Location is Everything

Wanna live where the action is? The goal: trails out the back door, a serious Saturday-morning peloton, whitewater just up the road, and neighbors eager to join in. Our source: the best adventure athletes in America, who tell us where they live and why. The result: 20 communities where locals work, train, and play hard. Start packing.

Bellingham, Washington

New Paltz, New York

Boulder, Colorado

Sebastopol, California

Madison, Wisconsin

Bend, Oregon

Asheville, North Carolina

Durango, Colorado

Truckee, California

Haleiwa, Hawaii

The Gore-Tex Vortex

Bellingham, Washington

Population: 72,320

Paddlers in this hilly green outpost 90 minutes north of Seattle get it both ways: Bellingham offers back-door access to the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound, and it’s a launching pad to Canada’s Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island. Kayakers putting in on Bellingham Bay can ogle sandstone bluffs south of town, the San Juans on the western horizon, and the 10,778-foot volcanic summit of Mount Baker—all in one sweeping glance. The beginner-friendly local kayakers’ club, WAKE (Whatcom Association of Kayak Enthusiasts), gathers for frequent training sessions, gear exchange, and group paddles on 4,971-acre Lake Whatcom, on the eastern edge of town. Come spring, informal Wednesday-night races on the lake draw as many as 70 boats. Inevitably, all excursions end up downtown at Boundary Bay brewpub. Johnson Outdoors, parent company of Necky and Ocean Kayaks, has a regional branch just up the road in Ferndale, and Sterling’s Kayaks and Fiberglass, a custom-boat and repair shop, is a local fixture. Though residents tend to describe the job market as underwhelming, things seem to be perking up: Inc. magazine just applauded Bellingham as a boomtown for small techie startups like Microstaq.

REALITY CHECK:
“It rains a lot,” says WAKE president Ted Ullman. “Everybody gets moss between their fingers.”

NEXT BEST:
Bar Harbor, Maine. Chilly 50-degree water and droves of summer visitors to Acadia National Park are givens—but so are 100-plus-foot cliffs, bald eagles, seals, and the lovely Porcupine and Cranberry island chains. Membership in the Maine Island Trail Association provides access to 350 miles of coast and campsites.

New Paltz, New York

Population: 13,469

“The climbing here is so accessible, and there’s so much of it—we have literally years’ worth of routes,” says Evan Marks, who runs the New Paltz–based Web site Gunks.com. That’s Gunks as in Shawangunks, of course, the ridges that loom 200 feet above the orchards and farmlands between the Hudson River and the Catskills, just outside this college town 90 miles north of New York City. The Nature Conservancy dubbed the Gunks, with their quartz-conglomerate cliffs and cold-running streams, one of earth’s “Last Great Places.” Hundreds of climbers who come here each weekend from the city and points beyond—many of whom eventually put down roots in this community of SUNY–New Paltz undergrads, artists, homeschoolers, and tie-dyed street drummers—don’t argue the point. More than 100 miles of old carriage trails on protected lands nearby, like the Mohonk Preserve and Minnewaska State Park, lead to some 800 routes, including such classic face climbs as Survival of the Fittest, boulder problems like Genghis Khan (a 40-foot overhanging cave), and hundreds of short single-pitch routes ranked 5.9 or lower. Amid the 300-year-old stone houses downtown, Rock and Snow is both gear emporium and gossip channel, and the beer list at Bacchus—400 strong—helps amplify untold numbers of postclimb recaps.

REALITY CHECK:
Easy access for city dwellers can mean overcrowded trails, especially during high-season weekends.

NEXT BEST:
Bishop, California. You’ll find more than 800 sport-climbing routes on volcanic rock in the Owens River Gorge, northwest of town, and some 3,000 bouldering problems within an hour’s drive. And you’re just a few hours from the storied big walls of Yosemite and world-class ice climbing in the eastern Sierra.

Boulder, Colorado

Population: 101,718

Is there anything quite so humbling as being a run-of-the-mill athlete in Boulder? After all, the guy leading spinning classes at Flatiron Athletic Club is six-time Hawaii Ironman winner Dave Scott. The co-owner of the Boulder Running Company is Mark Plaatjes, former world-champion marathoner; another local runner, Alan Culpepper, finished fifth this year at Boston. Triathletes migrate here to train. The University of Colorado ski team just bagged its 17th national title. Throw a dart in the air and there’s a fair chance it will land on an Olympian—more than 60 live in Boulder County, by one recent tally. Why do so many end up here? Because the 300-plus sunny days and 5,430-foot altitude make for ideal year-round training. Because the town’s decades-long status as Adrenaline Central has spawned a microeconomy catering to jocks: 3-D bike fittings at the Center for Sports Medicine; discount Zen shiatsu sessions at the College of Massage Therapy; mountain-bike clinics with a former pro racer at Outdoor Divas, a shop on the Pearl Street Mall. Because the city owns 43,000 acres of open space with more than 130 miles of trails for hiking, horseback riding, and cycling. Because there’s a bona fide job market, anchored by the university and knowledge-economy stalwarts like IBM, Sun Microsystems, Ball Aerospace, and brainiac federal labs. When it comes to measuring a place by sheer athletic excellence per square mile . . . top it or drop it.

REALITY CHECK:
Think life in America’s favorite outdoor mecca would be dreamy? Careful what you wish for. Click here to read Marc Peruzzi’s take on “The Gore-Tex Vortex.”

NEXT BEST:
Burlington, Vermont. Recipe for a multisport boomtown: Combine Green Mountain skiing, Smugglers’ Notch climbing, and Long Trail hiking. Blend in sailing and paddling on massive Lake Champlain. Top off with a thriving arts scene and direct flights to NYC. Shake, then chill.

Sebastopol, California

Population: 7,794

Apple orchards put this Sonoma County refuge for freethinkers on the map, but these days local pursuits in the name of holistic living go way beyond picking a few Gravensteins and baking a pie. At first glance it’s a pleasantly retro Russian River Valley farm town: good schools, a Methodist church framed by palm trees, rolling vineyards, quirky folk-art sculptures assembled from salvaged junk in front yards along Florence Avenue. Even in the post-hippie enclaves of Northern California, though, you won’t find many small farm towns that contain half a dozen yoga studios, two massage schools, several home-based meditation groups, an Ayurvedic healing center, a Buddhist zendo, a spa offering Japanese enzyme baths, two “equine experiential learning institutes,” and a clinic that treats cancer patients with not only conventional Western protocols but also Chinese medicine, acupuncture, osteopathy, and jin shin jyutsu. “Sebastopol is a hotbed of green/eco/health-conscious lifestyles and businesses,” says David Klein—and as editor of Living Nutrition magazine, which espouses a raw-food diet, he would know. Not too surprisingly, greens dominate town hall, and organics prevail at Andy’s Produce Market and the Sunday-morning farmers’ market. Even an alliance of vegan jocks, OrganicAthlete, is headquartered in town. Local businesses doing well by doing good include Traditional Medicinals (herbal teas) and Gourmet Mushrooms Inc. (suppliers to chefs and nutraceutical labs). If a career in the healing arts isn’t your bag, you can always become a cellar rat: More than 100 Sonoma County wineries are a short commute away.

REALITY CHECK:
Recent transplants from Marin County have helped inflate the median home price past $650,000. But with lots of under-the-radar options—granny units, barns, the occasional yurt—locals aren’t packing their bags.

NEXT BEST:
Santa Fe, New Mexico. A longtime draw for second-home-owning Texans, spa-goers, art collectors, artists, and ski bums with a creative side, the City Different is also a vibrant education center for alternative medicine, with schools like the University of Natural Medicine and the New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts.

Madison, Wisconsin

Population: 220,332

A lot of the adjectives used to describe this Paris of south-central Wisconsin also apply to its cycling scene: inclusive, enlightened, accessible. The bragging starts with infrastructure, thanks to a city government that takes two-wheelers seriously. Over the past 30 years, it has instituted more than 30 miles of well-tended bike paths and 110 miles of on-road bike lanes. For trips under five miles, it’s faster to pedal than drive. Roadies devise endless variations of in-town loops, through parks and the arboretum and around 9,847-acre Mendota and 3,274-acre Monona, glacial lakes that define downtown. For rolling hills, they head for the paved, lightly trafficked farm roads west of town. Hammerheads, novices, and in-betweeners alike sign on for Bombay Bicycle Club rides (twice a week, April to October) and for summer Wisport citizens’ races (one of the few no-license-required race series in the country). Madison is also adored by runners, sailors, paddlers, and fans of locally owned co-ops, restaurants, and organic farms. Many are techie entrepreneurs; others work for the state government, the University of Wisconsin, or economic mainstays like Rayovac.

REALITY CHECK:
In December and January, when average highs dip below freezing and roads grit up with salt and sand, stir-crazy riders may find themselves Googling Tucson.

NEXT BEST:
Austin, Texas. Good roads, club and charity rides, bike-in movies, nonprofits like the Yellow Bike Project (it recycles used rides into free-floating loaners), and the rolling Hill Country just outside of town. The planned six-mile crosstown Lance Armstrong Bikeway, named for some local guy, will be a great pedal forward.

Bend, Oregon

Population: 70,328

Bend, Oregon

Bend's Steve Larsen picks up speed on the Deschutes River Trail

Bend’s central-Oregon mix-and-match topography—at 3,600 feet, it sits between the Cascade Range and the high desert—has spawned more hyphenated subspecies than Hollywood. It’s even money that the woman on the next barstool over is a climber-snowboarder-dogsledder, a telemarker-triathlete who ties her own flies, or some other ambitious combination. “Trail runner” generally shows up somewhere on the rĂ©sumĂ©. Pity if it didn’t, as the local stats are impressive: 48 miles of in-town trail, plus 11 miles of dirt path along the Deschutes River; 2.5 million acres of Forest Service land nearby; and almost 300 clear-sky days a year. Ultrarunners and 10Kers alike join in weekly club runs that start at FootZone, a shoe store downtown, where microbreweries and martini bars have replaced lumber mills. Bend’s many charms, of course, are no secret—as a city official recently told The New York Times, “a new family [moves] in every hour and a half.” But even with an influx of athletes as diverse as professional cyclist Chris Horner, formerly of San Diego, and Hawaiian surfing icon Gerry Lopez, who moved here in 2001, Bend can hardly be considered crowded. On a five-mile trot, you’re more likely to see a herd of elk or deer than another runner.

REALITY CHECK:
Exurbanites from the Bay Area, Seattle, and Portland have helped drive up home prices—to the tune of more than 50 percent in the past two years.

NEXT BEST:
Charlottesville, Virginia. This one’s a no-brainer, what with Shenandoah National Park, the Appalachian Trail, George Washington National Forest, and the rugged, waterfall-cooled Blue Ridge Mountains all within 20 miles. A burgeoning lineup of off-road races adds to an already sweet mix.

Asheville, North Carolina

Population: 69,338

Thank nature, God, or geological serendipity for the jackpot of whitewater riches in western North Carolina. Home to 6,000-foot Appalachian peaks, the region gets more than 47 inches of rain annually, and the runoff has to go somewhere. Hence the Class V runs on the Raven’s Fork, the Linville, the Toxaway, and the West Prong of the Pigeon, plus hundreds more Class II–IV stretches on the Nantahala, Nolichucky, Tuckaseegee, and Ocoee rivers, all within an hour or so of Asheville. Duke Energy also gets credit for a major assist: The power company’s near-daily dam releases on the Green River serve up legitimate Class V whitewater 12 months a year, on a 3.5-mile section known as the Narrows. The Green’s waterfalls, slides, eddies, and boulder gardens, 22 miles south of town, are where elite steepcreekers like Pat Keller and Tommy Hilleke cut their teeth. If no one answers the phone at local businesses like Astral Buoyancy (PFDs) and Liquidlogic (kayaks), they’re probably out there, too. AprĂšs-paddle, head forthe slacker-hip downtown, where art deco facades house indie cafĂ©s, an eclectic music scene, and a core of craftsfolk that rivals any in the nation.

REALITY CHECK:
Asheville’s low unemployment rate (3.5 percent) masks a disconnect between low-paying tourism and service jobs and a steeper-than-average (by Southeast standards) cost of living.

NEXT BEST:
Hood River, Oregon. Cascades snowmelt means Class V thrills on the Little White Salmon, beginners’ training runs on the Klickitat, and something for everyone on the White Salmon and the Hood. When the flow trickles off, there’s boardsailing on the Columbia River, skiing and climbing on Mount Hood, and lots of road and trail cycling.

Durango, Colorado

Population: 15,628

One small detail from the Mountain Bike World Cup time trial that was held here five years ago will tell you all you need to know about Durango. The course ran through the Steamworks Brewing Company, entering where the front window had been removed, passing the bar, and exiting via the side patio. That’s not the only clue that off-road biking trumps most other priorities in this dirthead arcadia, where the undammed Animas River flows past a backdrop of 13,000-foot-plus San Juan peaks. Photos and jerseys autographed by storied local riders—Ned Overend, Juli Furtado, Myles Rockwell—are boilerplate restaurant decor around the Victorian downtown. The Durango Coffee Company sells six different Tom Danielson blends, named for the Discovery-team rider and 2005 Tour de Georgia winner who stuck around after graduating Fort Lewis College. Indoctrination starts early: There’s a junior-high mountain-bike program and a Durango Wheel Club junior development team. Already graduated? Tuesday-night group rides subdivide into levels A through C and head off for terrain that starts right in town—there’s the rolling, 42-mile high-desert Horse Gulch network, the forested singletrack of 40-mile Hermosa Creek, or the steep shale of six-mile Test Track, to name a few. Fast-twitch riders fill up their calendars with weekly time trials and the brutal 48-mile, 5,700-foot-elevation-gain Iron Horse Bicycle Classic to Silverton each May.

REALITY CHECK:
With the Denver and Salt Lake City job markets both more than 300 miles away, all too many starstruck new arrivals join the ranks of advanced-degree holders who end up waiting tables.

NEXT BEST:
Moab, Utah. Why do thousands of riders pilgrimage to this onetime uranium boomtown? Because the prospectors left a thousand miles of singletrack winding over slickrock and through red-rock canyons. The 12,000-foot La Sal Mountains are an uncrowded bonus.

Truckee, California

Population: 15,936

If Truckee hasn’t had nine lives yet, it’s getting close. In the last century and a half, the town, bounded by the Truckee River and jaw-dropping Sierra Nevada mountainscapes, has been a stagecoach stop, a rough-and-tumble lumber-mill town (complete with a red-light district, opium dens, and routine gunfights), and a haunt of golden-age Hollywood movie crews—Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable both filmed on location nearby. These days, Truckee is best known as a locals’ home base in the resort-infested Lake Tahoe Basin, 190 miles northeast of San Francisco and just east of the crest of the Sierra Nevada. That a good number of those locals are freeskiers, ski-film makers, or members of the U.S. ski or snowboard team has much to do with the dozen lift-served mountains within minutes of town: 2,850 feet of vertical at Squaw Valley’s natural amphitheater, the quieter runs and backcountry of Sugar Bowl, and the intermediates’ paradise at Northstar-at-Tahoe, to name a few. On Commercial Row, the brothels are gone, but a funky Wild West feel lives on in Truckee’s downtown historic district, where covered walkways lead to shops, low-key bars, and a wider range of restaurants than a town this size has any right to, from Cal-Asian cafĂ©s to wood-fired- pizza joints. Not surprisingly, tourism accounts for about a third of local jobs, with retail and construction not far behind. But with epic hiking, trout fishing, mountain biking, and whitewater paddling nearby once snow season ends, no one actually comes here to be a workaholic.

REALITY CHECK:
With the year-round population ballooning more than 70 percent since 1990 and golf courses multiplying, debates about growth and development threatening Truckee’s small-town vibe won’t end anytime soon.

NEXT BEST:
Jackson, Wyoming. It’s steep: Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has 4,000-plus feet of vertical drop. It’s deep: Jackson gets about 38 feet of annual snowfall. It’s a leap: off towering cliffs and into narrow couloirs. But it’s definitely not cheap: The average house price tops $1 million.

Haleiwa, Hawaii

Population: 2,225

Surf capitals come and go, but for nearly half a century, one thing hasn’t changed: The road to surfing stardom still rolls right through Haleiwa, gateway to Oahu’s North Shore and some of the sport’s most fabled waves: Pipeline, Sunset, Waimea. In a sense, Haleiwa, which marks one end of the “seven-mile miracle” stretch of beaches and some 40 surf breaks, is two different towns. One materializes every winter, when thousands of fans and photographers follow the planet’s best surfers—including North Shore residents Jamie O’Brien, Pancho Sullivan, and Fred Patacchia—as they converge for high-profile contests like the World Cup and the Pipe Masters, braving sometimes-lethal shallow reefs, monster tubes, and wave faces that can top 30 feet. Once the mobs and the hype (and the swells) die down, the other Haleiwa reappears: a sleepy old sugar-mill town where Jack Johnson learned to strum a guitar at backyard barbecues. It’s a laid-back anti-Waikiki, where feral chickens shriek from the branches of mango trees, locals gear up at any of a dozen or so surf shops and refuel on ahi tacos at Cholo’s, and grandparents cheer on longboarding preteens in the annual Menehune Surf Championships. On the job front, survival often entails doubling up on tourist-related gigs, driving an hour or so to Honolulu, or sponging off your friends. On the surfing front, respect is earned, not granted: Wise newcomers start out at the less hyped, less crowded breaks, such as Kammies or the more challenging Pupukea, until they find their place in the pecking order.

REALITY CHECK:
The good news about real estate on the North Shore: Prices are leveling off. The bad news: The median home price is around $900,000, and even that won’t get you oceanfront. Plan B? Pony up $1,500 to rent a modest one-bedroom until the rep from Quiksilver calls.

NEXT BEST:
Ventura, California. Close to Rincon, one of California’s best point breaks, along with stellar surfing at Emma Wood and Silver Strand—and just far enough from Los Angeles. Ventura hosted the first prize-money surfing contest (in 1965), and it was here that three-time world champ Tom Curren and the surfing/filmmaking Malloy brothers perfected their moves. Ventura’s cool old downtown—wedged up against the foothills a few blocks from the Pacific—is packed with eateries, thrift shops, and bookstores.

The Gore-Tex Vortex

Think life in America’s favorite outdoor mecca would be dreamy? Careful what you wish for.

So you want to move to Boulder, Colorado, the perennial best town in America for (circle one or all depending upon your level of outsideness) roadies, rock jocks, organic consumers, backcountry skiers, mountain bikers, trail runners, ultrarunners, whitewater boaters, alpinists, credit-card environmentalists, New Agers, sellers of waterproof-breathable canine accessories, and those who support prairie dog emancipation at the expense of baseball fields. It's a great place to live, because everyone looks and thinks exactly like you.*

Except they're better than you. Get that straight and you'll fit in. But you'll matriculate quicker if you come with some attitude. Pose if you must. It's the best town in America, for Christ's/Buddha's/Ganesh's/Chris Carmichael's sake. Step up.

