Moab of France—sweet singletrack enhanced by olive groves and better wine

C’Est magnifique: the vineyards of Provence

At some point along a meandering ridge trail called the Grande Randonnée 9, the thought took hold: The region around Apt, in southern France, is a kissing cousin to that mountain-biking mother lode, Moab. Both areas are sun-drenched convergences of startling geology, sudden inclines, and long vistas, crisscrossed with technical trails. Apt even shares Moab’s Mars-colored riding surfaces—the powdery, ocher-infused dirt of Provence glows as lustrous as Utah’s sandstone. It just hurts a lot less when you biff on it.
But I had to set my revelation aside when the GR 9 turned abruptly to the right, sauntered among the stone ruins of a castle, plunged down an ivy-laced ravine, and skirted olive groves. When the ride finished in a town with cobblestone streets so narrow my bike could barely pull a U-turn, Moab’s fast-food franchises and prefab motels seemed, well, an ocean and a continent away.
Like the Impressionist painters who moved to Provence for the astonishing intensity of its light, mountain bikers also find much to their liking here. With more than 300 days of sunshine a year and frost-free winters, Provence’s riding season is long and hassle-free. The widely spaced trees—cedar, oak, juniper, and eucalyptus—keep trail duff and deadfall clutter to a minimum.
I first rode Provence three years ago. Near Nostradamus’s hometown of Salon-de-Provence, I snuffled down singletrack brimming with rosemary and thyme. On my second trip, I ventured farther inland to the Parc Naturel Régional du Lubôron, 637 square miles encompassing the 11,500-person village of Apt, as well as winemaking estates, lavender fields, rugged slopes as high as 3,690 feet, and startlingly phallic ocher formations.
A stop at Gassou Shop, on the west side of town, got me pointed to Apt’s trademark playground, Le Colorado Provençal, a canyon six miles to the northeast. The Colorado Provençal ride is one of many possibilities; hundreds of miles of riding trails surround Apt. Ridable chemins (roads) and sentiers (trails) spider up, down, and over the 31-mile-wide Lubéron range.

Once at the canyon, I followed the yellow markings that denote mountain-bike-friendly trails, spinning up a gentle grade to the rim. Birdsong and golden light made the preserve’s wind-eroded dirt pillars appear celestial, but still damn weird. As in Arches National Park, cyclists are banned from pedaling sensitive formations; unlike in Utah, the sights loom yards, not miles, away. The seven-mile loop concludes with a rollicking descent.
Each evening, I returned to the affordable (about $40 per night) Hôtel L’Aptois, on Apt’s eastern edge, to prepare for French post-ride refueling. Among several unpretentiously good restaurants, Au Petit Saint Martin stands out: a romantic room inside the chef’s house, tucked into a labyrinth of backstreets that a certain automobile-obsessed nation would have bulldozed long ago. On Saturdays, Apt hosts a bustling outdoor market where your euros buy fresh cherries and criminally good $4 bottles of Côtes du Lubéron wine.
Eight days in Apt coated my bike with grit the same hue that Provence native Paul Cézanne used in his palette. Too bad that when I flew home, U.S. customs officials washed the bike to keep our shores free of hoof-and-mouth disease—I wanted to spread ocher dust all over home.

Paddling the Tromsø Archipelago

The search for an Arctic Eden beneath Norway’s midnight sun

The arctic landscape of Norway

Catch a break from the North Wind, paddle 24 miles, and trust the advice of a modern-day Viking named Bent, and we just might make it to Eden. That’s the plan as Tim Conlan, the leader of our sea-kayaking expedition, spreads his nautical charts out on the dune grass inside our lavvu, an indigenous Scandinavian tepee. Twig in hand, he sketches the route to a long, sandy beach on the island of Rebbenesøya. There, in a crescent-shaped bay, awaits Eden, or at least that’s what Conlan’s sailing buddy Bent indicated on the chart. And as we were besieged at our first campsite by voracious sheep, thwarted the next day by a headwind so fierce it took us an hour to paddle a mile, and kept off the water by heavy gusts on our third day, this idyllic campsite—beachfront property, with freshwater streams and majestic ridges—sounds like Valhalla. We agree to an early start (4:30 a.m.) and pray that the wind abates.

We’re four days into a ten-day kayak tour through the thousands of mountainous islands west of Tromsø, well above the Arctic Circle and about 1,100 miles north of Oslo. The Tromsø archipelago covers about 450 square miles, and the rugged coast reminds me of the High Sierra, only with the valleys flooded by the sea. The region’s wide fetches and channels leave us exposed to the wind, and our progress has been slow. In fact, by the end of the trip we’ll have managed only 64 miles of a planned 100. Fortunately, the hilarity of tackling language barriers and debates about everything from polar bears to taxes to Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe will have gelled our international team during the wind-enforced downtime.
Ten of us—four Americans, three Swedes, a German, a Brit, and an Afrikaner-Canadian—signed on for this Nordic ramble with Crossing Latitudes, Conlan’s Bozeman, Montana-based guide service. For seven years, Tim and his Swedish business partner and wife, Lena, have led kayak trips south of Tromsø, threading the granite towers of Lofoten and island-hopping the skerries of Vester&3229;len. The Conlans wanted to know what’s around the next fjord, so they arranged this exploratory, as outfitters call trips they have yet to complete themselves and run with experienced clients to gauge feasibility.
Aside from paddling, we’ve played spirited matches of the Viking game kubb (think horseshoes with rocks) and hiked to the top of Haaja, a 1,600-foot peak with a dead-drop to the breakers below. Aside from the sheep incident, our campsites have been untracked, snug in the curve of dunes or perched on low bluffs, and we’ve taken full advantage of the midnight sun. Last night, sensing a lull after dinner, we hit the water and covered 18 miles between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m., all the while reveling in the strange, affecting glow. It may cause insomnia, but the midnight sun sustains you, too, as if you were a plant in bloom. The one thing you don’t want to do here is flip your kayak: The water is a frigid 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
It takes about seven hours of paddling over two days to get there, and then, finally, we surf a two-foot break into the deserted beach on Rebbenesøya, and Bent’s Eden is, well . . . fallen, but beautiful. Several detonated mines from World War II lie half buried in the dunes. We beachcomb and scramble up the ravines behind camp and drink from snowmelt streams that trickle through mountain birch. Scores of bright forget-me-nots, carnivorous sundews, and budding multe (cloudberries) crowd our feet. Above us, a sea eagle soars.
Conlan concedes he won’t rush to add Tromsø to his outfitted trips. Nevertheless, he’s considering a second Troms” exploratory trip for 2003, farther north, where the archipelago hides more-secluded coves of glacier-smoothed rock and sun.
Access and Resources:
Crossing Latitudes (800-572-8747, ). Offers guided kayak trips in Sweden and Norway. Wilderness Center (011-47-77-69-60-02, ) and the Vesterålen Padleklubb (011-47-776-12-40-73) in Troms” rent kayaks and/or provide transport for put-in and take-out. For relatively inexpensive lodging in Troms”, try Ami Hotel bed and Breakfast (doubles, $81-$93 per night; 011-47-77-68-22-08, ). For information, contact the Norwegian Tourist Bureau (212-885-9700, ). For backcountry planning, contact the Oslo offices of Den Norske Turistforening, the Norwegian equivalent of the Sierra Club (011-47-22-82-28-00, ).

The Power to Move You

More self-propelled adventures

(SKATING)
THE ELFSTEDENTOCHT // THE NETHERLANDS
The Elfstedentocht (meaning “11 cities tour” and pronounced however you see fit) ice-skating race covers a stupefying 124 miles over the frozen canals, lakes, and streams of the northern Dutch province of Friesland. Of course, to have a 124-mile race, you need 124 miles of ice—a winter-weather miracle that has happened only 15 times since 1906 (the last time in 1997). To guarantee your go at the course, forget the ice skates and try in-line instead. The race route is a clockwise loop from Leeuwarden, Friesland’s capital, past flower-filled meadows, pristine lakes, and quaint villages—particularly Hindeloopen, a conglomeration of windmills and clock towers. You’ll skate mainly on perfectly paved, wide-berth bike paths, and when you do have to mix with traffic, Dutch drivers will always brake for you. Nonetheless, if your plan is to tick off all 124 miles, sign up with Amsterdam-based Skate-A-Round (011-31-20-4-681-682, ), which offers self-guided tours of four or five days for about $123 and $237 respectively, including hotels and some meals (the five-day tour stops at more-expensive hotels and includes more meals per day). You roll solo but get the convenience of luggage transport, maps, and an information guide on what to see en route.