But what's it like to live here? Well, Boulder exudes a unique blend of over-the-top liberalism and extreme fitness. How to describe it . . . If Lance Armstrong and Amy Goodman had a love child, the prodigy would drive his Audi A4 to Boulder, buy a Maverick to decorate the roof rack, and then not ride the $5,000 bike because he didn't want to encroach upon mountain lion habitat. Are you feeling the zeitgeist? Some more Boulder color might help:

A Buddhist monk moved into our condo complex. Shaved head, full regalia, real deal. He drives a 30-cylinder pickup truck named after a subarctic ecosystem where trees don't grow and frost lingers.

Two strangers have said the word excelente to me in the past four months.

My barista (Oh, dear Lord, what's happening to me?) to a fellow barista: “Cuba is, like, this paradise. Nothing has changed since, like, the fifties. They drive these old cars and play this great music.” Me: “Cuba? They put AIDS patients in concentration camps and throw journalists in jail for printing the truth.” Barista: “Uh, yeah, but the people are so happy down there. Who had the tall rice-milk latte?”

Need more telling details? The Dunkin' Donuts went out of business, but the oxygen bar next door to the gay-and-lesbian bookstore seems to be doing well. The panhandlers on the Pearl Street Mall sport $70 sandals and pull in upwards of 25 bucks an hour. Did anybody mention that the median sale price of a home here is $525,000? That's $302,000 more than the national figure. The best don't come cheap. If that's too pricey for you, maybe you should check out Burlington or Santa Fe. Oh, right: bad sushi.

OK, that's all lifestyle stuff that comes with living in a town that has a large contingent of soft-palmed check-of-the-month-clubbers. Could just as easily be Marin County. Buy a meditation table, slap a GO VEGAN! sticker on your roof box, and you'll blend. You're here for the fitness pursuits anyway.

Except that's where Boulder gets weird. In most American towns, outdoor-sports aficionados are part of an elite counterculture minority. Mountain bikers and climbers have cachet. Not so in Boulder. Recreating outdoors is the norm here, and it's in your face. There's always some horse-toothed mountain-town equivalent of Laird Hamilton ready to kick your athletic pride through the dirt. Remember the 2005 Tour, when T-Mobile kept attacking Discovery, trying to break Lance? That's what a casual bike ride is like in Boulder. Strangers attack. Old guys with gray beards and steel bikes attack. Reach for a shot of Gu and even your friends attack. And women: Women always attack—they're the worst.

Even slow guys like me attack. The other day I was reeling in a pro cyclist on a brutal local climb. My heart rate was near its max, but I was feeling good. I was in the zone. Maybe four years of living in Boulder have paid some fitness dividends, I thought.

Then I figured it out: He's between intervals, and once his heart rate drops below 65 bpm, he's gone. At least he said “No offense” before he accelerated.

It doesn't matter what sport you do; you will suffer similar humiliation. Go nordic skiing in North Boulder Park and two Olympians shout “Track!” from a meter back. Climb the Flatirons only to learn that someone once ascended in Rollerblades. Get Maytagged in a hole while paddling Boulder Creek and a World Cup champion slalom kayaker will toss you a rope bag. Running? Not me, not in Boulder. Boulderites run like gazelles. Fancy yourself a mountaineer? The waiters at Sherpa's have summited Everest. But at least those guys are nice. If Reinhold Messner himself walked into south Boulder's mountaineering shop to buy a carabiner, the sales staff would give him attitude. It's enough to make you revolt against the blue sky (300 sunny days a year), pull down the blinds, and watch NASCAR.

I know what you're thinking. If you don't like it, why don't you get the hell out? I'll tell you why: It's pretty damn nice here, actually. I just bought a German automobile—gonna chip it. My four-year-old has attended two birthday parties in climbing gyms—little dude will be free-soloing soon. Maybe it's the endorphin equivalent of a contact high, but I've never been in better shape. The sun is shining. The prairie dogs in the infield are chirping. One more round of whitening strips and my choppers will be gleaming. Everything's, like, most excelente.

* If your teeth are pearly white and your resting heart rate is below 45 bpm.

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The New American Dream Towns

Welcome to the Neighborhood
We’ve found a new way of living

IMAGINE YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO INVENT A PERFECT TOWN from scratch. You could choose whatever features you wanted to make it a stimulating and satisfying place to live, and borrow liberally from the best of what other cities have to offer. Anything goes: You might start with French Quarter streets lined with painted-lady Victorians from San Francisco. Maybe a river runs through it, with bridges and banks very much like the Seine’s except for the Class III rapids in the whitewater park downtown. Solar-powered streetcars whisk commuters through lush greenbelts to art deco office towers, whose exterior walls double as climbing gyms. There’s free valet parking for bicycles on every block and a free-range chicken in every pot.

Creating an exquisitely livable town, of course, isn’t quite that simple. But it’s not a fantasy, either. When we combed the country for the sweetest innovations and the freshest ideas for making neighborhoods better places to live, work, and play with tons of green space, easy access to the outdoors, and big-think visions for smarter, more sustainable everyday living we hit the jackpot. Plenty of real American cities, we found, are taking positive steps to soften the rough edges of our high-octane day-to-day. Communities of all sizes are waking up and relearning old lessons: That many residents want the option of walking or biking to get from A to B. That locals will swarm to a town’s natural assets its shoreline or lakefront, riverbank or foothills if the paths and piers welcome them. And that change starts with a willingness to look hard at your weaknesses and then play to your strengths. Your town’s paper-flat, like Davis, California? Build a network of bike lanes and paths. It rains a lot in Portland, Oregon? Transform urban rooftops into gardens of native plants.

To spotlight the new American dream towns, we started with a wish list of criteria: commitment to open space, smart solutions to sprawl and gridlock, can-do community spirit, and an active embrace of the adventurous life. We looked for green design and green-thinking mayors, thriving farmers’ markets and healthy job markets. We found it all and then some: ten towns that might tempt you to box up your belongings, plus nine more whose bright ideas are well worth stealing. Check out these shining prototypes for what a 21st-century town what your hometown, perhaps can be: cleaner, greener, smarter. Better.

Salt Lake City, Utah

POPULATION: 182,000 // MEDIAN AGE: 30 // MEDIAN HOME PRICE: $204,300 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 19.2 min.

When the mayor of the largest city in Utah uses his annual State of the City address to evangelize about sustainability, greenhouse-gas reduction, and the downsides of Wal-Mart, you know something’s brewing on the Wasatch Front. The speech, delivered in January by Rocky Anderson, a Democrat elected in 1999, is but one indication that Salt Lake City—a near-perfect location for avid outdoor adventurers—is gradually wriggling itself into the environmental forefront. In 2002, the city government independently latched on to the Kyoto Protocol goals, vowing to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases 21 percent by 2012. Light-rail lines, christened just in time for the 2002 Winter Olympics, reduce auto traffic by funneling 44,000 riders a day in and out of downtown, while the SLC sewage-treatment plant turns released methane into electricity to help run itself. All of this plays to mixed reviews in conservative Utah. “People who live in the city love [Anderson],” says Vicki Bennett, Salt Lake’s environmental- programs manager. “The state legislature hates him.” Politics aside, sunny SLC offers much more than its lingering Donny Osmond stereotype suggests—most notably, quick access to the Wasatch Range’s dazzling canyons and near-12,000-foot peaks.

PROGRESSIVE CRED // Compact fluorescents now light city offices, and traffic signals glow with energy-saving LED bulbs. Plans for a 1.2-million-square-foot west-side “sprawl mall,” as Anderson dubbed it, were tabled after opponents derided its dependence on car traffic and its threat to locally owned stores. On the negative side, because it’s tucked into a smog-collecting basin, air quality in the Salt Lake Valley remains alarming at times. But, hey, you gotta start somewhere.
LIVABILITY // Yes, you can buy a cocktail, and, no, not everyone is a Mormon. (Just under 50 percent of city residents belong to the Church of Latter-day Saints.) Salt Lake earns glowing reviews these days from dog lovers, vegetarians, bookstore browsers, microbrew guzzlers, and especially recreationists. Within an hour lie the crowd-pleasing powder stashes of Alta, Snowbird, Deer Valley, and backcountry chutes galore. Singletrack abounds in Big and Little Cottonwood and five other canyons, and the Provo River is thick with trout. The University of Utah, the LDS church, and Delta Airlines all employ big numbers.
YOU’LL LOVE IT IF // You think living in one of the nation’s most underrated outdoor meccas, in exchange for endless polygamy jokes from your out-of-state friends, is a pretty fair trade.

Littleton, New Hampshire

POPULATION: 6,000 // MEDIAN AGE: 39 // MEDIAN HOME PRICE: $153,000 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 17.7 min.

It would have made a dandy plot line for a Frank Capra picture. Act One: Sleepy North Country burg nestled in the rugged White Mountains reels when 800 shoe-factory jobs vanish. Act Two: Plucky villagers—a mix of blue-collar workers and doctors, lawyers, and teachers—band together to breathe new life into struggling Main Street. Act Three: Vacant storefronts fill, Sunday farmers’ market draws crowds, downtown goes WiFi, and the place not only survives but prospers. What makes the story so compelling is that it’s all true—and it’s taken 30 years and a cast of hundreds to make it unfold. Among Littleton’s recent improvements are a walking path and bridge gracing the Ammonoosuc River, a high school project that brainstormed a way to heat downtown sidewalks in winter (by mixing furnace exhaust with water and glycol, then pumping it through underground tubing), and an effort by pragmatic downtown merchants to zero in on niches that the big-box retailers on the edge of town can’t fill. In short, it’s a cutting-edge model of economic revival overlaid onto a postcard setting.

PROGRESSIVE CRED // Littleton’s unofficial motto seems to be “It takes a committee.” Past and present ones include the Economic Development Task Force, the Riverwalk Committee, Envisioning Littleton’s Future, Littleton Main Street Inc., and—no doubt—more to come. But from those seeds have sprouted plenty of tangible assets: a 200-acre industrial park that accounts for upwards of 1,200 local jobs, a recent push to create more jobs for young people, one of New Hampshire’s top recycling programs, and 145 units of new or refurbished affordable housing. Sprawl is minimal, but so are open-space initiatives: Littleton’s still recovering from double-digit unemployment in the early 1990s, so—at least for now—development tends to win out over conservation.
LIVABILITY // Crime is low, and state sales tax and income tax are nil. The hospital was recently rebuilt, attracting M.D.’s and others from along the I-93 corridor between here and Boston, three hours south. Outdoor playgrounds? Take your pick of flatwater paddling on the Connecticut River, whitewater on the Ammonoosuc, cragging and hiking in the White Mountains, road and mountain biking in every direction, and skiing at Cannon Mountain—where World Cup ski champ Bode Miller learned to bomb.
YOU’LL LOVE IT IF // You don’t mind looking elsewhere for cultural diversity and, well, culture.

Fort Collins, Colorado

POPULATION: 126,000 // MEDIAN AGE: 28 // MEDIAN HOME PRICE: $220,500 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 18.5 min.

This cottonwood-shaded college town in Colorado’s Front Range gets short shrift compared with its strenuously progressive neighbor to the south, but don’t call it Boulder Lite. Fort Collins has more than enough backyard wilderness and green bona fides to hold its own—with less traffic and cheaper real estate. Hometown cred starts with New Belgium Brewing—makers of Fat Tire Amber Ale—which runs its plant on wind power, uses only half the typical amount of water to brew a barrel of suds, and makes local deliveries in trucks fueled by a blend from Blue Sun Biodiesel, another homegrown company. Colorado State University delivers more paychecks than anyone else in town and helps set the eco-conscious tone, with its 212-acre Environmental Learning Center, situated on prime fox-and-heron habitat on the Cache la Poudre River, on the edge of town. CSU’s nearly 25,000 students keep things young and happening, and the lively and walkable Old Town district—with its smoke-free restaurants and bars, Friday-night gallery openings, and summer music and beer festivals—sweetens the mix.

PROGRESSIVE CRED // By buying and leasing 19,000 acres of former ranchland north of town near the Wyoming state line last year, the city locked in a key piece of the Laramie Foothills project, a massive public-and-private plan to keep 55,400 acres of critical wildlife corridor—linking the mountains and the plains—undeveloped. The city itself boasts some 4,300 acres of green space, along with 25 miles of in-town trails and 143 miles of bike lanes. Fort Collins’s Climate Wise program provides free consulting to 33 local businesses—from the Anheuser-Busch plant and CSU to natural grocer Wild Oats—on how to cut greenhouse-gas emissions; strategies include switching to biodiesel and increasing recycling. Three new sustainably designed schools feature solar panels and wind-generated electricity; a geo-exchange system will heat and cool a junior high slated to open next year.
LIVABILITY // Fort Collins’s population jumped 35 percent in the 1990s, and for good reason: Within a couple hours’ drive in every direction lies a ridiculous bounty of backcountry options, including crags and trails in Rocky Mountain National Park (just 40 miles southwest), singletrack in Lory State Park, Summit County powder runs, and whitewater on the Poudre. On the job front, Hewlett-Packard and Eastman Kodak anchor the tech-heavy base, which has suffered a flurry of recent layoffs. Health care, on the other hand, is thriving, and CSU has helped spawn a culture of innovation and dozens of startups: Optibrand’s electronic gizmos allow GPS tracking of cattle, and Able Planet’s devices enable the hearing-impaired to communicate by phone.
YOU’LL LOVE IT IF // You crave the mountains and can handle the fact that the Front Range boom has arrived—and shows no sign of stopping.

Charleston, South Carolina

POPULATION: 97,000 // MEDIAN AGE: 33 // MEDIAN HOME PRICE: $248,000 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 20 min.

You can’t capture a sense of place and charm in a bottle, of course. But Charleston has come pretty close. In the past 30 years, this port city on the peninsula where the Cooper and Ashley rivers flow into Charleston Harbor has become a lively, subtropical magnet for young creative types, families, and the water-obsessed. The city’s revival has coincided with the 30-year mayoral tenure of Joe Riley, who, starting in the 1970s, spearheaded the redevelopment of a down-at-the-heels business district and the creation of lovely Waterfront Park, along the Cooper River. A model of cultural preservation, Charleston formed the nation’s first historic district, in 1931, to protect its narrow “single houses,” piazzas, and lush garden courtyards. Geography—especially the tracts of undeveloped marshland that beckon in either direction along the coast—also wields a powerful influence. “It’s easy to be a conservationist here,” says Dana Beach, of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, which is at work on land-use, water-quality, and forestry campaigns in the Charleston area. “People talk about it at cocktail parties. They see it as part of their heritage.”

PROGRESSIVE CRED // Keeping the waterfront accessible to all is an ongoing quality-of-life issue in Charleston; a four-mile promenade along the peninsula is 80 percent complete. Although battles over outlying growth and sprawl are heating up, a new county sales tax, passed in May, will fund public transportation and green space. The city has also pioneered scattered-site affordable housing, mixing low-income tenants with market-rate homes.
LIVABILITY // The economy’s sizzling: Next to tourism, the port (second-largest on the East Coast), the Medical University of South Carolina, and the military are major players, alongside a host of thriving startups: iPod accessories, software for nonprofits, and robot helicopters. On weekends, locals catch waves at Folly Beach, sail the harbor, and hike and bike among 300 bird species in Francis Marion National Forest.
YOU’LL LOVE IT IF // You think “approaching hurricane” is a quaint southern expression meaning “great surf.”

Davis, California

POPULATION: 65,000 // MEDIAN AGE: 25 // MEDIAN HOME PRICE: $333,000 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 20.6 min.

If more developments resembled Davis’s Village Homes project, subdivision might not be such a dirty word. Trees shade the narrow streets, keeping the asphalt (and air) cooler during the hot Central Valley summers than in less enlightened housing tracts. Nearly 75 percent of the community’s 225 houses use solar power, reducing furnace heat in the winter. And it’s all linked by broad common spaces, winding pathways, and—here’s a term you don’t hear enough—”edible landscaping”: community vineyards and orchards yielding grapes, persimmons, cherries, almonds, and peaches. No town gives more leeway to bicycles: 51 miles of paths and 50 miles of bike lanes (among the first in the nation); special bike-traffic signals at intersections; even BikeTalk on KDRT-FM (K-Dirt). Citizen involvement is high on the list of civic values: Rush hour in Davis, goes a local truism, happens just before 7 p.m., when people are scurrying to their committee meetings.

PROGRESSIVE CRED // If you’re tall, dark, and herbaceous, this is your kind of town. Davis maintains a Landmark Tree List and a Master Street Tree List—as well as 31 parks, 20 greenbelts, and a 400-acre man-made wetland. To compensate for every acre of farmland built upon, developers must preserve two acres of comparable land in its place. Culture gets a nod, too: 1 percent of all capital-improvement funds is set aside for public art such as sculptures. And Central Park’s year-round farmers’ market, says Mitch Sears, Davis’s open-space planner, is “a community touchstone.”
LIVABILITY // UC Davis, which employs one out of every three residents, keeps the local scene young and diverse. Land trusts, nonprofits, and green research programs, such as the National Institute for Global Environmental Change, abound. Davis’s proximity to the Bay Area and the Sierra Nevada means that anything you can do on water, snow, rock, or dirt is never far away.
YOU’LL LOVE IT IF // In the standard American turf wars—bike vs. SUV, farm vs. strip mall—you always root for the underdog.

Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Urban bliss: Portland’s Japanese Gardens

POPULATION: 550,000 // MEDIAN AGE: 35.2 // MEDIAN HOME PRICE: $203,600 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 23.1 min.

For more than three decades, Portland has been so green you could serve it as a side dish. And the unofficial capital of the Pacific Northwest ecotopia is still showing the rest of America what’s possible. “What would be total fringe in other cities approaches the mainstream here,” says 32-year-old Amy Stork, who moved to Portland nine years ago and has since morphed into a microcosm of the place. Stork pedals three miles daily to her communications job at the city’s Office of Sustainable Development. She attends bike-film festivals and bike-in movies, bike-hauls compost to her community-garden plot, and, when she must resort to four wheels, whips out her membership card at Flexcar, the popular car-sharing company. Portland is a magnet for people like Stork: college-educated twenty- and thirty-somethings looking for a progressive urban lifestyle. The city’s outdoor playgrounds don’t hurt either. Pacific sands, 90 minutes to the west, draw beachcombers and whale watchers; Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge, just an hour to the east, lure anyone who hikes, bikes, paddles, windsurfs, or skis.

PROGRESSIVE CRED // Green space? Check. Portland has 227 parks, including Forest Park, at 5,000-plus acres the nation’s largest urban wilderness. Bike-friendly? Emphatically, with almost 270 miles of street lanes and paths, all lovingly marked with nonskid paint. Walkable? Two-hundred-foot blocks, half the length of those in many cities, and narrow streets keep the scale human. Public transit? Yup: 44 miles of metro-area light-rail lines, and the country’s first new urban streetcar line in half a century, all free within a 330-square-block downtown grid. Hybrid cars? More per capita than anywhere else. Structures certified, or awaiting certification, by the U.S. Green Building Council? The most—no “per capita” needed. Almost too good to be true, isn’t it? But smug Portlanders better watch their backs: Measure 37, a private-property-rights law approved by Oregon voters last fall, makes it harder for government agencies to enforce the tight land-use rules that have so far curtailed sprawl.
LIVABILITY // On average, Portlanders spend more on reading material, watch more indie films, and grow more flowers than their countrymen. Portlanders drink better beer than most, too, with 23 microbreweries within city limits. The arts, performing and otherwise, are booming, and the 11 farmers’ markets help locals eat local. The city’s job market bottomed out two years ago, taking multiple blows in the key high-tech manufacturing sector, but that hasn’t slowed the flow of new arrivals.
YOU’LL LOVE IT IF // Job opportunities and rising home prices matter less to you than keeping it clean and green.