(TREKKING)
THE GR 20 // CORSICA
One look at Corsica’s coastline, its time-forgotten villages, and its mountainous middle and you just might join the local separatist movement to boot French rule so you can keep the Mediterranean isle for yourself. Yes, politicos do get shot here, but the 26-year-old insurgence involves mainly nuisance attacks: wee-hour, low-power bombings that target government outposts—never tourism, the island’s bread and butter. The best spot for your tour of duty is the GR 20, a 125-mile Grande Randonnée (really big walk) that cuts a diagonal path from Calenzana, in the northwest, to Conca, in the southeast. This is one of the most stunning—and challenging—mountain hikes in Europe. It’s segmented into 15 stages of six to seven hours each, loaded with dense pine forests, moonscape plateaus, glacial lakes, and flowery valleys. The route is meticulously marked and well traveled, especially in July and August, but beware: By trail’s end, your total altitude gain will be nearly 35,000 feet, much of it over rocky and exposed terrain. There are bare-bones hostels and campgrounds at the end of each stage, but no provisions—and very little water—in between. For help planning your route, visit the tourism office of the Parc Naturel Régional de Corse (011-33-4-95-51-79-00, () in Ajaccio, the island’s capital. French travel agency Nouvelles Frontières () offers eight- or 15-day guided trips for $700-$1,250.

The Power to Move You

More self-propelled adventures

(CANOEING)
THE GAUJA RIVER // LATVIA
Sandwiched between Estonia and Lithuania on the Baltic coast, Latvia is a growing blip on the ecotourism radar. And for good reason: More than half the country, which is slightly larger than West Virginia, is unadulterated nature. Much of the terrain is languid and low-lying—sprawling pastures, wooded groves, marshlands crowded with cranes and peregrines—but things turn dramatic at the town of Sigulda, 31 miles northeast of Riga, Latvia’s vibrant capital. This is your gateway to 227,000-acre Gauya National Park, and particularly to the Gauja River, which cuts a choice 56-mile path through dolomite cliffs and sandstone ravines. Makars Tourist Agency in Sigulda (011-371-924-4948, ) arranges three-day self-guided canoe trips for $62 per boat, including transportation to and from the river, gear, and camping fees. The trip starts in the northern bounds of the park, at the village of Valmiera, and you float back to Sigulda along the Gauja’s broad, rapids-free waters. Certain sections practically boil with trout and salmon, and the banks are thick with beavers, otters, and the occasional lynx. You’ll stop at riverside campsites, some of which have hiking trails that meander into the park’s deep forests and valleys.

(CAVING)
THE TATRAS MOUNTAINS // POLAND
Straddling Poland and Slovakia, the Tatras Mountains are an irresistible draw for European tourists. They come for the alpine summits (the highest is Mount Rysy, 8,198 feet) and world-class skiing. But if you want to get off the beaten path, go under it—into one of the range’s stalactite-studded caves, the patient result of carbonic acid eating away at the mountains’ limestone base over the millennia. Try the handful of easy-access caverns open to the public on the Polish side, notably the Mrozna cave, a horizontal jut 1,676 feet long. A one-hour underground tour follows a high-ceilinged path amid startling stalactites and trickling streams. The tourist office at the gateway town of Zakopane (011-48-18-201-22-11, ) is central intelligence for cave information and tour outfits. Tatras Mountain Rescue Team (011-48-18-206-34-44) is your ticket to serious spelunking if you have a modicum of fitness and don’t mind a tight squeeze. In addition to conducting searches, these mountaineers lead trips into hard-to-access or otherwise off-limits areas, particularly the Wielka Sniezna cave, the biggest specimen in the Tatras at 2,670 feet deep and 11 miles long. Guide services cost $100-$200 per day, by reservation only.

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WARNING: If you are pregnant, or have kids of any age, read on. This report contains information guaranteed to provide you with the premier places to rest you head. Then rip it in the great outdoors with your wee ones.

Cheating on Vacation: Cheat Mountain Club’s lodge

CHEAT MOUNTAIN CLUB
Durbin, West Virginia
Thomas Edison visited the Cheat Mountain Club in the summer of 1918. Old Tom strung up lights on the lawn and slept beneath the stars—he couldn’t get enough of the fresh air and mountain scenery. Your kids probably will want to do the same, and snooze in the shadows of 4,800-foot peaks and the tall hardwoods of Monongahela National Forest—until, that is, they hear the midnight howl of a coyote.