Chicago, Illinois

POPULATION: 2.7 million // MEDIAN AGE: 32 // MEDIAN HOME PRICE: $265,000 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 33.2 min.

When Mayor Richard M. Daley (son of Richard J. “Boss” Daley, mayor from 1955 to 1976) first declared his vision of transforming gritty, sports-fixated Chi-town into “the greenest city in the country,” residents smirked and ordered another pitcher of Old Style. Now, with Daley in his fifth term, skeptics are about as common here as Mets fans. Under Daley’s reign, more than 400,000 trees have been planted, 125 vegetation-covered “green roofs” have sprouted atop buildings—including City Hall—to slurp up runoff and help cool the urban heat island, and dozens of new energy-scrimping structures are in line for certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. The city has teamed with local environmental groups to give four run-down South Side bungalows sustainable makeovers (recycled-tire floor tiles, geothermal heating)—a project designed to inspire owners of 80,000 similar vintage nests across the city. Meanwhile, architects and gardeners attend free workshops at the city-funded Center for Green Technology; abandoned gas stations have blossomed into pocket parks; and the Field Museum has gone solar. The belle of Chicago’s renaissance? Millennium Park, 24.5 downtown acres of gussied-up railyards and parking lots, complete with a bike-commuting station, an ice rink, and a Frank Gehry–designed band shell.

PROGRESSIVE CRED // Still not convinced? Consider the fact that the city government is on track to buy 20 percent of its power from renewable sources within the next year and that 4,800 acres of recovering South Side wetlands will soon host a center for environmental remediation. Homeowners who upgrade the energy-efficiency of historic homes earn up to $2,000 in grants. The city will even let you swap your exhaust-spewing gas lawn mower for a discounted electric model. These guys are serious.
LIVABILITY // In addition to the 18-mile string of parks and beaches along Lake Michigan (which fill with volleyball players, runners, and sailors as soon as spring even hints at appearing), ambitious new outdoor visions are taking shape, including the Grand Illinois Trail, a 537-mile bike loop to the banks of the Mississippi and back, and the Northeastern Illinois Regional Water Trail, a 467-mile network-in-progress of lake and river routes for kayakers and canoeists. Economic bonus: The diversity of Chicago’s job market tends to prevent jarring spikes and plunges.
YOU’LL LOVE THIS TOWN IF // You can look past the dismal winters—because no city packs more living into its summer.

Madison, Wisconsin

POPULATION: 208,000 // MEDIAN AGE: 30.6 // MEDIAN HOME PRICE: $223,000 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 18.3 min.

It’s easy to fall for Madison. Wisconsin’s capital is like a girl who aces all her finals, paddles a mean J-stroke, knows how to tap a keg, and doesn’t realize she’s a knockout. (Oh, yeah, she can also milk a Guernsey.) The appeal starts with location. The town sits on a two-mile-long isthmus between Lake Monona and Lake Mendota, rippling expanses perennially dotted with sailors and paddlers (or ice-fishers and ice-yachters, depending on the season). A city-sponsored 30-mile web of paved trails—well lit, snowplowed, and biked year-round—combines with walkable streets and first-rate bus service to make car-free commutes viable; there’s even a Paddle to Work Day, in June. Along with its natural assets, Madison offers myriad urban pleasures: thriving co-ops, ethnic menus, clever entrepreneurs, and all the other trappings of post-hippie capitalism. The University of Wisconsin’s 900-acre flagship campus, 40,000 students strong, is a microcosm of the larger populace—brainy and left-leaning, tolerant and determinedly unprovincial. Factor in a dozen or so beaches, some 250 parks, Big Ten athletics, and an enormous farmers’ market and you’ve got the complete package: Berkeley with bratwurst.

PROGRESSIVE CRED // Madison has a long heritage of open-mindedness. It was the first U.S. city to launch curbside recycling (in 1968); today, there are waiting lists for residents who want Madison Gas & Electric to supply a portion of their electricity via wind power. More than 70 percent of Madison’s traffic signals run on energy-saving LED fixtures, and Mayor Dave Cieslewicz is determined to keep green space a priority: He’s vowed to open five new parks a year—maintained, of course, without chemical pesticides or fertilizers—and he’s kept that promise during his first two years in office. Wisconsin ranks third in the nation in number of organic farms, and community-supported agriculture—a system in which consumers buy “shares” of a local farm and the food it produces—are high on the Madison agenda.
LIVABILITY // Madisonians are wired and literate; last year Forbes called the city a “seedbed of biocapitalism” for launching 120 biotech firms in the past decade. Largely because of UW’s influence, startups and spinoffs are common. A cross section of innovative Madison companies: Epic Systems (medical-records software), Cellular Dynamics International (stem-cell research), and Planet Bike, a cycling-gear outlet that donates a quarter of its profits to velo-friendly causes. Houses are still reasonable, although last year the area’s median sailed past the $200,000 mark.
YOU’LL LOVE IT IF // You like your mom-and-apple-pie, cheesehead midwestern vibe served with a shot of coastal hipness.

Pasadena, California

POPULATION: 146,000 // MEDIAN AGE: 34.5 // MEDIAN HOME PRICE: $509,200 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 25.9 min.

Los Angeles County’s unholy trinity of smog, sprawl, and gridlock long ago earned it the stamp of America’s paradise lost. But some eye-opening changes are unfolding, many of them in this revitalized urban village at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. A satellite on the northeast side of L.A., Pasadena is an experiment in downtown revitalization, smart planning, and life beyond car addiction. Since the Metro Gold Line light-rail train opened in 2003, linking the suburb with downtown L.A., Pasadena has become a hub for innovative mixed-use development, with 800 new residential units. This isn’t pop-up suburbia, though. The city’s pedestrian-welcoming streets—shaded by an exotic canopy of 286,000 California oaks, jacarandas, and palms—are famously home to a mother lode of Craftsman architecture, as well as a gallery of races and languages (a third of Pasadenans are foreign-born; more than half are Hispanic, black, or Asian). Once blighted Old Pasadena, a 21-square-block historic district, is now one of the Southland’s hottest nightlife magnets.

PROGRESSIVE CRED // The city is removing hundreds of tons of concrete debris and planting native sycamores and oaks to restore streamside habitat in Arroyo Seco, a 132-acre gulch harboring a web of trails and the Rose Bowl Stadium—along with a small population of coyotes and bobcats. Human habitat is getting attention as well: The nonprofit Heritage Housing Partners helps first-time home buyers, provided that they protect their house’s architectural character. The city offers substantial rebates for solar-power installations, and Pasadena Water & Power recently inked a long-term deal to buy electricity from California’s largest wind farm.
LIVABILITY // Take your pick: highbrow visuals at the Norton Simon Museum, Pacific Asia Museum, and Pasadena Museum of California Art; edgy performances from the Furious Theatre Company; readings at Vroman’s Bookstore; or an alphabet’s worth of dining options (Afghan, Brazilian, Cuban . . . ). You can surf in nearby Malibu, fly-fish in Angeles National Forest, and hoof it down the Pacific Crest Trail—all without leaving metro L.A. Within a few hours, you can climb in Joshua Tree, snowboard in the San Gabriels, or paddle the Kern River—which raged this spring with the torrential runoff of the biggest Sierra snowpack in years.
YOU’LL LOVE IT IF // You’d like a little bit of Paris on the 210 Freeway and don’t mind the sensation of property values inflating beneath your feet.

Portland, Maine

POPULATION: 64,000 // MEDIAN AGE: 36 // MEDIAN HOME PRICE: $215,000 // AVERAGE COMMUTE: 19 min.

Portland’s centuries-old maritime heritage isn’t just a brewpub decorating motif. Thanks to a 1987 referendum that tightened restrictions on waterfront development, it’s a workaday reality. Yachts, catamarans, and cruise ships ply Casco Bay’s natural harbor alongside fishing fleets and tugboats hauling in oil tankers. And the pedestrian traffic in the adjacent Old Port district, a bustling brick-and-cobblestone mix of locally owned restaurants, offices, and upper-story apartments, suggests that different worlds can overlap: landscapers, lawyers, and lobstermen all coexisting. As far as after-work diversions go, few towns of this size could even dream of rivaling Portland’s options. A well-used network of paths and greenways, many right along the shoreline, continues to expand, and 486 restaurants within city limits feed the oft repeated rumor that only San Francisco can claim more per capita. Crime remains low; the number of sea kayaks strapped to car roofs, reassuringly high.

PROGRESSIVE CRED // This summer, Portland Trails will complete a 30-mile network of foot- and bike paths that’s been years in the making; waterfront sections along the Eastern Promenade and Back Cove will become part of an envisioned 3,000-mile urban path stretching from Calais, Maine, to Key West, Florida. Infill development is poised to take off, with downtown’s progressive Bayside neighborhood soon to trade in its warehouses for $60 million in offices, shops, homes (including affordable units), and walkable streets—a model of urban density. Meanwhile, the city’s zeal for nurturing small businesses dovetails with an influx of newcomers. You might not expect a Somalian grocery or a Cambodian market in Maine, but they’re here. Other accolades: an aggressive recycling program, low-emissions power plant, and sustainable school.
LIVABILITY // Portland’s job market is sunnier than its coastal New England climate. Health care, banking, insurance companies, shipping, biotech, tourism, L.L. Bean (15 minutes up the coast), and semiconductors keep unemployment low. Startups are a Portland staple, with all manner of city-leveraged loans, tax-increment financing, and walking success stories to egg on transplants. Athletes go inland for climbing and skiing in the White Mountains and to the Atlantic for sailing, sea kayaking, and chilly surfing. “Hypothermia is a real danger,” cautions the local Surfline report, “as is severe shrinkage.” Noted.
YOU’LL LOVE IT IF // You prefer a smaller, cheaper, and somewhat sleepier alternative to Boston.

Smart Urban Ideas, PT. I

best towns

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME: Small-town thinking in Venice.

Smart Idea #1
• Big Pine and No Name Keys, Florida

When your island is four miles wide and happens to be a habitat for endangered species, MANAGING DEVELOPMENT isn’t just smart—it’s imperative. To protect the vulnerable Key deer and stave off Key Largo–like growth, Big Pine and No Name keys, with a combined population of 5,000, approved a community plan this spring that limits the construction of new homes to ten per year (minimizing their impact by concentrating them along the U.S. 1 corridor), purchases empty lots for open-space conservation, and restricts the size of retail stores in support of smaller mom-and-pops.—Melinda Mahaffey



Smart Idea #2
• Venice, California

Despite being enveloped by a teeming metropolis, this L.A. neighborhood of 34,000 is blessed with ocean views, a small-town vibe, and SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE. Among those designing in Venice are Isabelle Duvivier, whose firm won a 2004 Santa Monica Sustainability Leadership Award; eco-designer David Hertz; and modernist icon Frank Gehry. And Venice’s green scene goes beyond the built environment: Duvivier is currently working with the state on an interim management plan to preserve the Ballona Wetlands, the last remaining large-scale wetlands in Los Angeles County.—M. M.



Smart Idea #3
• Auburn, New York

This trout-fishing haven of 28,000 near upstate New York’s Lake Owasco is staging a RENEWBALE ENERGY revolution. In 2003 the city retrofitted its 75-year-old municipal building with a geothermal heating system designed to cut CO2 emissions by 58 percent and save an estimated $19,000 a year.—Jason Stevenson



Smart Idea #4
• Santa Fe, New Mexico

The juniper-covered foothills just east of downtown Santa Fe (pop. 66,000) are a patchwork of private and government lands, making the creation of PUBLIC RECREATION SPACE a negotiating and fundraising nightmare. But local banker and conservationist Dale Ball, 81, plunged in anyway, raising more than $200,000, establishing rights-of-way with homeowners and—over the course of a dozen years—convincing officials to piece together tracts of city, county, and federal land to complete the 25-mile maze of singletrack that bears his name. Next up: the purchase of 103 acres to preserve the area for trail expansion.—J. S.



Smart Idea #5
• Marquette County, Michigan

This adventure mecca on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is home to an elaborate network of bike, ski, and kayak trails, as well as a GRASSROOTS HEALTH CARE initiative that matches uninsured residents with medical care and prescription drugs donated by doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. Thanks to state and federal grants, more than 2,000 people have enrolled in the program; a similar model will be implemented across the rest of the UP by 2007.—J. S.



Smart Idea #6
• Montgomery County, Maryland

Just across the Potomac River from sprawl- and mall-choked northern Virginia is Montgomery County’s Agricultural Reserve, 93,000 acres of farmland that’s been protected since 1980. Twenty-five years later, the densely populated county of 920,000 is a national leader in OPEN-SPACE PRESERVATION, developing a ten-year, $100 million plan to protect vulnerable wildlife habitat, watersheds, and historic properties.—J. S.

Smart Urban Ideas, PT. II: Buena Vista, CO

Buena Vista, Colorado

BUENA VISTA KAYAK CLUB: Developers Katie and Jed Selby with their dogs Hurley (left) and Charlie

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű by Design
Building the town of the future from the river up

THE PLAN WAS AS BOLD as running a Class VI rapid in water wings: Buy a 40-acre parcel of premium Rocky Mountain property with more than 670 feet of river frontage and create a small-town utopia—complete with a half-mile-long whitewater park, live/work spaces, restaurants, bike trails, and tree-lined avenues of shops, coffeehouses, art galleries, and theaters.

“It seemed crazy at first,” says Katie Selby, 29, a pro kayaker who, with her 26-year-old brother, Jed (also a professional paddler), is spearheading one of the most ambitious—and, arguably, enlightened—development projects in the West: South Main, in Buena Vista, Colorado, a bucolic burg framed by snowcapped fourteeners to the west and high-desert hills to the east. “I was living up in Alaska, paddling, chasing moose and elk around, and Jed kept calling me and pushing the idea, keeping it alive.”

Though Jed had settled in central Colorado for the nearby paddling, he wasn’t spending much time there. “I was driving all around North America, going to competitions, sleeping in the back of my Subaru, eating fast food,” he says. “I just started questioning the whole lifestyle. When this idea began to take hold, I thought, Now I can really make a difference.”

The Selbys had grown up in Tucson, Arizona, and both attended Fort Lewis College, in Durango, so they’d witnessed the West’s rapid urban growth firsthand. When Jed first laid eyes on the undeveloped, trash-strewn field between the Arkansas River and Buena Vista’s 100-year-old historic district, he immediately saw its potential. At the time, it was pegged as the future home of dozens of McMansions that would have shut out public river access. But in 2003, with help from their father, Buzz, a Tucson-based doctor and real estate investor, the siblings came up with the winning $1.2 million bid and purchased the land. Their next step: nailing down a design for their urban hamlet.

For that, the Selbys—with the help of Florida-based design firm Dover, Kohl & Partners—embraced the principles of New Urbanism, which advocates densely packed, mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly development as an alternative to sprawl. In South Main’s case, that means leafy avenues with gable-roofed Arts and Crafts–style bungalows, quaint frontier Victorian row houses, awning-shaded storefronts, sidewalks, picket fences—it’s Bedford Falls, only populated by kayakers in flip-flops hanging at the coffee shops after thrashing sculpted playholes. The design also includes a riverside park with bike paths, beaches, and a village square surrounded by a retail hub. The remaining space is platted for residential lots (about 200 in all), ranging from $40,000, for a standard row-house lot, to $70,000, for a 5,000-square-foot chunk of land for a single-family home—a bargain compared with prices in nearby Summit County.

While the Selbys will oversee development of the river park and green space—underwritten largely by a $187,000 grant from the state’s open-space preservation fund, Great Outdoors Colorado, and $30,000 from the city of Buena Vista—private developers will build the homes and businesses, following strict community guidelines. That commercial phase is still a couple of years down the road, says Katie, but reservations for lots in Phase One have been brisk: 24 of the first 26 lots were snatched up within two months of going on sale last spring. Bill Dobson, the realtor handling the project, says he already has a waiting list of 45 people, from young paddling enthusiasts buying a first home to retirees looking to downsize out of their country estates.

That all means a potentially lucrative investment for the Selbys, but the siblings insist the real payoff isn’t cash. “Money is just a means to an end,” says Katie. “Suburban sprawl is the source of pretty much all the problems that confront our country, from dependence on fossil fuel to water and air pollution to traffic congestion to ecosystem destruction. What’s more fulfilling than devoting yourself to solving the biggest issue out there?”

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IT WAS WEDNESDAY EVENING aboard a ferry bound for Vancouver Island, and although my wife, Kelly, and I had arrived in British Columbia for our clockwise loop around the province just hours earlier, things already seemed a little hinky. INVESTMENT STRATEGY FOR A SOARING LOONIE, read a headline in the National Post (“loonie” referring to the Canadian dollar), but frankly the term might lend itself to a broader application. Everyone we’d encountered so far seemed half a bubble off center. The customs lady at the Vancouver airport confiscated our apples, then sweetly recommended a restaurant in Tofino. The waitress at the Vietnamese pho shop where we stopped for a late lunch looked at me and beamed. “Long time no see!” she chimed.

“Uh . . . yes,” I stammered. I had never set foot in her city before.

Soon after, we drove onto a car ferry larger than some airports, to cross from Vancouver the city to Vancouver the island. Moments after the ship cruised out into the Strait of Georgia, a woman in a corridor on level six unrolled a small mat and nonchalantly performed a perfect headstand, the first I had ever seen done at 15 knots. The moon rose full, looming over a bank of cedars atop one of the Gulf Islands: a perfect circle to launch a circle tour. Then, to our astonishment, a shadow blurred its eight-o’clock edge, the beginnings of what would gradually become a total eclipse. Aha! A possible rationale for irrational behavior: The word lunatic, after all, stems from the Latin lunaticus—moonstruck. Loonies, lunatics, lunar eclipse. The dots began to connect.

Daftest of all, perhaps, was our own agenda: to try to do justice to the treasures of British Columbia in a mere two weeks. The province’s population is roughly equal to that of Los Angeles—about four million, not counting any post-reelection wave of American lefties—scattered over an area larger than two Californias combined. Its borders encircle thousands of Pacific islands, untamed mountain ranges, pristine lakes and rivers, and ancient rainforests. Sweetening the pot were the creature comforts scattered along our route: hotels and lodges both rustic and indulgent; cuisine flaunting its Pacific Rim provenance and an abundance of local, organic ingredients; spas with an emphatically West Coast tilt. I came to think of B.C. as the Northern Hemisphere’s New Zealand—only three and a half times the size of the original, and not requiring the 12-hour flight.

Our journey’s dotted line would zigzag across Vancouver Island; take us on a voyage through the Inside Passage from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert, far north on the mainland; trace Highway 16 inland, south of Hazelton and through Smithers and Prince George; turn south on Highway 97 through Williams Lake and the Cariboo Country; then wind southwest toward the coast, through Whistler, and back to Vancouver—more than 1,800 miles in all. To recall a saying I learned years ago from a group of people who bungee-jumped out of hot-air balloons: Go big or go home.