Built as a private hunting and fishing lodge for Pittsburgh steel barons in 1887, the three-story, hand-hewn log building feels as it might have 100 years ago. The great hall, with oversize maple furniture and a stone fireplace, is perfect for curling up with a book or singing songs by the piano. Hearty meals of fish and game, homemade soups and bread, as well as kids’ fare, are served in the family-style dining room. Children can raid the cookie jar—full of chocolate-chip and oatmeal-raisin goodies—at will.
Out the back door, you can fly-fish Upper Shavers Fork River, known for rainbow, brown, and brook trout. When the lines get tangled, take the afternoon to explore the ten miles of trails that wind through Cheat Mountain’s 180 wooded acres. My kids like the nearby Gaudineer Scenic Area, where a surveyor’s error spared a tract of red spruces, some 100 feet tall and 300 years old.
Afterward, it’s fun to goof off on the three-acre lawn, playing horseshoes or flying kites. As the sun sets, sit on the terrace overlooking the river. You, too, might be tempted to sleep outside. Then again, you’ll want to be well-rested for tomorrow’s adventures.

Enchantment Resort

Sedona, Arizona

Sedona at sunset

After two days exploring the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, my husband, two-year-old son, and I were careening around the hairpin turns of Arizona 89A toward Enchantment Resort, wondering if we’d planned our trip in the wrong order. What could top the Grand? But once we headed into thumb-shaped, pinon-and-juniper-filled Boynton Canyon, with its red walls rising 1,400 feet up on three sides, we felt like we had found our own private park. No crowds! No loud buses!
Set on 70 acres about five miles from New Age Central (Sedona), Enchantment is a modern adobe village, its 71 casitas and main clubhouse painted the same ruddy pink as the canyon’s sandstone walls. The indoor wonders rival the spectacular setting: Top on the list is Mii amo, the new, 24,000-square-foot spa, where haunting flute music greets you as you enter the museumlike space (children under 16 aren’t allowed). From a big menu of body wraps and Ayurvedic treatments, I chose Watsu and a custom facial.

Enchantment makes it easy for parents to indulge: Camp Coyote keeps four- to 12-year-olds busy making dreamcatchers and sand paintings and taking nature walks (our son was too young for the camp, but a grandmotherly babysitter was arranged by the concierge).
Despite my spa retreat and one romantic dinner at the excellent Yavapai restaurant, there was still plenty of family time. One afternoon we hiked the five-mile round-trip to the end of Boynton Canyon, but our favorite activity was simply hanging by the pool. One morning, I sat with a mother of three boys from Boston, watching our kids bat around a giant beach ball and soaking in the astounding view of red pinnacles and buttes. “We thought about taking a day-trip to the Grand Canyon,” she said. “But what could be more beautiful than this?”

Point Reyes Seashore Lodge

Olema, California

Olema, California

Ordinarily a downpour on vacation dampens my spirits, but when we awakened to rain at Northern California’s Point Reyes Seashore Lodge, it only made me want to heap more blankets on the already cozy double beds, laze in front of the crackling fire, and let the rain have its way with the bucolic pasture outside the bay window.
Our sons, Will, 6, and Griffin, 4, however, had food on the brain. So we threw sweatshirts on over our pajamas and trooped through the airy lobby with its 30-foot-long Douglas-fir chandelier and down the stairs to sit next to another fireplace, where we gorged on the continental buffet included in the room rate. Being first in line ensured dibs on the bear claws in the pastry basket. By the time we finished eating, the sky had cleared, changing the morning’s equation.

We know our options well—this 21-room inn is a favored family escape for both active and relaxing weekends. For instance, a two-minute walk out the door puts you on the Rift Zone Trail, which wanders through patches of redwoods along the base of the Coast Range, eventually joining more than 140 miles of trails in the area. My husband, Gordon, wanted to go kayaking in Tomales Bay or horseback riding, but I lobbied for something simpler—a visit to Olema Creek in the backyard. Surrounding the inn’s Douglas-fir-planked lodge are two acres of grass and gardens for play. And three and a half miles west is the surf, which crashes onto beaches with 100-foot-high cliffs along Point Reyes National Seashore.
We poked around Olema Creek and then headed for the Bear Valley Visitor Center, the hub of the National Seashore, via a half-mile trail. My children absorbed wildlife and habitat displays but reached saturation at the replica of a Miwok Indian village. So we turned back to the inn just as a gentle rain began falling.
We could have driven to the nearby lighthouse, or gone to see the local herds of tule elk, or tooled down Highway 1 past a couple of miles of cow pasture to the artsy town of Point Reyes Station. Instead, we returned to the inn’s indoor pleasures. We had everything we needed inside.

The Birches Resort

Moosehead, Maine

The moose of Maine

After 20 minutes cruising in a pontoon boat across Moosehead Lake in central Maine, my three-year-old daughter, Cady, spied the payoff: “I see him! I see him!” she yelled, knocking my husband’s Wisconsin Badgers cap into the chilly water. Sure enough, the lake’s namesake mammal emerged from the woods on spindly legs and nosed along the water’s edge, oblivious to the hum of video cameras.
But the loss of a favorite hat was the sole disappointment at The Birches Resort, a 1930 wilderness sports camp that’s morphed from a hunting outpost into an 11,000-acre family retreat. Situated in the Moosehead Lake region on the west side of the water, The Birches consists of a lakeside lodge with an indoor waterfall and trout tank, 15 hand-built one- to four-bedroom lakeside cabins equipped with hot water, kitchen and bath, and a wood stove or fireplace. That cozy heat source is welcome after a day of hiking or cycling the property’s 40 miles of trails, boating on the 35-mile-long lake, or exploring 1,806-foot Mount Kineo, the largest hunk of flint in the country, with an 800-foot cliff that drops into North Bay.
The Birches is home base for Wilderness Expeditions, which will outfit your crew for its Family ���ϳԹ���s Camp (rafting, kayaking, hiking, and wildlife-watching for ages 12 and up) or a float trip on the lower Kennebec River (ages 5 and up). Though the cabins are equipped with cookware, we opted for the meal plan so we could feast on pancakes and steak in the atmospheric lakeside dining room with its 35-ton fieldstone fireplace. Cady spent the last night of our getaway dancing to folk tunes while the moonbeams skipped across the lake.

Across the Bay Tent and Breakfast

Kachemak Bay, Alaska

Cutting across the glass-smooth surface of Kasitsna Bay

Rare is the Alaska lodge where a whole family can afford to stay long enough to let a day unfold without a hyperactive do-it-all plan. While other places on Kachemak Bay, near Homer in south-central Alaska, can cost three times as much, Across the Bay is more like a deluxe camping community where families sleep in platform tents and join together for shared meals harvested from the backyard garden—a modern commune.
The lodge sits among giant Sitka spruces before a steep mountain on the edge of Kasitsna Bay, and it’s most easily accessible via a 30-minute boat ride or a float plane from Homer. Accommodations are straightforward: five canvas-wall tents with cots, plus a main wooden lodge, a dining room, two outhouses, and a bathhouse. Those aren’t without comforts or elegance, though—a piano, board games, books, and hot chocolate in the lodge, and framed art hanging near stained glass in the, um, outhouse. There’s also a wood-fired sauna with stained glass by a creek.
On a typical afternoon, my three oldest kids played in the tide pools, collecting mussels and arranging sand dollars into castles. Later, guests gathered at the shore for grilled salmon and vegetables. A more adventuresome day could include renting the lodge’s mountain bikes to explore an abandoned road up to Red Mountain, eight miles south, or going on a guided kayak tour along the shoreline, visiting the Herring Islands to watch sea otters and whales.

The Wildflower Inn

Vermont

In full bloom: former dairy far, the Wildflower Inn

Turning your home into a family resort is not a stretch when you have eight children age four to 21. It certainly helps if that home is a former dairy farm ringed with plush green meadows and mountains in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Owners Jim and Mary O’Reilly converted their Federal farmhouse and three red barns atop Darling Hill into the 21-room Wildflower Inn, preserving the agrarian feel without tilling the 570 acres. Now in its 17th season, the Wildflower has become the classic outdoor getaway for Boston families who yearn for forests and fields.
A typical day starts with my three-year-old, Melanie, sucking down the chocolate-chip eyes of a teddy-bear pancake, while five-year-old Jake plays air hockey in the adjoining playroom. Then it’s off to the petting barn to frolic with sheep, goats, calves, and a shaggy donkey named Poppy. On summer mornings, a kids’ nature program runs for two hours, with activities like watching beavers on the Passumpsic River. Parents and older children can check out 12 miles of mountain-bike routes that link with the Kingdom Trails, arguably the finest fat-tire riding in the Northeast. Cruise past the barns on smooth singletrack and you’ll soon be lost in the woods, sweeping up and down a serpentine route.

Back on the farm, play a game of horse (what else?) on the basketball courts and then a set of tennis. Kids’ dinner and a movie are waiting at Daisy’s Diner, a converted barn. But after a full day, my little ones are content to lie on the grass and look for Orion—Vermont’s version of nightlife.