Here are a few postcards from the continent’s edge.

Wednesday night

Starting out on the alluring shores of Vancouver Island can be hazardous to a road trip—once nestled there, we were half tempted to scrap the drive altogether. The Brentwood Bay Lodge & Spa, opened last May beside North America’s southernmost fjord, on the Saanich Peninsula north of Victoria, is particularly dangerous in this regard. From the lodge’s marina, you can set out on a dive boat (if the prospect of 48-degree water doesn’t faze you) to explore a colony of glass sponges and some old warships recently imported to the seafloor. Or saddle into a kayak and paddle for hours around the deep-water inlets; the dock of the Butchart Gardens, Victoria’s best-known tourist draw, lies a few minutes away by boat. The in-house spa, taking a cue from nearby vineyards, offers such enticements as the three-hour Vino Ritual, involving various antioxidant grape concoctions (both on the skin and down the gullet), including the Vino Stomp Pedicure. Each of Brentwood Bay’s 33 suites, though, is something of a spa unto itself: With saltwater views, slate fireplaces, king-size platform beds, rice-paper lampshades, exotic bath salts, and jetted tubs, one could do nicely without ever leaving the room.

Thursday and Friday

After a blissful rest, our motivation returned, and so off we steered to Vancouver Island’s west coast—the wilder, more rugged side. Crossing the interior, we gawked at steep, wooded mountainsides rising almost perpendicular from glassy lakes, and narrow waterfalls gushing over roadside cliffs. We arrived in Tofino, a funky end-of-the-pavement outpost surrounded on three sides by water, just as a near-full moon rose and painted the sky sapphire. On the shores of Clayoquot Sound, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, Tofino has a year-round population of 1,400 or so and a disproportionate number of sea-kayaking and whale-watching outfitters and surf schools (Tofino is ground zero for coldwater surfing in Canada). The local Esso station sells wild rice, mandarin oranges, and even gasoline. One of the best places to eat, SoBo, serves Asian-street-food-style dishes out of a purple catering truck.

“Now even a lot of First Nations kids are getting into surfing,” Dave Pettinger told us. Pettinger owns Pacific Sands Beach Resort, on a crescent of sand along Cox Bay, a prime surf break on the northern edge of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. He grew up on a dairy farm in Edmonton, where one day in 1973 his parents glimpsed an ad in the newspaper: MOTEL FOR SALE. The “motel” now includes four two-story lodge buildings and six new clusters of luxe two- and three-bedroom villas, with cedar beams, roomy kitchens, fireplaces downstairs and up, and ample amounts of ocean-facing glass. All of the rooms are heated by Pettinger’s latest addition, a geothermal-exchange heating system that employs steady temperatures hundreds of feet underground as a power source.

On Pettinger’s recommendation, we hiked a pair of boardwalk trails that loop through Pacific Rim’s old-growth rainforest—in a torrential downpour. Hoods pulled overhead, we shuffled along like novitiates from some monastery devoted to Gore-Tex. Like anyplace that has remained mostly untouched by humans, the forest has an otherworldly feel, with gardens of moss draped from gnarled branches. Some of the western red cedars are 800 years old, with trunks that would require the combined arm span of five adults to reach around them. Ten feet of annual rainfall waters this garden—a good portion of that, it seemed, during our hike.

Sunday:

A few lessons about Canada gleaned along the road: (1) Kilometers rock! If your rental car measures speed in metric terms, you’ll find it’s far more gratifying going 120 than 75, even if it doesn’t get you there any sooner. (2) Canadian roadsides, for reasons no one could clearly explain, contain virtually no litter. Remarkable. (3) The all-purpose ending to any Canadian sentence—”eh?”—lives on, with regional twists. The Tofino version of adios: “Choo, eh?” On the mainland, among the maniacal mountain bikers we would meet in Williams Lake, more of a nasal hey: “I’m feeling pretty punched, hey?” And the classic, muttered to me by a little hobbit-woman standing in the morning ham-and-eggs line aboard the Queen of Prince Rupert: “Little rough last night, eh?”

We had boarded the boat the previous evening in Port Hardy, on Vancouver Island’s northern tip, for a 15-hour cruise to Prince Rupert, one of B.C.’s northernmost coastal towns, just shy of the Alaska panhandle. As the ferry chugged into the exposed waters of Queen Charlotte Sound, unprotected from Pacific storm swells, we sat in the dining room and watched the wine in our carafe begin to pitch and yaw, my stomach soon following suit. Happily, the seas calmed once the ship entered the sheltered channel of the passage. After overnighting in a small cabin, we had Sunday breakfast while watching spotted humpback whales spouting on the horizon. At noon, porpoises arced in circles to starboard. Gulls raced alongside the ship like farm dogs chasing a pickup truck. Now and then we passed tugboats pulling log-piled barges, lonesome logging camps, a floatplane. It was a peaceful day’s idyll, at an almost forgotten pace.

Monday

We slowly headed east on Highway 16, also known as the Yellowhead Highway, out of Prince Rupert—a bustling little port city with dozens of First Nations totem poles—and Port Edward. Fishing and whale-watching boats angled across the bay, leaving trails of foam like comet tails. At the fishermen’s memorial, overlooking the mainland and other islands, engraved plaques list the names of those lost at sea. Not far out of town, the road began tracking upstream along the Skeena River, choppy and as wide as a lake at first, then shallower, meandering around broad gravel bars and wooded islets. We crossed dozens of creeks and rivulets and passed more waterfalls than we could count, spilling over cliffs hung with thick patches of moss.

By evening we’d arrived at the Minette Bay Lodge, a remote but highly civilized inn with seven guest rooms. Kayaks and canoes lay in wait near the waterline, but the main reason guests pilgrimage here is to board helicopters on its broad lawn and then hover off to the surrounding wilderness to decide which trout or salmon hole—in some 20 entire rivers—they would like to fish all by themselves that day. Minette Bay’s English-born proprietors, Dr. Howard Mills, a physician who practices in Kitimat, and his wife, Ruth, both spent time in Africa as youths and have done their share of globe-trotting. The lodge’s walls and shelves are festooned with carved native masks, photographs of sailboats, a Bible from the 1500s, antique foxhunt prints, nautical charts and maps, a World War I periscope, and a two-foot-long replica of a wild boar from New Guinea trimmed with cassowary feathers. After a day’s fishing, guests swap stories around a broad Scotch-pine dining table.

Wednesday

We arrived at the Logpile Lodge, on a rocky knoll outside Smithers, farther inland on the Yellowhead Highway. This is a lively town of 5,500, but it still has an undiscovered feel, as if you’ve time-traveled into Boulder, Colorado, in the 1960s. “There’s tons of people here who really chose the place not for economic reasons but because of lifestyle,” said Christoph Luther, who came from Switzerland with his wife, Barbara, then built the seven-room lodge, with its massive spruce and pine logs, eight years ago. Wooden skis lean against the dining-room fireplace. Hudson Bay Mountain, 7,648 feet high, towers outside the front door. Other Ă©migrĂ©s have come to Smithers from Vancouver, Quebec, Europe, even China and Vietnam.

Not long after you arrive in town, someone will likely repeat to you the truism that Smithers has a higher percentage of Ph.D.’s than anywhere else in western Canada. The main draw is not just a dazzling menu of adventure-sports venues—hiking in Babine Mountains Provincial Park; whitewater on the Skeena, the Bulkley, and other rivers; climbing on Mount Rocher DeBoule; and skiing in the Telkwa and Howson ranges—but also the solitude. “You don’t see another person here!” Barbara said. “It’s always said Smithers is the best-kept secret. Sometimes too well kept.”

Friday morning

Heading south on Highway 97, we neared the town of Williams Lake, in the heart of Cariboo Country, a district of rolling rangeland, evergreen hills, and lakes between the Coast Mountains and the Rockies. The Cariboo Gold Rush of the 1850s and ’60s spawned tales of claim jumping and hanging judges, with fresh stories in the making: There are still men here who live on their gold claims, with only a woodstove and a dog for company. We overnighted at Tyee Lake Resort, a restful 15-room lodge on a four-mile-long lake. Guests arrive to fly-fish for kokanee and trout, to honeymoon, to swim in the lake, to uncoil. Our hostess, Kim Burgoyne, regaled us with some half-mad stories of her own, including one about the lodge’s ill-fated first attempt to offer dogsled rides in the winter, in which a local musher named Guy (who had once extracted all of his own teeth with a pair of pliers) brought a team consisting of a bitch in heat and several highly agitated males. Not a good idea.

Saturday afternoon

We drove less than an hour to Williams Lake. Starting in the mid-nineties, this town, best known as the site of a summer rodeo, has become popular for freeriding, a style of mountain biking tailored to fearless thrill chasers and stark raving nut jobs (with a good deal of overlap). Standard equipment includes body armor and bulky 30- to 40-pound full-suspension bikes designed for stability, for riders who are arguably not designed for stability. “You could fill a garbage truck with all the frames that get broke in this town,” said Merle McAssey, co-owner of Adrenalin Mountain șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs, a touring company at the heart of the tight-knit local cult of riders. In the past year, Merle has racked up an anatomically improbable four broken collarbones. “A right, then a left, then both at the same time,” he explained cheerfully over dinner at the Overlander Hotel. “We all have the same surgeon.”

Earlier, we had ventured out on a ride with half a dozen local hardcores down a fir-wooded slope on the edge of town, along a trail called Mitch’s Brew. (Mitch himself didn’t come; he’d recently had a titanium rod inserted into his leg.) Threading through the trees like hummingbirds, we paused to watch members of the group launch furious aerials off a wooden trestle that ended abruptly, 15 feet above the ground, like a Salvador DalĂ­ bridge, and ramps, assembled from logs and planks, that emptied onto 30 feet of uninterrupted air. The riders seemed motivated not by machismo but by raw exuberance, tracing tightrope lines down slick fallen logs, whooping and egging one another on. “Feeling pretty punched, hey?” “Pure, total commitment, hey?”

During the ride, we had assumed that these were likely the sort of people who don’t bother holding down steady jobs, who sleep on friends’ couches to save up for more gear, who subsist on ramen noodles. But over dinner, we learned that the gonzo crew in fact consisted of a pharmacist, a pair of engineers, an industrial electrician, and, appropriately, a trauma nurse. During the previous week’s lunar eclipse, 14 riders had donned headlamps and set out on a moonlight descent down Desous Mountain, a local freeriding hot spot, performing drops and jumps and launches until midnight. “I think the philosophy for us,” Merle said, “is to expand people’s notions of what’s possible.” Soaring loonies, indeed.

The BC Circle Tour

A complete provincial sampler, stop by stop

Getting to the starting point in Vancouver is easy. Several airlines fly there daily from many U.S. cities. Alternately, drive north from Seattle on Interstate 5, which becomes Highway 99 in Canada, or ferry directly to Victoria from Seattle (Victoria Clipper; 800-888-2535, ).

Word to the wise: Throughout B.C., there are often vast expanses between towns, with few or no facilities. Fuel up—your car and yourself—whenever you have the opportunity.

STOP ONE: Reserve a space on the ferry from Tsawwassen, about a 40-minute drive south of Vancouver’s airport via Routes 99 and 17, to Swartz Bay, on Vancouver Island (fares and schedules, 250-386-3431, ). Driving south on Highway 17 toward Victoria, follow signs to Brentwood Bay Lodge & Spa (doubles from $367, including breakfast; 888-544-2079, ). Rent a kayak at the lodge’s marina ($34 per day for a single, $51 for doubles) and float around glassy Saanich Inlet, mingling with seals, orcas, and bald eagles.

STOP TWO: From Victoria, go north on Highway 1 (it becomes Highway 19 in Nanaimo), then west across the island on Highway 4 to Tofino—about 200 miles total. After crossing Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, check in at Pacific Sands Beach Resort, a welcoming family-run lodge on Cox Bay (doubles from $143, villas from $2,946 per week; 800-565-2322, ). The next day, take a two-hour Zodiac ride to Hot Springs Cove, where 105-degree sulfur-spring water tumbles down terraced pools into Clayoquot Sound ($84–$93 for a seven-hour trip; Remote Passages Marine Excursions, 800-666-9833, ).

STOP THREE: Backtrack east across the island, then head to its northern end to catch the ferry at Port Hardy, a long day’s drive of 300-plus miles (May 18 through September 30, ferries depart at 7:30 a.m. and arrive at Prince Rupert, 273 nautical miles north, at 10:30 p.m.; rates and schedules, 250-386-3431, ). In Prince Rupert, request a harbor-view room at the Crest Hotel (doubles from $124; 800-663-8150, ). The next day, book a boat tour with a native Tsimshian guide to the Khutzeymateen Valley, a dense rainforest and site of Canada’s only grizzly sanctuary ($124 for six hours; 250-624-5645, ).

STOP FOUR: Heading east on Highway 16 out of Prince Rupert, take a side jaunt at Port Edward to the North Pacific Cannery, a time-warp Steinbeckian remnant of the hundreds of salmon canneries that once dotted the West Coast. At Terrace, turn south on Highway 37, following signs near Kitimat to Minette Bay Lodge (about 150 miles total). This cozy seven-room haven, built in 1995, boasts feather beds and arguably the best showers on the continent (doubles, $168, including breakfast, with heli-fly-fishing packages starting at $4,394 per person for four days; 250-632-2907, ). Fly-fishing is the ticket here, on salmon and steelhead streams in the heart of untrammeled Coast Mountains wilderness; the lodge’s staff can also arrange hiking (with or without helicopter) and kayak tours.

STOP FIVE: Retrace your route back to Terrace and continue east on the Yellowhead Highway about 180 miles to Smithers, stopping en route at Hazelton, a vintage riverboat town that suggests a Far North version of Mark Twain’s Hannibal. In the woods outside Smithers sits the Logpile Lodge, a seven-room spruce-wood warren of charmingly rustic rooms, complete with furniture built by Christoph Luther, the lodge’s co-owner (doubles from $84, including breakfast; 250-847-5152, ). For a taste of the backcountry, hike the 4.3-mile Silver King Basin Trail, in Babine Mountains Provincial Park—some 80,000 acres of soaring peaks, glacial lakes, and subalpine meadows a ten-minute drive from the lodge. Mountain goats, moose, and the occasional grizzly have been known to appear.

STOP SIX: Continue east about 240 miles to Prince George, B.C.’s fourth-largest city, in a bowl that once held an enormous glacial lake. Book a room at Esther’s Inn, an outpost of northern kitsch with a poolside indoor jungle and a well-stocked bar (doubles from $57; 800-663-6844, ). While in town, hike a portion of the 15-mile Cranbrook Hill Greenway, a network of hiking and cycling paths that thread through a forest of birch, cottonwood, spruce, and hemlock.

STOP SEVEN: Drive south 140 miles on Highway 97 to Tyee Lake Resort, near McLeese Lake, a 15-room fishing lodge in the heart of rugged Cariboo Country (lake-view doubles, $117, including breakfast and use of boats; 866-989-9850, ). Fly-fishing is the local passion, and there are hundreds of uncrowded trout- and kokanee-stocked lakes within a short radius; the Osprey Restaurant offers Indonesian tenderloin, spicy “gunpowder” prawns, and other exotic fare. About an hour south, in the town of Williams Lake, hook up with the crew at Adrenalin Mountain șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs for a day of guided biking on some of the more than 100 trails around town, tailored to your levels of skill and ballsiness ($94; multi-day tours also available; 250-392-6299, ).

STOP EIGHT: Take Highway 97 south and then 99 southwest on a 275-mile leg through the mountains to Whistler, darling of skiers and co-host (with Vancouver) of the 2010 Winter Olympics. By now you’ve earned a little hedonism; spring for a room at the new Four Seasons Resort Whistler, where the beautifully appointed rooms feature balconies, gas fireplaces, and amply proportioned bathtubs (doubles from $206; 800-819-5053, ). Downstairs, the Fifty Two 80 Bistro hosts a nightly orgy of fresh-caught seafood, a great wine list, and attentive service. Whistler has plenty of summertime playgrounds, including some serious whitewater runs; Whistler River șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs offers day trips through the canyons and waterfalls of the Elaho and Squamish rivers, among other packages, for $130 a person (888-932-3532, ).

STOP NINE: End your journey with an exclamation point by taking the Sea to Sky Highway 76 miles—through a gorgeous backdrop of granite cliffs, waterfalls, and hazy island vistas—to Vancouver.

The New American Dream Towns

Smart Urban Ideas, PT III: Tucson, AZ, and NYC

Smart Idea #8
• Tucson, Arizona

In this Sonoran Desert city of 528,000, WATER CONSERVATION is considered a civic duty. Thanks to creative incentives (like increased rates for overconsumption and PR campaigns to encourage wise use), the average Tucson resident uses 120 gallons of water per day—slightly more than half what Phoenix locals use. And residents of the nonprofit Milagro Cohousing, a neighborhood of 28 sustainable adobe homes built around a common space, are going one step further: harvesting storm water in basins to irrigate their landscaping and treating wastewater to irrigate fruit trees and a hummingbird garden.

—M. M.



Smart Idea #9
• New York, New York

New York City has always been a model for mass transit—seven million use the system per day—but now it has even more reason to brag. This fall, construction begins in Manhattan on an estimated $65-million-to-$100-million project to convert a weedy 22-block stretch of elevated railway into an URBAN OASIS of native grasses, wildflowers, and shade trees. Dubbed the High Line, the public garden has already generated plenty of buzz, thanks to a MoMA exhibit of design plans and photographs that runs through October, as well as celebrity hype from actors Edward Norton and Kevin Bacon.

—M. M.

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Maine:

national parks, state parks

American Splendor: Canyonlands National Park

Utah:





Michigan/Minnesota:





Tennessee/North Carolina:





Colorado:





Washington:





California:





PLUS:

Acadia National Park, Cutler Coast Public Reserve Land

national parks, state parks

The coastal calm of Acadia National Park

ACADIA
THE NORTHEAST’S ONLY NATIONAL PARK, Acadia manages to shoehorn some 2.8 million annual visits into its compact landscape, mostly on Mount Desert Island (with smaller tracts on Isle au Haut and nearby Schoodic Peninsula). The finest way to lose the crowds and take in the park’s cymbal-crash surf, craggy stone-shored islets, and requisite clifftop lighthouses is to venture out of bounds by SEA-KAYAKING. Put in at the public boat ramp in Manset, located on the southern end of Mount Desert Island, and mosey up Somes Sound, the only bona fide fjord in the lower 48, for a five-hour voyage through the Maine that sets watercolorists’ hearts aflutter. Watch for porpoises, seals, and the mountains, which rise more than 400 feet in elevation from the shore. (And do yourself a favor, Cap’n: Time it so that you’re paddling in and out of Somes Sound with the tides.) Another day’s ocean ramble begins at Seal Harbor beach and aims south for the Cranberry Isles; Little Cranberry, with the Islesford Historical Museum and classic seafood served at the Islesford Dock restaurant, makes a fine spot to stretch your sea legs. The most reliable marine-mammal ogling goes down in Frenchman Bay, off Bar Harbor, where you can paddle around Bar Island and the magnificent and uninhabited Porcupine Islands. Keep a polite distance from the seal ledges, please. Hazardous conditions in these parts can include 55-degree water, 12-foot tides, persistent fog, and currents; unless your kayak schooling includes a master’s in wet exits, hire a guide. For group trips and boat rentals, contact an outfitter: Try Acadia Bike and Coastal Kayaking (800-526-8615, www.acadiafun.com) or Aquaterra șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs (207-288-0007, ). Post-adventure, the Inn at Bay Ledge (doubles, $160–$375; 207-288-4204, ), perched atop an 80-foot cliff overlooking Frenchman Bay, makes a most civilized base camp.

CUTLER COAST PUBLIC RESERVE LAND
Acadia’s watery splendors are a mere warm-up for the astounding sea views you’ll encounter on the Bold Coast, two hours north of the park on routes 3, 1, and 191. Spend two days BACKPACKING one of the East Coast’s longest seaside trails, the ten-mile Fairy Head Loop, opened seven years ago. Few people take in the raw beauty of this unpolished coast. See for yourself on a figure-eight loop that combines the Coastal Trail with the Inland Trail. The path meanders through blueberry heaths and boardwalked swamplands before opening up atop 70-foot cliffs jagging out over Cobscook Bay. You’ll hike through fog-nourished spruce woods, in and out of seal coves, and to Black Point Beach, littered with sea urchins, a good spot for a 50-degree cold plunge (beware of currents). Watch for eagles overhead and sprays on the horizon from the whales that cruise past from May to October. At Fairy Head, the farthest point of the loop, you’ll find three designated campsites tucked into the woods atop the cliffs. From here, Canada’s Grand Manan Island looks otherworldly in the orange blush of sunrise. Maps are at the trailhead, and you can pick up supplies in Machias.

Canyonlands National Park, Goblin Valley State Park

national parks, state parks

Utah’s Labyrinth: Canyonlands National Park

CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK RENAISSANCE FUNHOGS, BRACE YOURSELVES: This trip, combining three days of MOUNTAIN BIKING with five days of WHITEWATER RAFTING on the Colorado River, may be the tastiest pairing since chocolate and cabernet. It takes you straight into the heart of Canyonlands’ high-desert rock garden, defined by the goosenecking canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers and an almost hallucinogenic symphony of spires, buttes, mesas, hoodoos, fins, arches, and slickrock. Phase one: a two-wheeled thrill ride on most of the 100-mile White Rim Trail, a celebrated track that requires a four-wheel-drive support vehicle to tote food and gear. Aim counterclockwise, along the Green River in the Island in the Sky district, and take a side trail at Lathrop Canyon or Potash to your prearranged meeting with your rafting guides. Here you embark on phase two: epic Southwest whitewater. A few miles below the confluence of the Green and the Colorado roars Cataract Canyon, a chain of about 25 Class III–V rapids that some claim trump those in the Grand Canyon, at least in the high-water months of May and June. O.A.R.S. Moab guides raft trips ($1,227, return flight from Lake Powell included; 800-342-5938, ).

GOBLIN VALLEY STATE PARK
Now for the soft side of your adventure: NARROWS HIKING. While you might feel hoodooed out, you’ll be awestruck anew by the whimsical sandstone gargoyles and skull-shaped gremlins of this state park. Goblin Valley, less than two hours from Canyonlands via U.S. 191, I-70, and U.S. 24, noses up to the southern end of the San Rafael Swell—an oval-shaped 3,000-foot fold of sandstone and shale wedged onto the northern edge of the Colorado Plateau. The land is so fantastic that it’s siphoning Moab loyalists—fast. These are the salient geological features: a 75-mile-long by 30-mile-wide rock dome, riddled with red-wall canyons, which meets a reef, a ring of nearly vertical eroded strata studded with slot canyons. Your hike into this alien land: the seven-mile Ding and Dang Loop, which in some sections carves through the reef via a slot that’s only as wide as a person. There’s plenty of scenic camping to be had all along the swell—if you travel light and can squeeze your backpack through the narrows. A more comfortable alternative is to do the route as a day hike and then set up your tent at the park’s 24-site campground (for reservations, call 800-322-3770).

Isle Royale National Park, Superior National Forest

national parks, state parks

Floating Kingdoms: Isle Royale National Park

ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK
Kayakers come to this roadless, carless Lake Superior island for its rocky shoreline; fishermen and canoeists, for its 47 inland lakes; and backpackers, for its wooded basaltic ridges populated by moose and timber wolves. A savvy and intrepid handful of park visitors know how to really get lost here: Venture below the lake’s forbidding surface for SHIPWRECK DIVING. Ten major vessels have come to rest in park waters in the last 127 years, and the same frigid 40-degree water that forces divers to don drysuits has drastically slowed the wrecks’ decomposition. Visibility is often so good you can survey a ship’s exterior 40 feet down without a light. The shallower remains are most popular, such as the America, a package freighter that sank in 1928 and whose bow lies just a few feet below the surface. Others sit deeper; the Kamloops, a Canadian freighter not located until 50 years after it succumbed to a blizzard in 1927, lies between 175 and 260 feet under. Join an outfitter—Superior Trips (763-785-9516, www.superiortrips.com) or RLT Divers Inc. (507-238-4671, www.rltdivers.com)—and spend a week diving and living off a boat. Isle Royale is open mid-April through October; the ferry from Grand Portage, Minnesota, takes three hours.

SUPERIOR NATIONAL FOREST
Just as Isle Royale island fever sets in, the ferry hops you back to Grand Portage, on the doorstep of the wet wonderland of Superior National Forest. This vast two-million-acre area is home to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and its 1,500 miles of routes on silvery lakes and streams choked with northern pike and walleye. But here’s the surprise: Superior also hosts some fine MOUNTAIN BIKING, particularly in the rolling, moose-trodden highlands above Tofte and Lutsen. Minnesota’s Cook County is composed almost entirely of public lands, which translates to more than 500 miles of rideable forest gravel roads, two-track logging roads, and ski trails. (You may want to carry an inflatable pool toy to float your bike across deep water.) Start by driving an hour from Grand Portage on Highway 61 south to Grand Marais, your base for fat-tire fun; the Pincushion Bed & Breakfast (doubles, $95–$120; 800-922-5000, ) is a piney retreat overlooking Lake Superior. Try the 25-mile Devil’s Track Lake Loop, which starts out from the nearby campground on County Road 8. Superior North Outdoor Center (218-387-2186) has rentals and maps, and outfits inn-to-inn rides.

Great Smoky Mountains, Nantahala National Forest

Appalachian Adrenaline: Great Smoky Mountains National Park

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK
IN THE SMOKIES, THE NUMBERS TELL good news and bad: 800 miles of trails, almost 700 miles of fishable streams, hazy blue ridges topping out above 6,000 feet (some of the highest east of the Rockies), 5,600 species of plants, more than 60 of native mammals … and upwards of nine million humans every year. So head where the masses aren’t—the Greenbrier area, on the Tennessee side—for three sweet and soothing days of HIKING and FLY-FISHING. Start hoofing it at the Porters Creek trailhead, reached by entering the park off U.S. 321 east of Gatlinburg. Follow the wide creek for 3.6 miles until you reach Campsite 31, gaining about 1,500 feet of elevation in the process—good reason to stop and wet a line along the way. Casting is easier here than in many of the park’s cramped, brush-banked streams, and you can catch rainbow trout. Next morning, backtrack 2.7 miles from your campsite to the Brushy Mountain Trail. You’ll cross trout streams and roam through tulip trees, hemlocks, rhododendrons, and mountain laurels. Bunk that night at the Mount LeConte shelter, a three-sided stone structure at 6,440 feet (free; reserve through the backcountry office at 865-436-1297). Or book a slot at the LeConte Lodge, a rustic haven reachable only by trail and lit by kerosene lamps (cabins and group lodges start at $83.50 per adult per night; 865-429-5704, ). On the third day, march six more miles on the Boulevard Trail, encountering many a heart-stopping mountain vista, to another shelter, at Icewater Springs near the Appalachian Trail (70 miles of which traverse the park). Finally, a 2.7-mile taste of the AT takes you to Newfound Gap Road, where you thoughtfully arranged for a shuttle to pick you up ($32 for up to five people; A Walk in the Woods, 865-436-8283).

NANTAHALA NATIONAL FOREST
Shake off the quiet of the past few days with high-intensity WHITEWATER RAFTING on the Chattooga near Nantahala National Forest. South of the national park, off highways 441 and 76, there’s easy access to the river’s sections three and four, a rumble strip of phenomenal Class III-V rapids. You’ll see nary a trace of man except your paddle mates, and it’s easy to get Deliverance-spooked while navigating rapids that ribbon through hemlock forest and echoing gorges, and dipping into holes ringed with eerie rock formations. After taming the first ten miles, set up camp at Woodall Shoals, where diversions include rope-swing acrobatics. Day two gets burlier, with 4.5 romping miles graciously followed by two calming miles of lake waters. Old Creek Lodge (cabins for two, $89–$229; 800-895-6343, ), in the artsy town of Highlands, is your post- paddle roost. Spin out your rafting legs by MOUNTAIN-BIKING the 6.6-mile, rhododendron-choked Blue Valley Loop Trail; from Highlands, access the trailhead via Clear Creek Road and Forest Road 367. Squeeze in a two-mile hike to the gray-cliff summit of 4,986-foot Whiteside Mountain, off Highway 64 between Highlands and Cashiers, for views of the rolling hills of North Carolina and Georgia. The Nantahala Outdoor Center (800-232-7238, ) leads overnight trips on the Chattooga and rents mountain bikes.

Rocky Mountain National Park, Routt National Forest

national parks, state parks

Colorado Sick-Track: Rocky Mountain National Park

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK
JUST AN HOUR AND A HALF’S DRIVE from Denver and less than an hour from Boulder, Rocky Mountain National Park draws legions of Front Range residents with its elk meadows, hikes to chilly alpine lakes, and Trail Ridge Road, the Divide-straddling highway. Less appreciated is that when it comes to CLIMBING, the park’s got something for every subculture: alpine routes, sport climbs, bouldering, and ice climbs. At 14,255 feet, Longs Peak is “the granddaddy of the fourteeners,” says Jim Detterline, a ranger who’s summited Longs 220 times and counting. Thousands of other people also reach the top each year, most of them by the Keyhole Route (the most popular path), and most in July or August. Very few brave the Stettner’s Ledges route on the mountain’s east face. Their loss. Rich with alpine history, the climb, rated a Grade III, 5.7-5.8, was first ascended in 1927 by a pair of German-American brothers from Illinois; at the time, it was among the country’s toughest routes, and it’s still no gimme, even for those acclimatized to high altitude. Stettner’s entails a pre-climb backcountry bivouac, a glacier crossing, and six pitches over fractured granite, chimneys, cracks, and ledges, all capped by another 600-foot scramble to the top. Typically, this means six to eight hours of heroics after a 4 a.m. start to avoid afternoon lightning. But you’ll still want to pause to catch your breath and take in your surroundings, which include a close-up view of the Diamond, an 800-foot-tall face. Contact the Colorado Mountain School in Estes Park (970-586-5758) for lessons and guided climbs.

ROUTT NATIONAL FOREST
ONE OF Colorado’s greatest untrampled MOUNTAIN-BIKING play spots is tucked away in the northernmost reaches of high-elevation Routt National Forest, two hours from Rocky Mountain National Park. For three days of wheeled heaven, head west from the park on Highway 40 (you’ll hit the Continental Divide at Rabbit Ears Pass) and continue north of Steamboat Springs to Routt, named for the state’s first governor. The formidable Nipple Peak/Lopez Creek Loop, accessed via Forest Road 487, near Hahn’s Lake will humble even hardcore riders. This 16-mile burner follows nappy Trail 1156 through dense conifers and lupine-sprinkled meadows before a four-mile grind to the saddle near 10,324-foot Nipple Peak. Then it’s up over a divide, down along Willow Creek, and onto Trail 1147. Call it a day at the Hinman Park Campground, next to the Elk River, east of the town of Clark. It’s a delightful, lodgepole-pine-dappled camp, somewhat less used than its neighbor sites in the area. The following day, your riding agenda focuses on the Big Red Park/Manzanares Trail, which wraps along Big Red Park, a large mountain meadow, and has stellar views of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area next door. If you’ve got juice left, there’s still the Hinman Trail, also known as Trail 1177, near your campsite, which unleashes seven miles of aspen-fringed, rolling singletrack studded with roots, rocks, downed trees, and—just for extra credit—a couple of stream crossings. In Steamboat Springs, Sore Saddle Cyclery (970-879-1675, ) has bikes and maps.

Olympic National Park, Rose Lake National Recreation Area

national parks, state parks

Washington’s Never-Never Land: Olympic National Park

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK
FEW NATIONAL PARKS MAKE PICKING your poison so gut-wrenching as Olympic does: Should you light out for the 7,000-foot-and-higher peaks and sparkling lakes of the Olympic Peninsula’s interior? The rugged headlands and tide pools of the 65-mile Coastal section, a lengthy ribbon of primitive coastline? Or the moist air and brooding old growth of the temperate rainforest? Tough call, but this should help: For a gratifying combo of remoteness, adventure, and greenery so lush you’d swear you can hear the plants breathing, set aside three or four days to BACKPACK part of the 15-mile out-and-back Queets River Trail, in the park’s southwestern area. To reach the trailhead, drive 45 minutes from Highway 101 along a one-lane gravel washboard, and then ford two rivers, the shallow Sams and the trickier Queets. (Use caution on the Queets; the riverbed is rocky, uneven, slimy in spots, and unpassable at times in spring and early summer.) The trail wanders among Sitka spruces and red cedars, with riverside sandbars inviting quick dunks in the martini-cold Queets and well-situated tent sites. Elk herds have been known to make a cameo. Pick up your wilderness permit ($5, plus a camping fee of $2 per person per night) at any ranger station or information center.

ROSS LAKE NATIONAL RECREATION AREA
Shortcut across Puget Sound to your second destination: Ross Lake National Recreation Area, hard by the Canadian border. Drive north on Highway 101 along the coast to Port Townsend, where it’s a 30-minute ferry ride to Whidbey Island and the cozy Captain Whidbey Inn (doubles, $150–$295; 800-366-4097, ). Next day, drive three hours on State Route 20 to 24-mile-long Ross Lake and the captivating Ross Lake Resort (doubles, $92–$197; 206-386-4437, ). First, there’s one more transportation leg: Ditch your car at milepost 134 on State Route 20 and hike a mile to the water, where a resort boat will ferry you to one of 15 floating cabins. Mellow Ross Lake, home to beavers and beatniks, has premier LAKE PADDLING, with 20 designated boat-in campsites if you want to sleep out (pick up a free backcountry permit at the Wilderness Information Center on State Route 20 on your way in; 360-873-4590; the resort rents canoes and kayaks). Afternoon winds tend to blow strongly uplake, so move in the morning. Your warm-up: Paddle the four miles up and down the Ruby Arm inlet. Or ride a motorboat to the trailhead for 6,100-foot Desolation Peak. It’s a 4.7-mile, 4,300-foot billy-goat hoof up to the lookout, where Jack Kerouac is rumored to have camped for 63 days. The views—of glacier-capped peaks and glistening Ross Lake—are nothing short of majestic.

Olympic National Park, Rose Lake National Recreation Area

national parks, state parks

Oh Capitan, My Capitan: Yosemite National Park

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
QUICK—TRY TO THINK OF A NATIONAL PARK whose icons are more familiar than Yosemite’s masterpieces of rock and water: Half Dome, El Capitan, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite Falls. No park comes close to this one’s abundant glacier-polished granite, a veritable shrine of ROCK CLIMBING. For those with aid-climbing skills, the tip of Lost Arrow Spire is an electrifying place to rise above the fray, quite literally, with outrageous views of Half Dome and Yosemite Valley. The spire is a tapering finger of rock that parallels the main Yosemite Falls wall, with an adrenalinizing twist: Although you climb only 200 feet on the spire, there’s some 2,500 feet between you and the valley floor below, more than enough to get you mumbling incoherently about your own mortality. By the numbers the climb is Grade III, 5.7, C.2; if any of that sounds like quantum physics, you’re not ready for Lost Arrow. (Instead, scamper up classic but less serious climbs like two-pitch Bishops Terrace, a 5.8.) There are two ways to approach the spire; we suggest making it a weekend trip either way, camping off-trail the nights before and after the climb. If you have ample sweat to spill, hike the four steep miles from the Valley on Yosemite Falls Trail via Yosemite Point. (Payoff: At about 6,500 feet, upper Yosemite Falls makes spectacular trail company.) For details of Yosemite routes and great climbing history, check out climber Chris McNamara’s Web site at . For lessons or guided climbs, contact Yosemite Mountaineering School (209-372-8435, ).

STANISLAUS NATIONAL FOREST
Hugging Yosemite’s northwest shoulder is the strikingly similar terrain of the Stanislaus National Forest, with more than 800 miles of rivers and streams, 1,470 designated campsites, and plenty of wilderness access points for sublime RAFTING and MOUNTAIN BIKING. Allow two hours to drive from Yosemite to a choice stretch of unpopulated whitewater, the North Fork of the Stanislaus, a steep, narrow canyon best run in May and June. Here await six miles of relentless whitewater, California’s longest continuous Class IV stretch. En route to this trove, spend a night at Murphys Historic Hotel in Murphys, a charismatic Gold Rush town off Highway 4 (doubles, $65–$100; 800-532-7684). Then start the wild ride at Sourgrass Crossing, about 20 miles from Murphys, navigating massive drops, boulder slaloms, and stair-step waterfalls, into Calaveras Big Trees State Park. O.A.R.S. offers daylong rafting adventures ($117–$143 per person; 800-346-6277, ). Next up: Continue on Highway 4 to Bear Valley, trade your paddle for knobbies, and tackle the Bear Valley/Lake Alpine route, ten miles of rock-hopping singletrack. Bear Valley șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Company (209-753-2834) has maps, guides, and rentals. With a sunset-facing deck and knotty timbered cabins, Lake Alpine Lodge (one-bedroom cabins from $120; 209-753-6358, ) is your serene base camp. Don’t dawdle: Highway 4 could be the state’s next scenic byway.

Ramp It Up

BMX: Lake Ferris, California

Brandon Nicholls, now 14 years old, got his first for-real BMX bike on his seventh Christmas. “I just started riding from there,” he says in a voice so newly dropped to baritone that he uses it slowly and carefully. Where he rode to was BMX glory. Last December, Brandon became the number-one–ranked amateur rider in the American Bicycle Association, BMX’s leading sanctioning body.

At five-foot-nine and 170 pounds, Brandon is fast growing into his voice. On a Sunday after lunch in Moreno Valley, California, 70 miles east of L.A., he wheels his $1,900 aluminum-frame GT Speed Series UltraBox, provided as part of his sponsorship deal with the GT/Panasonic Shock Wave BMX Team, to the family minivan. Brandon, his parents, and his brother Kyle are about to decamp to the nearby Lake Perris BMX course, as it has on nearly every Sunday afternoon for the last seven years. Brandon’s parents, Bill and Marci, will help officiate while their boy cranks out lap after lap in a local-level race, hurdling dirt-packed jumps and 25-foot-long stretches of dirt lined with 15 one- to two-foot bumps.