Bluefin Bay on Lake Superior

Tofte, Minnesota

I took my family to Minnesota’s Bluefin Bay, ironically, to escape the Midwest. For a group of displaced East Coasters like us, life in the middle can be hard at times. Along with decent bagels and attitude, we miss being on the edge of a continent and looking out. From the deck of our townhouse at the Bluefin Bay, though, we could gaze across the 31,800-square-mile expanse of Lake Superior and leave the prairie far, far behind.
A collection of 70 blue clapboard split-level buildings stacked around a rocky cove, Bluefin Bay recalls the Norse fishing villages that lined Superior’s northern coast a century ago. The airy suites and full-kitchened condominiums have vaulted ceilings and natural wood beams, fireplaces (to take the edge off breezy summer evenings), and stunning lake views that practically pour in through huge picture windows.
Guests are welcome to use the resort’s boats free of charge, and we spent days on the water, paddling over century-old shipwrecks with a certified sea-kayak guide and canoeing the coast on our own. Those willing to tear themselves away from the lake can explore Bluefin’s other backyard: Superior National Forest, a pristine 2.1-million-acre wilderness crisscrossed by more than 400 miles of birch-lined hiking and mountain-biking trails. Your kids will undoubtedly beg for a trip to the luge-course-like Alpine Slide, just up the road at Lutsen Mountains ski area.
At night, should you choose not to use the barbecues outside, take the crew out for mesquite chicken sandwiches at Breakers Bar and Grill, a walk along the lake from the condos. Or take advantage of the on-site kid programs and enjoy a candlelit dinner for two at the Bluefin Restaurant. The ambience and sound of crashing waves will get you in the mood to fire up the double Jacuzzi in your room. But first, stroll under the moon in the chilly night air, which will firmly remind you, lest you forget, that you’re in northern Minnesota.

Ross Lake Lodge

Ross Lake, Washington

Ross Lake Lodge

The Park Service advises visitors to use caution in the glacial meltwaters of northern Washington’s Ross Lake, a 21-mile-long alpine lake hard by the Canadian border, but the three kids cannonballing off the dock where I was sweating in the sun didn’t care. I looked hesitantly at the glaciers attached to nearby 9,066-foot Jack Mountain and then slipped, ungracefully, into the frigid azure water. Cheers erupted. I managed five gasping backstrokes. And then it was time to fish.
My dockmates piled into a wooden skiff with their dad and their fly rods and trolled away from Ross Lake Resort, a string of 15 floating wooden cabins connected by a serpentine dock and parked on the lake’s south end. Founded in the 1950s, the resort is hemmed in by steep, dark evergreen forest and is the only structure in the Ross Lake National Recreation Area, a stretch of wilderness surrounded by North Cascades National Park. Getting to the unreachable-by-road resort is where the fun begins: After a three-hour drive from Seattle along the North Cascades Highway, we had boarded an old-fashioned Seattle City Light tugboat at Diablo Lake—bearded, pipe-smoking captain at the helm—and then chugged 30 minutes to a flatbed truck that hauled us two miles to a small dock on Ross Lake. From there, a runabout shuttled everyone and everything (bring your own food; there’s no restaurant) across the lake to the resort.

We’d settled into our rooms—accommodations at Ross Lake range from two-person cabins equipped with kitchens, wood stoves, and bedding to a modern, nine-person chalet with enormous picture windows overlooking the lake—and rented our own skiff for the weekend ($70 per day). A few easy hiking trails lead to Ross Lake Dam and 6,107-foot Sourdough Mountain, but we fixed on the view north of us and planned to climb 6,102-foot Desolation Peak. So we boated—followed by a family of four traveling in kayaks ($31 per day)—to the trailhead, casting for rainbows and cutthroat en route. At the summit, the kayaking family caught up with us, and the two youngest members of their expedition surveyed the lake for the best swimming holes to test at sunset.