Once rolling, the Nicholls van takes on the glow shared by all family vehicles on the way to uplift and togetherness. “I think it’s important to do things with them, not just drop them off and pick them up later,” says Marci, a zaftig motherly sunbeam who works as a state truck inspector. (In lieu of a nametag, she’s wearing a T-shirt that proclaims her to be Brandon’s Mom.) Bill, a contractor who grew up in nearby Huntington Beach, brags about the preeminence of BMX here in the suburbifying drylands of Riverside County, the sport’s Fertile Crescent. In fact, BMX was born in these parts in the early 1970s as bicycle motocross, a nonmotorized version of motocross that pits eight torso-armored racers against one another in one-lap heats, or “motos,” on the 1,100 to 1,300-foot-long tracks.

Bill’s own recreational background—he used to race Baja buggies and motorcycles—says a lot about why this is BMX country. Daddies here share a predilection for things that burn gas and go like hell. Motorless kiddie motorsport, then, is a natural. Some dads turn to BMX when their kids get hooked, and the 60,000-member-strong ABA is more than accommodating: Age groups range from five-and-under to 56-and-over, with the 13-and-14-year-old division the biggest. Yet despite its competitive bent, BMX boasts a thriving recreational side, too: Nonracers flock to homemade dirt courses—outfitted with short, swooping downhills and steep jumps—in parks all across the United States.

Today at Lake Perris, Brandon Nicholls is in his element. He rockets down the starting hill, looking like a steelhead swimming with catfish. “Check this moto right here,” machine-guns the announcer, somebody’s dad being unhinged. “Check out Brandon Nicholls!” Kids who hope for BMX fame can see it in their midst, while parental hope is spelled out on the side of the Chevy pickup that belongs to the guy who runs the track: Keeping kids clean in the dirt.

The Dirt: More than a dozen L.A. suburbs have BMX tracks. Armoring up for your first moto requires ABA membership ($35 per year). At the Lake Perris track, practice times and races are scheduled throughout the week; call 909-657-4917 for details.

SPECIALIZED FATBOY HEMI

VITALS: $600; 800-245-3462;
WEIGHT: 4 pounds frame, 24.7 pounds complete
FRAME: No tubes, just an aluminum monocoque
FORK: Stout, chrome-moly unicrown
COMPONENT HIGHLIGHTS: A smattering of Specialized’s own parts (cranks, tires, handlebars) built to handle the high-flying rigors of the BMX track
THE RIDE: Whether you’re perfecting a gate-start at the track or simply hamming it up on the local trails, at $600 the Fatboy Hemi is cheap enough that you and Junior can think about getting matching bikes to work on your double-jumps together. (Sure beats hucking fastballs at each other.) The Hemi’s trademark monocoque construction makes it stiffer than most BMX frames, and it comes adorned with nice touches like a built-in pad on top of the frame—which, when you come up short on that double-jump, means Junior won’t necessarily be an only child.

S&M KRIS BENNETT

VITALS: $915; 714-835-3400;
WEIGHT: 6.95 pounds frame; 25.7 pounds complete
FRAME: Chrome-moly steel
FRAME: Stout, chrome-moly unicrown
COMPONENT HIGHLIGHTS: Pricey Profile three-piece cranks are worth every penny for their balance of durability and light weight
THE RIDE: Show up at any BMX street scene or dirt-lot jump astride the Bennett—named after the famed racer—and the local competition will immediately classify you as one of two breeds: dark horse threat or witless poser. You are, after all, riding the signature bike of one of the best “dirt-jumpers” in the country. Haven’t heard of Bennett or his niche MTV-style sport? You’re obviously not a threat. But that’s OK because the Bennett, with construction and componentry designed to handle the impact of the occasional flat landing on hardpacked dirt, is tough enough to be ridden away from all but the worst rookie-beaters. —ANDREW JUSKAITIS

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To zero in on the most idyllic resorts this side of paradise, we dispatched a crack squad of writers to the Caribbean. They came back with a hit list of places where creature comforts and adventure are not mutually exclusive. Now it’s your turn.

By Katie Arnold

By Janine Sieja

By Randy Wayne White

By Hampton Sides

By Bonnie Tsui

By Grant Davis

By Sally Schumaier

By Mike Grudowski

By Karen Karbo

By Lisa Anne Auerbach

PLUS:
Swimming in Mosquito Bay, sailing the Grenadines, climbing 10,000-foot Pico Duarte, and five other don’t-miss dream outings.

Laluna

A minimalist’s idea of maximum bliss

Caribbean Resort, Grenada

Caribe, anyone? Laluna’s mod seaside lounge overlooking Portici Bay.

ON OUR THIRD MORNING IN GRENADA, we roasted the Chicken. Then we did what any sensible traveler in the Caribbean would do: We beelined it back to Laluna, a sublime refuge tucked into a hidden bay on the island’s southwest coast, and made straight for the sea. We were ridiculously filthy, splattered with mud from a three-hour mountain-bike ride with Chicken—a wiry, calf-strong Grenadian guide who’s such a fanatic cyclist, he’d already pedaled 25 miles before breakfast. (No wonder we beat him up the hills.) Salty but clean, we retired to the private plunge pool on our cottage’s wide wooden deck, taking in the uninterrupted view of Portici Bay. Time to debate the next move: Grab a book and sprawl across the teak settee on the veranda, wander down to the open-air lounge for a cold Caribe and a game of backgammon, loll poolside on a chaise, or have a massage? There’s only one house rule at this tiny, tony anti-resort: Make yourself at home. After three days, we felt so at home, we thought we were home—that is, if home were a stylish, thatch-roofed cabana notched into a hillside above an empty crescent of Caribbean beach. In our dreams.

The Good Life // Designed in 2001 by Gabriella Giuntoli, the Italian architect for Giorgio Armani’s villa on an island off Sicily, Laluna has a pared-down, natural aesthetic: Indonesian teak-chic meets spare Italian elegance. All 16 one- and two-bedroom concrete cottages—painted in cheerful shades of pumpkin, lapis, teal, and plum—are well-appointed but unfussy: Balinese four-poster beds draped with sheer muslin panels, earth-colored floors covered with sea-grass rugs, open-air bathrooms with mod metal fixtures. The same soothing mix of wood, cane, cotton, and thatch prevails in the resort’s beachfront courtyard. On one end is the breezy restaurant, where Italian chef Benedetto La Fiura cooks up Carib-Continental dishes like callaloo soup (an island specialty made from dasheen, a tuber with spinachlike leaves, and nutmeg) and mushroom risotto. On the other is the open-air lounge, with a fully stocked bar and comfy Indonesian daybeds with plump throw pillows, and low tables that double as footrests. Between the two is pure R&R: a sleek square pool with a perfect curve of beach beyond.

Jaw Dropper // Swinging the cottage’s mahogany-and-glass doors wide open at night and being lulled to sleep by the wind in the bougainvillea and the gentle rolling of waves below.

Sports on-Site // There’s no set agenda at Laluna, but there’s plenty to do. Guests with sailing experience can take out one of two Hobie Cats, as well as single and double sea kayaks, for the easy cruise to Morne Rouge Bay, the next cove over. There’s a small stash of snorkeling equipment available (keep an eye out for yellow-and-black-striped sergeant majors near the rocky points at either end of the beach) and Specialized mountain bikes for tooling around.

Beyond the Sand // Fight the urge to cocoon at Laluna and head inland and upward to Grand Étang Forest Reserve, a 3,800-acre tract of rainforest at 2,350 feet, along the island’s jungly spine. We spent a day in the charming company of 64-year-old Telfor Bedeau, known to all as the father of Grenada hiking. He led us on a four-hour ramble around Lake Grand ƒtang, a rogue crater left over from the island’s volcanic past, and along an overgrown tunnel of a trail to a series of five waterfalls (popularly, if erroneously, dubbed the Seven Sisters) and up a hidden path to a bonus cascade called Honeymoon Falls (half-day hikes, $20 per person; 473-442-6200). At A&E Tours, Chicken guides half-day, full-day, and multi-day mountain-bike rides along the coast or through the reserve (our three-hour pedal from the harbor capital of St. George’s over the serpentine, near-vertical Grenville Vale Road cost $25 per person, including bike rental; 473-435-1444, ).

The Fine Print // American Eagle (800-433-7300; ) flies the two and a half hours to Grenada daily from San Juan, Puerto Rico (round-trip from Chicago, about $785); Air Jamaica (800-523-5585; ) flies nonstop from New York’s JFK four days a week (about $400). From December 20 to April 13, rates at Laluna (473-439-0001, ) start at $530 per night, double occupancy, including water activities and bikes (the price drops to $290 in summer). A modified meal plan (breakfast and dinner) is $65 per person per day. Henry’s Safari Tours can take care of your on-island transportation and guiding needs (473-444-5313, ).

The Hermitage

Frangipani breezes, volcano view

THE SOUNDTRACK TO NEVIS, a volcanic bit of emerald-green pointing skyward in the West Indies, lacks a badass steel-drum reggae riff. Nevis, blessedly, is not that Caribbean. Its rhythms require closer attention: nocturnal, chirping bell frogs and murmuring trade winds that rustle the coconut palms and spread the sweetness of frangipani across 50 square miles of overgrown hills and dignified former sugarcane plantations. The most charming of these mansions, the Hermitage, is perched 800 feet above sea level on the southern flanks of dormant-for-now 3,232-foot Nevis Peak. The 15 gingerbread cottages and 340-year-old British colonial lodge are embellished with pastel-shuttered windows and four-poster canopy beds. Despite this dollhouse decor, you won’t feel embarrassed to take your lunch of grilled-flying-fish salad on the veranda after a muddy five-hour hike up the volcano. Just hose yourself off in the front yard first. The Good Life // Amiable American transplants Richard and Maureen Lupinacci bought the Hermitage 33 years ago. Its Great House, reputed to be the oldest wooden building in the Caribbean, is where guests dine by candlelight or sidle over to the bar for rum punch at cocktail hour. (The free-flowing mixture of dark Cavalier rum, syrup, lemon juice, and a dash of cinnamon is part of why the refined Hermitage vibe never crosses over into stuffiness.) Most of the cottages are restored originals—whitewashed, light-filled retreats furnished with regional antiques. All have hammock-equipped balconies for horizontal views of Nevis Peak and the white clouds that usually shroud its summit. The three-acre grounds are dotted with citrus, mango, and cashew trees, and have two pools and a tennis court.

Jaw Dropper // Roam trails crisscrossing the Gingerland District on one of the lodge’s 16 thoroughbreds, or charge up Saddle Hill to an old lookout used by British admiral Horatio Nelson in the 1780s.

Sports on-Site // Explore the terraced gardens of lilies, ginger, and hibiscus or take the ten-minute shuttle to four-mile Pinney’s Beach, the loveliest of Nevis’s sandy stretches. Just a quarter-mile from the inn is the trailhead for the mile-long climb to the summit of Nevis Peak (contact Top to Bottom; $35 per person; 869-469-9080).

Beyond the Sand // A wild donkey—an odd trail obstacle—brayed his displeasure as I pedaled the sea-grape-lined singletrack of Tower Hill. Windsurf ‘n’ Mountain Bike Nevis (869-469-9682, , ) offers half-day rides from $40, including use of a Trek front-suspension bike. At Oualie Beach, on the island’s northwestern coast, let marine biologist Barbara Whitman introduce you to four-eyed butterfly fish, goat fish, flame coral, and pink sea anemones. Under the Sea (869-469-1291, ) charges $40 for a three-hour snorkel, including gear.

The Fine Print // American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) is the only major U.S. carrier serving Nevis. The daily flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, takes an hour and 15 minutes (round-trip airfare from New York City costs about $725; from Denver, about $980). From December 15 to April 15, rates at the Hermitage (800-682-4025, ) start at $325 for a double, including a full breakfast (low-season rates from $170).

Anse Chastanet

This is jungle luxe

Caribbean Resort, St. Lucia

Petit Piton looms as Anse Chastanet’s yacht heads out for a day at sea.

Caribbean Resort, St. Lucia

Walls optional: a hillside villa at Anse Chastanet

MY FIRST DAWN on St. Lucia, a big teardrop of an island wedged between Martinique and St. Vincent in the Lesser Antilles, was disappointing. I’d flown in on the dark of the moon and arrived at Anse Chastanet, a 600-acre resort perched on the rugged southwestern shore, too late to see anything but a macrodome of stars. The next morning, I awoke to warblers singing in the cedars and the scent of begonia shifting in the trade wind. My villa-size room, I realized, barely had walls. Wait, it gets worse. Below was a bay so clear, the coral shimmered like a field of wildflowers. Twin peaks spired out of the forest. The rockier one, 2,461-foot Petit Piton, was unavoidably phallic. Gros Piton, at 2,619 feet, was more rounded and feminine. I looked from the Pitons to the beach, then at my empty bed. What a blunder! Here I was in the most achingly romantic setting in all my years … and I was alone.

The Good Life // I didn’t feel weepy for long. The resort has a five-star list of activities to match the cuisine (spiced-carrot-and-coconut soup, grilled dorado, mango trifle), an attentive 250-person staff (serving no more than 100 guests), and pleasantly esoteric options at the Kai BeltĂ© spa. (Try a wosh cho hot-stone massage.) Trou au Diable, a thatch-roofed bistro, sits on a half-mile of secluded beach, while the Piton Restaurant is set among the 49 villas up the hill. My Hillside Deluxe room, with its louvered doors and green heartwood furniture, was like a tree house built by Swiss castaways. Very rich Swiss castaways. But considering the absence of phones or TVs, they didn’t seem to mind being stranded on St. Lucia.

Jaw Dropper // Tucking into a plate of locally raised lamb and fresh snapper cooked under the stars by chef Jon Bentham on an antique cane-sugar pot the size of a kettledrum.

Sports on-Site // Anse Chastanet is famous for spectacular diving; there’s a Platinum/PADI Scuba and Water Sports Center, and boats ferry you out to several world-class dive sites along the Pinnacles reef. But I chose to explore a lesser-known offering: 12 miles of mountain-bike trails winding through the ruins of a 19th-century French sugarcane-and-cocoa plantation next door. Full disclosure: I expected crappy equipment but a fun ride. What I got was a first-class trail system partially designed by NORBA phenom Tinker Juarez and my choice of 50 Cannondale F800s, all fitted with hydraulic shocks and brakes. The ride, over rolling jungle paths, was excellent—I broke a sweat but still had time to stop and pick wild avocados, bananas, and guavas.

Beyond the Sand // Ever bagged a Piton? Me neither. The climbs are notoriously steep and muddy, but if you’re game, the front desk recommends a guide named Meneau Herman ($50 a person for the day). For the rest of us, there are ample opportunities to explore St. Lucia via horse or sea kayak. On my last day, I hit the water with Xavier Vernantius, the head kayak guide. Born on St. Lucia, Xavier, 33, knew all the secret caves to explore. As we paddled around a rocky outcropping called Fairyland, the view of the Pitons in the distance left me speechless. “I grew up here, and I still find them beautiful,” Xavier said.

The Fine Print // US Airways (800-622-1015, ) flies to St. Lucia from New York City for about $700, from Chicago for $760. From December 20 to April 7, a double at Anse Chastanet (758-459-7000, ) costs $455 per night, including breakfast and dinner ($220 per night in the off-season, not including meals). The spa and scuba diving are extra.

Tiamo Resorts

Check your Blackberry at the door and get way, way offline

THE MOST IMPRESSIVE thing about Tiamo is how unimpressive it is. Even as my sea taxi pulled up to the unassuming scallop of beach on the southern half of Andros, I still couldn’t see the resort that was right in front of me. Once ashore, I had to wade through thickets of sea grapes and gumbo-limbo trees to find the central lodge—an unpretentious wooden structure with screened porches and a corrugated metal roof. Was this the place? The sleepy Brazilian jazz seeping out the front door said yes. Hacked out of the Bahamian bush and opened in 2001 by Mike and Petagay Hartman, Tiamo is a fascinating—and so far successful—experiment to test whether assiduous eco-consciousness can coexist with rustic luxury. The ethos here is part Gilligan’s Island, part Buckminster Fuller. With only 11 open-air bungalows, powered by the sun and outfitted with compost toilets, everything is small-scale, low-impact, phosphate-free, and relentlessly off the grid. Accessible only by boat or seaplane, the resort sits on 12 acres of pristine beach along an inland waterway, surrounded by 125 acres of preserved wilderness. There are no air conditioners, no TVs, none of the whirs and bleeps of the digital age. Nope, at Tiamo, messages are delivered strictly by iguanagram. The Good Life // By day, watch a heron or one of the resident iguanas trundle by your screened porch. At night, the hemp curtains billow in the breeze. The bright-green-and-yellow louvered shutters, exposed copper pipes, and bare-metal faucet levers are sleekly utilitarian. My solar-heated beach-rock shower looked out on a mighty specimen of local cactus known as—I kid you not—the Bahamian dildo. The lodge has the same casual vibe. Browse for dog-eared paperbacks and board games in the library; dine on sesame seared tuna and mahi-mahi with mango beurre blanc at the large communal table; or simply fritter the evening away at the rattan bar, clutching a mind-warming Petagay Punch as a local “rake-and-scrape” band sings you back to bed.




Jaw Dropper // A spectacular network of “blue holes” riddle the limestone bedrock all over southern Andros. Kayak out to the Crack, a fabulously deep gash in the seafloor where two temperature zones collide in a thermocline, and snorkel or dive the nutrient-rich broth alongside hosts of wrasse, lobster, sea cucumbers, and freakishly large angelfish.

Sports on-Site // Tiamo is not a destination for hyperactive folks who expect a brisk regimen of “activities.” Basically, Mike shows up at breakfast and says, “What do you want to do today?” Choose between swimming, bonefishing, kayaking, snorkeling, scuba diving, bushwhacking, or my new favorite sport, extreme hammocking. Hikes (led by Shona Paterson, the on-staff marine biologist) are free, as are snorkel trips to the blue holes. There’s a modest fleet of trimarans and sea kayaks at the ready. But the most elaborate activity is … horseshoes. Somehow, that says it all.

Beyond the Sand // Andros boasts some of the finest bonefishing in the world, and Mike can easily hook you up with a guide ($350 per boat for a full day; each boat holds two anglers). Ask for Captain Jolly Boy, a corpulent former bar owner turned Baptist preacher who stalks “the gray ghost” with all the biblical fervor of Ahab. “I feel you, Mr. Bones!” Jolly Boy whispers as he poles the flats. For divers, the Andros Barrier Reef, one of the world’s largest contiguous reefs, lies less than a mile offshore; its sheer wall, home to thousands of species of fish, drops nearly 6,000 feet into the Tongue of the Ocean. Scuba excursions motor out daily, but you must be PADI-certified ($100 for a one-tank dive, $145 for two tanks).

The Fine Print // Delta (800-241-4141, ) and American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) fly to Nassau from L.A. and New York for $600 or less. From there, make the 20-minute hop with Western Air (242-377-2222, ) to Andros; flights are about $100 round-trip. The bungalows at Tiamo (242-357-2489, ) cost $275 per person, double occupancy ($360 per person, single occupancy) year-round; rates include everything but your bar tab, bonefishing, and scuba diving. The resort is closed August 1 through September 30.

Punta Caracol Acqua Lodge

The lullaby of lapping waves

Caribbean Resort, Isla Colon, Panama

The H20 cure: cabanas on stilts at Punta Caracol

TRANQUILO IS THE OPERATIVE WORD at Punta Caracol, located just off the serenely beautiful island of Isla ColĂłn, an hour’s flight by puddle jumper from Panama City and a 15-minute boat ride from the small town of Bocas del Toro. Sheltered by the surrounding archipelago and, about three miles away, mainland Panama, the resort’s six two-story thatch-roofed cabanas are suspended over the water on wooden stilts, spiraling out from a long central walkway to face Almirante Bay. Each solar-powered duplex has its own private terrace and deck, and the sound of lapping water lulls you to sleep. This vision of calm luxury perched at the edge of the world is just what founder and Barcelona native JosĂ©-LuĂ­s Bordas had in mind when he designed Punta Caracol in 1997 as his final project for business school. At dusk on my first evening, I’d already showered and dressed for dinner, yet I couldn’t help heeding the call of bath-temperature, cerulean water. In record time, I changed back into my swimsuit and threw myself—with a war whoop—off the back deck. It’s the kind of place where glittering-green tropical fish jump up to meet you in rapid-fire succession and bioluminescent plankton are the only lights shimmering offshore after sunset. Every detail of the resort, from hand-woven hanging textiles to fresh papaya and pineapple-covered panqueques at breakfast, is well executed by Bordas’s competent local staff. At the end of my four-day idyll, I could tell him honestly, “Es mi idea del paraĂ­so, tambiĂ©n.” The Good Life // Each bungalow has native-hardwood floors and French doors that open to the bay, as well as wooden lounge chairs and woven floor mats. Bathrooms are lined with clay tiles with a lime-green-and-plĂĄtano-yellow trim—brightly Caribbean without being gaudy. Upstairs, the open-air bedroom has a canopied king-size bed with natural-cotton drapes that double as mosquito nets, but you won’t need them; the cool breezes off the water at night are enough to blow pesky insects away. As for eats, you won’t find fresher seafood: The open-air restaurant-cum-lounge—also on stilts over the water— gets regular deliveries from local fishermen cruising by with just-caught lobster and red snapper, weighed with a portable scale brought out from behind the bar. A must-have: grilled lobster with tomatoes stuffed with rice, fish, and vegetables. (Chase it down with a warm, sweet pineapple slice glazed with caramelized sugar.)

Jaw Dropper // While you’re dining alfresco on flame-grilled shrimp, you can watch dolphins, pelicans, and parrot fish trolling for dinner on the reef below.

Sports on-Site // Swim, snorkel, or paddle in clear, calm Caribbean water along a mile of coral-reef coastline; there’s no beach at Punta Caracol, but your cabana’s private dock is just as enticing. It’s an easy paddle inland, via cayuco (traditional wooden canoe), to Isla ColĂłn’s mangrove swamps—home to howler and white-face monkeys and the unbelievably slow-moving two-toed sloth, or oso perezoso (“lazy bear”).

Beyond the Sand // Pilar Bordas, the miracle-working sister of JosĂ©-LuĂ­s, can arrange outdoor activities on demand: surfing at Bluff Beach, on the far side of Isla ColĂłn; mountain-biking across the center of the island; scuba-diving with queen angelfish near San Cr’stobal Island, four miles away (two-tank dives with Starfleet Scuba, $50; 011-507-757-9630, ). Hire a guide for the 40-minute boat ride to Bastimentos Island National Marine Park, where you can hike through sugarcane to Red Frog Beach ($30 per person).

The Fine Print // American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) flies direct from Miami to Panama City for about $300 round-trip. From there, Aeroperlas (011-507-315-7500, ) has two flights daily to Bocas del Toro for $116 round-trip. The Centers for Disease Control recommends a yellow-fever vaccination and the antimalarial drug chloroquine for travel to the Bocos del Toro region. Double-occupancy rates at Punta Caracol in high season (December 16 to May 15) start at $265, including breakfast, dinner, airport transfers, and use of cayucos and snorkel equipment (from $215, off-season; 011-507-612-1088, ).

Bitter End Yacht Club

Fat sails in the sunset

Caribbean Resort, Virgin Gorda, BVI

Even type A’s need some downtime: the Bitter End

Caribbean Resort, Virgin Gorda, BVI

The North Pier deck at Virgin Gorda’s Bitter End Yacht Club

THE BITTER END, ON THE REMOTE NORTHEASTERN TIP of Virgin Gorda, is a sprawling community of people with one thing on their minds: boating. In addition to the club’s 78 rooms, freshwater swimming pool, and teakwood Clubhouse restaurant, there’s a marina with charter-boat service, a dive shop, a market, a pub, and 70 boat moorings. All the action takes place offshore, specifically in the protected waters of three-square-mile North Sound, with the club’s flotilla of 100-plus vessels, ranging from sea kayaks and windsurfers to Hobie Cats and 30-foot oceangoing yachts. This is no mellow-rum-drinks-on-your-private-beach kind of resort: It’s a playground for Type A’s in topsiders.

The Good Life // The best rooms are the 48 cottages set on a steep hillside, with wraparound decks and views of Eustacia Reef (30 air-conditioned suites climb the sunset side of the hill). Meals (think surf-and-turf) are served under the blue canopies of the Clubhouse.

Jaw Dropper // The staff at the BEYC remembers everyone. It had been two years since my last visit, yet when I walked to breakfast, watersports staffers greeted me by my first name.

Sports on-Site // Thanks to warm water and 15- to 20-knot winds, North Sound is the perfect place to hone your tacks and jibes. Private sailing lessons for beginners cost $25 per hour, and advanced sailing sessions run $50 per class. Use of all the small boats is included in your stay, as are snorkeling trips to nearby reefs. Two-tank dives cost $85, all equipment except wetsuit included, and deep-sea fishing for blue marlin runs $275 a day.

Beyond the Sand // The 30-minute hike to the top of 1,359-foot Gorda Peak offers a commanding view of the entire Virgin Islands region. Don’t miss a trip to the famous Baths, a jumbled collection of giant boulders and knee-deep tide pools.

The Fine Print // Round-trip airfare on American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) from New York to Tortola’s Beef Island Airport is $525. From January 5 to April 30, the five-night Admiral’s Package at the BEYC ($2,925 to $3,850; 800-872-2392, ) includes three meals a day for two (low season, $2,150 to $2,625). The annual Pro-Am Regatta ($2,940) takes place the first week of November.

Maroma Resort & Spa

A mystical hideaway on the Mayan Riviera

Caribbean Resort, Yucatan, Mexico

Your palapa or mine? Get a massage or just toll in the sun on Playa Maroma.

EVER SINCE ARCHITECT JosĂ© Luis Moreno followed a machete-beaten path through 200 acres of tropical jungle, in 1976, to build this exclusive beachfront resort, Maroma has been deliberately hard to find—tucked off an unmarked gravel road, 20 miles south of CancĂșn. On my first evening, I followed the flickering lights of a thousand candles along a maze of stone walkways, wandering through gardens of orchids and palm trees until I found myself on a narrow crescent of fine white sand: a heavenly border between jungle and sea.

The Good Life // Designed simply, the 64 rooms in ten low-lying, white-stucco buildings are an elegant mix of saltillo tile, handwoven rugs and bedspreads, mahogany beams, and bamboo shutters. Dine on fresh grilled snapper at the cavernous El Sol restaurant or on the beach-view terrace. Jaw Dropper // The world’s second-longest barrier reef, which runs 450 miles from CancĂșn to Honduras and teems with coral and fish, is just 200 yards offshore.

Sports on-Site // At the beach kiosk, set up snorkeling and reef-diving trips, sea-kayaking excursions, and day sailing on a 27-foot catamaran ($15 to $120 per person). On land, mountain-bike through 250 acres of protected jungle. Spa offerings include a two-hour Maya steam bath and cleansing ceremony ($90), yoga classes, and nine types of massage ($50 to $120).

Beyond the Sand // The YucatĂĄn is cratered with more than 700 cenotes—limestone sinkholes that offer otherworldly snorkeling, diving, and rappelling opportunities. The resort can arrange a trip 40 miles south to Dos Ojos cenote for $90.

The Fine Print // Continental Airlines (800-523-3273, ) flies from Houston to CancĂșn for $400 round-trip; American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) flies nonstop from New York for about $700. Double-occupancy rates at Maroma (866-454-9351, ) start at $400 in high season (November 14 to December 18 and January 4 to May 15) and $340 in low season.

Caneel Bay

The true-blue classic

WITHOUT A DOUBT, ST. JOHN’S alluring natural charms get star billing at Caneel Bay. Frigate birds, as angular as pterodactyls, soar over no fewer than seven stunningly pristine on-site strands, from vest-pocket hideaways like Paradise Beach, which you can have all to yourself, to Caneel Beach, shaded by coconut palms and sea grapes and sprawled out in front of the resort’s main lobby. Some 170 manicured acres are cordoned off from the rest of the island—and the rest of the world, it seems—by a trio of 800-foot-high forested ridges. Philanthropist and conservationist Laurance Rockefeller founded Caneel Bay in the fifties, and the place still feels like a summer camp for blue bloods. There’s no shortage of diversions—day trips to the British Virgins, guided shoreline hikes, couples yoga at the resort’s Self Centre. But most of the clientele seem to be seeking stillness and seclusion rather than pampering. Rooms contain no phones, TVs, radios, or even alarm clocks. Management, for its part, tries mightily to preserve an old-money sense of decorum: Collars for gents, please, even on the tennis courts, and evening resort wear for ladies. Expect to see plenty of newlyweds, espadrille-shod martini sippers, and the occasional jackass: Wild donkeys sometimes roam past just in time for cocktails.

The Good Life // Architecture keeps a low profile here. Low-slung rows of 166 guest rooms—done up in dark wood, Indonesian wicker, and botanical prints—are scattered around the property in clusters of a dozen or so and linked by winding footpaths. As a rule, the food in the four dining rooms is tasty if not particularly innovative; standouts include the steaks, aged and tender, the breakfast buffet served on an open-air terrace overlooking Caneel Beach, and the 265-bottle wine list at the Turtle Bay Estate House.

Jaw Dropper // Request one of 20 rooms along Scott Beach. After you’ve spent hours snorkeling with hubcap-size hawksbill turtles, your private deck offers a front-row seat for virtuoso sunsets that give way to the lights of St. Thomas, four miles across the sound.

Sports on-Site // Aside from the 11 tennis courts, built into a terraced hillside, a compact fitness center, and a small pool near the courts, most action takes place on the coral formations a hundred yards from the waterline. Use of snorkel gear—plus a generous selection of sailboards, kayaks, and small sailboats—is complimentary.

Beyond the Sand // Two-thirds of St. John’s 20 square miles fall within Virgin Islands National Park. Sample them by renting a jeep (from $65 a day at Sun-n-Sand Car Rentals, available at Caneel Bay from 9 to 10 a.m. daily) and heading for the Reef Bay Trail, at 2.4 miles the longest of the park’s 20 hikes. Other options include half- and full-day sails to some of St. John’s excellent anchorages, and sea-kayak excursions to offshore cays ($60 to $70 per person through Caneel Bay).

The Fine Print // Most major U.S. airlines fly direct to St. Thomas from various East Coast cities (about $550 round-trip from New York); Caneel Bay guests go by ferry to the resort. From December 17 to March 15, rates at Caneel Bay (340-776-6111, ) start at $450, double occupancy ($300 in low season).

Turtle Inn

The Godfather’s eco-resort

I SIT AT THE DESK OF TURTLE INN’S VILLA ONE, staring through wooden shutters at the Caribbean, hoping for some Maya magic. Turtle Inn is owned by Francis Ford Coppola, and he was here, on the southern coast of Belize, working at this very desk, only a few weeks ago. I’m a huge fan of Mr. Francis (as he’s called by the people who work here). I love the Godfather trilogy, but what I really love is Villa One’s outdoor garden shower, designed by the auteur himself, surrounded by a high wall built by Maya stonemasons and illuminated with Balinese lanterns. I also love the Italian-for-the-tropics cuisine—white pizza topped with garlic and arugula grown from Sicilian seeds in Turtle Inn’s garden, soup made from local lobster—served in the snazzy open-air restaurant. A few nights at the inn, I thought, and maybe I’d absorb some of the creative mojo.

The Good Life // The 18 bungalows, all steps from the beach, are built in the style of traditional Balinese thatched huts, with large screened decks, ample living spaces, and ornate carved doors imported from Bali. The lovely Belizean wait staff (one soft-spoken boy responds to requests with “Don’t worry; I gotcha”) wear white linen shirts and sarongs. Marie Sharp’s Belizean Heat Habanero Pepper Sauce is on every table, the perfect addition to the spaghetti carbonara. All proof that here at the Turtle Inn, the weird fusion of Balinese- Belizean-Coppola culture actually works. Jaw Dropper // The inn is located near the end of Placencia Peninsula—a 16-mile noodle of land with the Placencia Lagoon on one side and the sea on the other. At the Turtle Inn dive shop, on the lagoon, an American crocodile named Jeff has taken up residency near the boat dock. He’s not housebroken, but he’ll pose for pictures.

Sports on-Site // The thatch-roofed bar is about 20 yards from every bungalow, on the ocean’s edge, which allows for a pleasant daily routine: Snorkel a bit, collapse on your chaise, order Turtle Juice (a house specialty made with coconut rum), kayak a mile or so up to Rum Point and back, collapse on your chaise, snorkel, Turtle Juice, rinse, repeat. Some of Belize’s finest beaches—narrow, sandy, palm-fringed—grace the peninsula. When you feel in need of an outing, beach-cruiser bikes are available for riding into the tiny Creole village of Placencia, a mile down the road. Or, from the inn’s dive shop, head out to Belize’s barrier reef—prime location for diving or saltwater fly-fishing. The rub is that it’s an hourlong speedboat ride on sometimes choppy waters. But once out there, it’s not unusual to see spotted rays or even nurse sharks cruising along a 2,000-foot wall, or for anglers to hook bonefish, tarpon, or snook.

Beyond the Sand // Turtle Inn is a great base for venturing into the jungle. The front desk can arrange day trips to Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary (the world’s first jaguar reserve) and a number of large Maya ruins. Monkey River is 45 minutes to the south by boat, through mangrove estuaries that are home to manatees. While cruising upriver, you’ll encounter tiger herons, gargantuan butterflies, six-foot iguanas, and howler monkeys.

The Fine Print // American Airlines (800-433-7300, ) flies to Belize City for about $500 round-trip from both Miami and Dallas. From there, it’s a 35-minute flight on Maya Island Air ($140 round-trip; 800-225-6732, ) to the Placencia airstrip. From January 4 to April 30 (excluding the week of Easter), seafront cottages at Turtle Inn (800-746-3743, ) are $300 per night, double occupancy, including Continental breakfast and use of bikes and sea kayaks (from $200 per night in low season).

Jake’s

How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?

Caribbean Resort, Jamaica

You can almost see the Pelican Bar from here: a cottage at Jake’s

“IF WE DON’T ENCOURAGE GUESTS to leave the property, they wouldn’t,” says owner Jason Henzell. He ought to know. Ten years ago, Henzell, 34, and his mother, Sally, opened a small restaurant on six acres overlooking Calabash Bay and named it after a local parrot. A small guest house followed, and each year, as the Henzells’ gospel of sophisticated laziness spreads beyond the fishing village of Treasure Beach (pop. 600), on Jamaica’s southwestern shore, more rooms are added. Which only makes it easier to give in to inertia. Lounging under the acacia trees next to the tiled saltwater pool, a pair of still-pale English thirty-somethings allow that they’ve been devouring books from the well-stocked library for four days. They reel with shock when my boyfriend and I start naming off the places we’ve been (Great Pedro Bluff! Black River fruit market!) and the things we’ve seen (dolphins! crocodiles!) and eaten (grilled conch! jerk crab!) in just two days. Soon, they wobble off on mountain bikes, determined to find out what they’ve been missing.

The Good Life // From modest wooden cabins with funky mosaic bathtubs to bright adobe bungalows topped with open-air rooftop chill zones, the 15 cottages at Jake’s are a mĂ©lange of Moroccan style and iconoclastic tiling—all sans TVs or phones but avec CD players. (The bar has a stellar music collection for your listening pleasure.) Lucky us, our pink palace came with a wooden porch overlooking the surf and an outdoor shower with claw-foot tub, plus swanky Aveda potions. There are two chow houses: Jake’s, the poolside bistro, where the coffee’s delivered fresh daily by a woman who roasts it over a wood fire; and Jack Sprat’s, a beachfront joint where Fabulous (yep, that’s his name) serves up jerk crab and coconut ice cream, and a DJ spins dance-hall reggae into the wee hours.

Jaw Dropper // A pilgrimage to Shirley Genus’s wooden zareba—basically a hut with a sauna—is required. Strip down next to a steaming terra-cotta pot filled with a healing soup of organically grown lemongrass and other herbs, then sweat like the dickens. Afterward, let Shirley hit all the pressure points ($30 for steam bath, $60 for massage; book through Jake’s).

Sports on-Site // Sea-kayak or snorkel through the rocky maze that hugs the beach. (Kayaks are free; snorkel gear can be rented at the bar for $10 a day.) Or hire a local to take you out fishing for snapper, jack, kingfish, and grouper; trips can be arranged at the front desk ($35 an hour per person).

Beyond the Sand // One day, on our way to ogle crocodiles along the Black River, 16 miles northwest, our boat chugged past the Pelican Bar, a tiny shack on a lick of sand. Our captain shouted out a lunch order to Floyd, the owner, and on the way back we parked, waded ashore, and dug into $6 plates of steamed fish, grilled onions, doughy white bread, and bottles of Red Stripe ($35 per person for Black River boat tours; book through Jake’s).

The Fine Print // Air Jamaica (800-523-5585; ) flies round-trip to Montego Bay from New York for about $600, from L.A. for $800. From December 19 to April 20, a double-occupancy room at Jake’s (877-526-2428, ) costs $95 to $395, meals not included ($75 to $325 in low season).

The Essential Eight

Had enough paradise? Add some intensity to your Caribbean life list.