The Winnetu

Martha’s Vineyard, MA

With miles of untrodden island coastline and a web of bike trails, Martha’s Vineyard is the optimal family getaway, but until recently, with area zoning laws limiting commercial construction, there wasn’t a decent family resort. That changed last summer when Mark and Gwenn Snider opened The Winnetu Inn and Resort at the south end of Edgartown. They demolished the shell of a run-down hotel-cum-condo-building and made a grand shingled New England-style hotel in which every spacious suite affords ocean or dune views.
My family first met Mark as he pulled up in his 1945 fire truck, ringing the bell. This father of three will do almost anything to entertain children. He’s organized pee-wee tennis clinics that start in summer at 8 a.m. and activities like scavenger hunts, arts and crafts, sand-castle contests, and bodysurfing on adjacent three-mile-long South Beach. In the evening, kids can go to the clubhouse for food and games while parents opt for fine dining at the resort’s seaside restaurant, Opus, or head into Edgartown, the island’s oldest settlement.
We favored getting on our rented bikes and hitting the trails. One day we pedaled to Edgartown and took the two-minute ferry across to Chappaquiddick, and then rode to the Cape Poge Wildlife Refuge, a stretch of coast that’s home to threatened piping plovers and ospreys. On our final day, we ventured ten miles to Oak Bluffs, stopping at the windswept dunes of Joseph Sylvia State Beach to swim, and ending at the Flying Horses Carousel, the country’s oldest operating carousel, built in 1876. Not surprisingly, Snider picked us up by boat to escort us back to the resort.

Steinhatchee Landing

Steinhatchee, Florida

Cottage industries: Steinhatchee lodging

As we neared the sleepy fishing town of Steinhatchee (pop. 1,100) on the southeast end of Florida’s Panhandle, my family and I half expected to see Tarzan come swinging through the tangle of moss oaks and silver palms. Far removed from Mickey and his perky pals, we’d ventured into what tourism folks call “Old Florida”—a pre-theme-park haven of lush vegetation, snoozing alligators, and wild turkeys.
Our base in this unhurried paradise was Steinhatchee Landing, a 35-acre resort on the Steinhatchee River, built to resemble a 1920s village of two-story vacation cottages, many of them Cracker-style (the term “cracker” refers to the state’s early settlers, who cracked long whips to herd cattle). Each has a tin roof, a big front porch, and all the modern conveniences—microwave, stereo system, washer and dryer, VCR, and even a refrigerator pre-stocked with soda. Though just 12 years old, the place enticed us to savor the syrupy-slow pleasures of past generations: listening to crickets, fishing for shiners off the dock, and watching the sun melt like red sherbet into the Gulf.

When my husband, daughter, and I felt like budging from the porch swing, we found much to do: We swam in the riverside pool, paddled canoes, and rode bicycles on the dirt trails through the resort into town. On a sunset pontoon cruise, our guide pointed out rare brown pelicans guarding their nests. One afternoon we drove 50 miles and soaked, under a canopy of cypress, gum, ash, and maple trees, in the clear, 72-degree waters at Manatee Springs State Park, where an industrious spring churns out 81,250 gallons every minute. Entrance fees at some 30 natural springs and state parks, all within an hour of the resort, are waived for Steinhatchee guests.

Park Places

National parks often get the drive-by treatment: Vacationing families cruise in for the day, climb out of the minivan at a few major vistas, and then high-tail it out for the night. These lodges, in five of America’s most revered parks, will guarentee you linger.

Yosemite National Park

LeConte Lodge
Rugged folks once farmed much of the rocky ground that Great Smoky Mountains National Park occupies, and their abandoned homesteads remain the park’s most popular attractions. But only at LeConte Lodge can you live as the pioneers did. Getting to the lodge requires a 5.5-mile hike to the top of 6,593-foot Mount LeConte, on the Tennessee side of the park. Once you;re there, you’ll find rough log cabins, lantern light, and family-style Southern cooking. The lodge sits at a crossroads of trails, making it an ideal launchpad for day hikes. ($82 per adult, $66 per child, including breakfast and dinner; 865-429-5704; ; open late March to mid-November)
Montecito-Sequoia Lodge
At Montecito-Sequoia Lodge, near California’s Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, children head off for supervised riding, boating, swimming, hiking, or tennis, while parents are free to enjoy the park on their own—perhaps hiking among the giant sequoias or granite domes. Families rejoin for meals and to sleep in basic rooms in a 24-room pine lodge or one of four cabins, with sweeping mountain views, arrayed between a small lake and a swimming pool. ($760-$855 per week per adult, $690-$800 per child; 800-227-9900; ; open year-round; reserve a year in advance)

Bear Track Inn
At the doorstep of Glacier Bay National Park is the Bear Track Inn. With its huge-log facade and vast fireplace warming the common room, it’s got Alaskan ambiance down pat. It’s also the area’s most luxurious accommodations, offering elaborate meals and 14 high-ceilinged guest rooms with down comforters. Bear Track Inn looks out on a field of wildflowers; beyond lies the ocean and the community of Gustavus—a springboard for sea kayaking among whales, fishing for salmon and halibut, and taking a boat ride into the park to see the glaciers. ($432 per person per night, including ferry from Juneau and all meals; 888-697-2284; ; open May through September)
Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort
Pure bliss is found in the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort’s marquee attraction after a day of exploring Washington’s Olympic National Park. The three geo-thermal pools are a mineral-water delight following a hike along the Sol Duc River—where salmon jump the crashing falls—and up through mossy forest to tree line and the tiny alpine lakes above. Kids may prefer the freshwater swimming pool to the hot springs. When everyone has reached prune state, retreat to your cabin in the rainforest. ($130 for two people in a deluxe cabin with kitchen, $110 for two without kitchen, $15 per night for each additional person; 360-327-3583; ; open March-October)
Tenaya Lodge
At the southern entrance to Yosemite National Park, Tenaya Lodge offers a national-park experience that’s more like a California resort vacation. The lodge sits like a mansion on land surrounded by forest and park, and its rooms have niceties like plush chairs and Gold RushÐ heirlooms. TenayaÕs kid-only activities include a twilight flashlight hike&3151;or take the whole family to ride horses into Mariposa Grove, swim in two pools with underwater sound systems, and cruise on a nearby steam railway. ($209-$299 per night, double occupancy; 800-635-5807; ; open year-round)

Slope Sides

Ski resorts have realized how perfect their alpine playgrounds are for summertime family getaways. They’re opening their slopes to mountain bikers and hikers, ratcheting up adrenaline levels at kids’ adventure camps, expanding day care, and offering lodging deals in the off-season. Here, four of the summer’s best.

Utah’s Wasatch Range

Westin Resort & Spa, Whistler
In summer, Whistler’s still-snow-covered Blackcomb glacier attracts planeloads of serious skiers and boarders, and an equal share of vacationing families who love the novelty of British Columbia skiing in the morning and rafting the Class II Green River׫or hiking in Garibaldi National Park, or soaring in a tandem paragliderÑin the afternoon. The Westin Resort & Spa (888-634-5577; ) offers posh suites with kitchens that start at about $118 (American) a night. Splurge on a body wrap at the hotel’s Avello Spa and Health Club while your children play in the Whistler Kids program (18 months to 12 years, about $43 per day or $25 per half-day, including lunch; 800-766-0449; ).
The Mountain Suites at Sundance Resort
A sanctuary of handsome, weathered buildings in a quiet canyon outside Provo, Utah, Sundance Resort has a mission: to foster creative expression, communion with nature, and environmental stewardship. In that spirit, youngsters at Sundance Kids camp (ages three to 12, $50 per day) begin the day with yoga, followed by photography, jewelry, and pottery sessions. Mom and Dad can take similar classes at the resort’s Art Shack studios. Stay in a Mountain Suite and you’ll be steps away from horseback riding, lift-served mountain biking, and hiking trails in the Wasatch Range. Decorated with Native American textiles, each one-bedroom suite ($450 per night) sleeps four and has a kitchen (800-892-1600; ).

Condos at Sun Valley Resort
Idaho’s Sun Valley, escape of the rich and famous since 1936, becomes a laid-back, family-friendly hiker’s paradise when the snow melts. Eighty miles of trails zigzag through Sawtooth National Recreation Area, and lifts allow even the youngest children to reach the incredible vistas on 9,000-foot Bald Mountain. Parents can go cast on the holy waters of the Salmon River while kids rock climb and ride horses at Sun Valley Day Camp (ages six months to 14 years, $59-$90 per day and $49-$64 per half-day; 208-622-2288; www.sunvalley.com). You’ll have room to spread out when you rent a condo through Sun Valley Resort (800-786-8259; ) or Premier Property Management (800-635-4444; ). One- and two-bedroom units cost $180-$300 per night.
Steamboat Grand Resort Hotel
With 50 miles of steep, boulder-strewn singletrack, Steamboat Springs, Colorado, vies with Mammoth as one of the country’s primo downhill-mountain-biking hot spots. And Steamboat Kids ���ϳԹ��� Club’s mountain-bike clinic lets nine- to 12-year-olds get in on the fun. Younger kids are also welcome at the ���ϳԹ��� Club (ages three to 12, $48 per day; 970-871-5390; ). For easy trail access, stay at the 328-room Steamboat Grand Resort Hotel. Each luxurious one-bedroom suite sleeps six and costs $225 per night (877-269-2628; ).

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