Kayak the Exuma Cays Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, in the Bahamas, spans 176 square miles of reeftop emerald water that laps the marine caves and white-sand beaches of hundreds of undeveloped limestone islands. Shallow, calm seas are perfect for paddling, snorkeling, and swimming. Do all three on a nine-day trip with Ecosummer Expeditions. ($1,695; 800-465-8884, )

Climb Pico Duarte More travelers each year are tackling the Caribbean’s tallest peak. At 10,414 feet, the rocky summit of Pico Duarte rises up from the tropical lowlands of Armando Bermudez National Park, along the Dominican Republic’s Cordillera Central. Iguana Mama runs a three-day, 29-mile mule trek to the top. ($450; 800-849-4720, )

Hike to Boiling Lake Deep in the heart of Dominica, hot magma warms the rocks and pushes volcanic gas through vents to keep one of the world’s largest boiling lakes at an eerie, gray simmer. Getting there requires a muddy three-hour rainforest slog on seldom-signed paths. Reserve a guide through Ken’s Hinterland șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Tours. ($40; 767-448-4850, ) Swim in Mosquito Bay Every night, a bright concentration of bioluminescent organisms lights up Mosquito Bay, on the south side of Vieques, just east of Puerto Rico. Paddle 15 minutes from shore with Blue Caribe Kayaks, then jump overboard for a glow-in-the-dark swim. ($23; 787-741-2522, )

Sail the Grenadines The unspoiled Grenadines—30 small islands, 24 of them uninhabited, from St. Vincent to Union Island—have long been favorite waters of the yachting elite. Now you can sail them without chartering an entire boat: Reserve one of five cabins aboard Setanta Travel’s 56-foot luxury catamarans for a seven-day cruise. ($3,990 per week per cabin, double occupancy; 784-528-6022, )

Dive the Bloody Bay Wall Just off Little Cayman’s north shore, the seafloor takes a half-mile-deep plunge along Bloody Bay Wall, where you’re sure to spy huge eagle rays and hawksbill turtles. Paradise Divers offers two-tank boat dives. ($80; 877-322-9626, )

Kitesurf Aruba Plan a pilgrimage to Aruba’s arid eastern shore, where 80-degree water and consistent winds make Boca Grandi the ultimate surf zone for seasoned kiters. Vela’s Dare2Fly offers a three-day introductory course in calmer waters ($350; 800-223-5443, ).

Fish the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve In the protected white-sand flats on the south side of 90-square-mile Ascensi—n Bay, in the YucatĂĄn, bonefish run wild. Sign on for a week of guided fishing, eating, and lodging at the funky, thatched cabanas of Cuzan Bonefish Flats. ($1,999 per person, double occupancy; 011-52-983-83-403-58, )

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Established 1890

Rocky Tioga Road, Yosemite National Park

761,266 Acres

QUICK—TRY TO THINK of a national park whose icons are more familiar than Yosemite’s masterpieces of rock and water: Half Dome, El Capitan, Tuolumne Meadows, Horsetail Fall. No place comes close to this park’s abundant glacier-polished granite, a veritable shrine for ROCK CLIMBING. For those with the aid-climbing skills, the tip of Lost Arrow Spire is an electrifying place to rise above the fray, quite literally, with outrageous views of Half Dome and Yosemite Valley. The spire is a tapering finger of rock that parallels the main Yosemite Falls Wall, with an adrenalizing twist: Although you climb only 250 feet on the spire, there’s some 1,500 feet between you and the valley floor below, more than enough to get you mumbling incoherently about your own mortality. Lost Arrow also demands some intermediate rope tricks: For one, it starts with a rappel from the valley rim to the notch between wall and spire; since that drop is longer than a climbing rope, the rappel entails tying two ropes together and then passing a knot around your belay device. In two pitches you’ll get to the spire’s small, slanting summit. You return to the rim (where you started) by way of a Tyrolean traverse, which means scuttling horizontally along parallel ropes threaded through permanent bolts—again, with maximum air below you. Complete the circle, and you’ll feel like an astronaut coming back to earth. By the numbers the climb is Grade III, 5.7, C.2; if any of that sounds like quantum physics, you’re not yet ready for Lost Arrow. (Instead, scamper up classic but less serious climbs like nearby 5.8 Bishop Terraces.) There are two ways to approach the spire; we suggest making it a weekend trip either way, camping off-trail the nights before and after the climb. If you have ample sweat to spill, hike the four steep miles from the Valley on Yosemite Falls Trail via Yosemite Point. (Payoff: at 1,430 feet, upper Yosemite Falls makes spectacular trail company.) If you’d like a gentler hike in, take the rolling seven-mile Indian Creek Trail, located east of Porcupine Flat. For obsessively thorough details of Yosemite climbing routes and great climbing history, check out climber Chris McNamara’s Web site at . For lessons or guided climbs, contact Yosemite Mountaineering School, 209-372-8435.
WHEN TO GO: In late April and early May you assume the risk of intermittent crummy weather in exchange for smaller crowds and temperatures much more tolerable than summer’s 90-degree highs; spring is also peak waterfall season. Come fall, even as early as late September, backcountry trekkers feel like they’ve got the place to themselves.

ANNUAL VISITORS: 3.5 million. (High: July, 572,440. Low: January, 97,985.)

MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: Some of Yosemite’s least-known HIKES offer some of the sweetest payoffs. Try a 14-mile overnighter from Tenaya Lake through fields of wildflowers to the top of Clouds Rest—more than 1,000 feet higher than Half Dome, with a better view from the valley rim and far fewer hikers on the trail. Do it on your own or call Yosemite Guides, which leads guided day trips and overnights throughout the park, starting at $65 per person (877-425-3366, ). HEADLAMP READING: The Complete Guidebook to Yosemite National Park, by Steven Medley; El Capitan: Historic Feats and Radical Routes, by Daniel Duane.

LOCAL SPECIALTY: Twenty-five miles southwest of Yosemite Valley on Highway 140 is the Yosemite Bug Hostel, with Guinness on tap and great eats for about half what you’d pay at the park’s showpiece Ahwahnee Hotel.

INSIDE SCOOP: In 1998, a Yosemite crime wave of sorts hit an all-time high, when property damage exceeded $659,000 and more than 1,300 automobiles were broken into—all by bears. Since then, the Park Service has reported a drastic decrease in ursine break-ins, thanks to an array of tactics that includes stiff fines for park visitors who leave food in their cars (climbers get warnings for leaving gum wrappers in their backseats) and rangers “hazing” problem bears with loud noises and rubber bullets.

PARK HEADQUARTERS: 209-372-0200,

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32 YEARS AGO this summer, my pal, the crime novelist Jim Crumley, his overeducated farmer friend from Arkansas, Harold McDuffy, and yours truly hiked six miles to Bowman Lake in Glacier National Park. For someone who had spent most of his life in the desert country of southeastern Oregon, this was a breakthrough for me. In high school I’d been driven through Crater Lake National Park in a bus, but that hadn’t seemed so much like visiting a park as the sort of thing they just did to you in high school. Crumley and McDuffy and I spent a few days loafing and fishing. I killed a fool hen with a rock. We cooked it that first night. Then we got into our only bottle of whiskey and drank the whole damned thing. The next day we solaced our hangovers on a raft of downed timber strapped together with a set of suspenders, drifting and casting to shallows in a frenzy, catching more fish than we could eat. Which was fine, because some fellows camped down the shore had brought no food whatsoever. We traded them fish for what are best called smoking materials, and quickly got over our fear of spook grizzlies in the midnight darkness. We sang to them: “Why don’t you love me like you used to do?” The grizzlies didn’t respond.

Glacier National Park

One afternoon I found myself with my eyes closed, feathering my fingers along the trunk of a great yellow pine, encountering platelets of bark, each unique and yet not unlike all the others. I was trying to imagine what that tree would mean to a blind person. That night, when the lake was still and mirroring silver under the full perfect moon, loons called and called, and I thought they were singing to me. It was one of those times when I found out that the world had more to it than I’d imagined, more pleasure, and more glory. And all because we’d chanced a few days of frivolity, play, and release.


Sure, there was that rapacious fishing. But I’m willing to excuse us; that was another world and we were rednecks on vacation. At least we weren’t trying to skip snowmobiles across the lake.
America the beautiful, the “fresh green breast of the new world,” according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, is about freshness and greenness as metaphors for life and health, a new-by-God-world that might stay sort of new and fair if we take care of it. Our national identity is embodied in liberties and natural wonders, freedoms, and the kinds of places we choose to celebrate in our parks—mountains, great swamps, canyonlands—all open and receptive spiritual playgrounds. That identity is threatened by each instance of environmental heedlessness, each clear-cut, each ill-sited power plant and oil drill, each extinction and political sellout. We need to understand that we are responsible for ourselves, for one another, and for the well-being of the natural world, which sustains us.
How to react? Go float down the Grand Canyon. Stop at Matkatamiba Rapids, and walk into the side canyon, which opens into walls of cream- and honey-colored limestone. Sit quietly, soaking in the infinities. Once I saw a wolverine on a lakeside sandbar in Glacier; it was there, then aware of me, and vanished, and was thrilling in its wildness. Yes, go visit the parks. Then come home refreshed, revitalized, and ready to save them.

Glacier

A Hiker’s Valhalla in Montana

Glacier National Park

Established 1910
1,013,572 Acres
COMBINED WITH WATERTON LAKES, its sister park just across Canada’s border, Glacier offers more than 700 miles of foot trails, 48 glaciers, 1,600-odd miles of river and stream, 650 lakes, soaring peaks, hanging valleys, meadows spattered with wildflowers, thick evergreen forests, and several species that outrank you on the food chain. In short, it’s a theme park for BACKPACKING. To find a chunk of backcountry all to yourself, the three-night, 20-mile Gunsight Pass Trail can’t be beat. You’ll trek through the guts of the park’s wilderness—one of North America’s largest intact ecosystems—with killer mountain-and-lake ambience, a Continental Divide crossing, probable sightings of mountain goats, and possible encounters with grizzlies (be prepared). Leave your car at Lake McDonald on Glacier’s west side, and take a park shuttle on 52-mile Going-to-the-Sun Road to Jackson Glacier Overlook, east of the Divide. Hike downvalley and then up from there, passing avalanche slopes and two glaciers, 6.2 miles along a drainage to Gunsight Lake, where you’ll pitch a tent and bask in celestial views of Mount Jackson and Fusillade Mountain. Day two calls for a challenging five-mile leg over the Divide at 6,946-foot Gunsight Pass to Lake Ellen Wilson; up top, take time to poke around the old rock shelter, the only one remaining atop Glacier’s passes. Day three is a short haul, “but the longest 2.7 miles in the park,” says Glacier wilderness manager Kyle Johnson: a 1,120-foot gain to Lincoln Pass, followed by a 450-foot drop into Sperry Basin. Take your pick here: Pitch a tent at Sperry campground, or upgrade to a fairly pricey bunk nearby at the 1912 Sperry Chalet ($150 for the first person, $100 for each additional person, meals included; 888-345-2649, ). Day four: six miles down, out of the subalpine zone, and into a forest of spruce, cedar, and hemlock to Lake McDonald.

WHEN TO GO: Many backcountry campsites, like Sperry, can’t be advance-booked until August 1, when summer (all five weeks of it) reaches the park. But if the snow clears early, walk-ins can sometimes score a coveted berth in July. Pre-snowmelt in the high country, you need crampons, an ice ax, and glacier know-how so you don’t Enron off a sheer drop-off into the abyss.
ANNUAL VISITORS: 1.73 million. (High: August, 487,800. Low: December, 3,387.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: RAFT the untamed, bouldery Middle Fork of the Flathead or the slightly more subdued North Fork (each Class II-IV), tinted emerald by glacial silt; BIKE Going-to-the-Sun by moonlight (east-to-west is the somewhat kinder direction).
HEADLAMP READING: Along the Trail: A Photographic Essay of Glacier National Park and the Northern Rocky Mountains, by Danny On and David Sumner; Man in Glacier, by C.W. Buchholtz
LOCAL SPECIALTY: Stop for huckleberry ice cream and Flathead cherries at any of the roadside stores on the way to the park. And the Park Cafe in St. Mary, Montana, makes ice cream and berry pies someone should write a song about.
INSIDE SCOOP: Need some incentive to brush up on bear etiquette? How about this: Since the park’s establishment, grizzlies have killed ten people within its boundaries.
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 406-888-7800,

Acadia

A Seal’s-Eye View of the Maine Coast

Acadia National Park

Established 1919
47,498 Acres
NEW ENGLAND’S ONLY NATIONAL PARK, Acadia manages to shoehorn some 2.8 million annual visitors into its compact landscape, the bulk of it on Mount Desert Island (with smaller tracts on Isle au Haut and nearby Schoodic Peninsula). The finest way to lose the crowds and take in the park’s cymbal-crash surf, craggy stone-shored islets, and requisite cliff-top lighthouses is to venture out of bounds SEA KAYAKING. Because Mount Desert Island isn’t particularly well situated as a launching point for overnight paddle trips—the closest campable public islands are a daunting six to eight miles of open-ocean slogging to the east or southwest—day trips are more inviting. Put in at the public boat ramp in Manset, near the island’s southern end, and mosey up Somes Sound, the Lower 48’s only bona fide fjord, for a laid-back five-hour voyage through the Maine that sets watercolorists’ hearts aflutter. Watch for porpoises, seals, and cliffs more than 400 feet high (and do yourself a favor, Cap’n: Time it so you’re paddling in and out of Somes with the tides). Another day’s ramble begins at Seal Harbor’s beach and aims south for the Cranberry Islands; Little Cranberry, with the Islesford Historical Museum and decent seafood at Islesford Dock, is a fine spot to stretch your sea legs. The most reliable marine-mammal ogling goes down in Frenchman Bay, off Bar Harbor, where you can paddle among Bar Island and the magnificent and uninhabited Porcupine Islands. Keep a polite distance from seal ledges, please. Conditions in these parts can include 50-degree water, 10- to 12-foot tides, persistent fog, and wicked currents; unless you’re adept at wet exits, hire a guide. For group trips and boat rentals, contact Acadia Bike and Coastal Kayaking Tours (207-288-8118) or Aquaterra șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs (207-288-0007). The Inn at Bay Ledge, perched atop an 80-foot cliff overlooking Frenchman Bay, is a most civilized base camp ($160 and up, in season; 207-288-4204, ).
WHEN TO GO: In the spring, the birds are nesting, seals are pupping, and the July 4th through Labor Day crowds haven’t arrived.
ANNUAL VISITORS: 2.8 million. (High: August, 630,240. Low: January, 18,090.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: Also on Mount Desert, MOUNTAIN BIKE the 40-odd miles of crushed-stone carriage roads, originally laid out by one John D. Rockefeller Jr., over stone-arched bridges and into the park’s aspen- and birch-packed interior.
HEADLAMP READING: The Sea Kayaker’s Guide to Mount Desert Island, by Jennifer Alisa Paigen; Discover Acadia National Park: A Guide to the Best Hiking, Biking, and Paddling, by Jerry and Marcy Monkman
LOCAL SPECIALTY: Don’t miss tea and popovers on the lawn at the park’s Jordan Pond House restaurant on Mount Desert Island, blueberry daiquiris at Poor Boy’s Gourmet in Bar Harbor, and lobster (of course) at Thurston’s in Bernard on the western “quiet side” of Mount Desert.
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 207-288-3338,

Canyonlands

High-Desert Surf ‘n’ Turf in Utah

Exploring Canyonlands National Park

Established 1964
337,598 Acres
RENAISSANCE FUNHOGS, BRACE YOURSELVES: This new trip, combining three days of MOUNTAIN BIKING with five or six days of Colorado River WHITEWATER RAFTING, may be the tastiest pairing since chocolate and cabernet. It takes you straight into the heart of the park’s high-desert rock garden, defined by the goosenecking canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers and an almost hallucinogenic symphony of spires, buttes, mesas, hoodoos, fins, arches, and slickrock. Phase One: a two-wheeled thrill ride on most of the 102-mile White Rim Road, a celebrated track that requires a four-wheel-drive support vehicle to tote food and gear (plan this leg yourself or through an outfitter). Aim counterclockwise, along the Green River in the Island in the Sky District. You’ll encounter funky sandstone formations, bottoms with swimmable holes along the river, Viewmaster overlooks of towering spires and the La Sal and Abajo Mountains, and a quad-burning hogback climb. Eventually you turn north to trace the Colorado, heading upstream, but instead of finishing the loop take a side trail at either Lathrop Canyon or Potash to your prearranged meeting with your rafting guides. Here either your cycling outfitter or your designated driver takes the bikes and bids adieu, and you embark on Phase Two: epic Southwest whitewater. A few miles below the confluence of the Green and the Colorado roars Cataract Canyon, a chain of 28 Class III-V rapids that some claim trump those in the Grand Canyon, at least in the high-water months of May and June. Sandbar camping (when the water is low enough) and side hikes into the Maze add frosting to an already savory cake. O.A.R.S. Canyonlands guides the raft trips ($1,176 for five days, $1,256 for six, return flight from Lake Powell included; 800-342-5938, ) and can link you up with a cycling outfitter. Book way ahead, especially if you plan your own cycling trip; White Rim campsite reservations are tightly limited.

WHEN TO GO: Midsummer’s desert heat eats cyclists alive, so the shoulder seasons earn raves. April brings wildflowers, cactus blooms, and rising water on the rivers; May and June bring the most bodacious whitewater; early fall brings sighs of deep contentment.
ANNUAL VISITORS: 401,558. (High: May, 55,109. Low: January, 4,110.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: Visiting Canyonlands without taking a HIKE ought to be a felony. Island in the Sky has plenty of short day loops with jackpot views; the Needles has lots of routes on slickrock, such as the Druid Arch Trail. Enter the remote Maze District for a double shot of Ed Abbey and Butch Cassidy backcountry—no pavement, no plumbing, no such thing as packing too much water.
HEADLAMP READING: Hiking, Biking, and Exploring Canyonlands National Park and Vicinity, by Michael Kelsey; Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, by Wallace Stegner
LOCAL SPECIALTY: Head to Miguel’s Baja Grill on Main Street in Moab for tasty fish or lamb tacos.
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 435-259-7164,

Yellowstone

Running with the Pack in Wyoming

Yellowstone National Park

Established 1872
2,219,791 Acres
CONSIDERING ALL THE PUBLICITY and controversy that raged when wildlife biologists reintroduced gray wolves into Yellowstone in 1995 after their 60-year absence, it’s surprising how few park visitors actually venture out to see the newcomers. But that’s lucky for you, because the Lamar Valley, one of the best venues for WOLF TRACKING, is in the park’s lightly trafficked northeastern section, far from such perennial crowd magnets as Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake, and Mammoth Hot Springs. You can certainly head out to the huge open meadows alone, but the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance offers an upgrade worth pondering. Three times a year, the Alliance runs four-day wildlife-tracking trips in Lamar (February and autumn trips focus on the valley’s resident Druid Pack, and the April/May trip on both wolves and grizzlies, which emerge from their dens around then). Trips are led by Franz Camenzind, the group’s executive director, who is also a wildlife biologist, a cinematographer, and an expert on Canis lupus—now more than 200 strong in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The valley’s flat terrain lies between 7,000 and 8,000 feet, with three to four feet of snow cover likely from November to April, so trackers head in on either snowshoes or cross-country skis (except in early fall, when they trek in). With spotting scopes and binoculars, the chances of seeing wolves playing, loping, hunting, and post-kill gorging on up to 30 pounds of elk meat (per wolf, gulp) are excellent, especially around dawn and dusk. Groups usually stay in rustic cabins at the Yellowstone Institute, a science-education facility, attend afternoon classes in winter ecology or the like, and indulge in a celebratory soak at Chico Hot Springs before returning to Jackson Hole ($450 per person; JHCA, 307-733-9417).

WHEN TO GO: In October, bugling elk outnumber RVs, making it a copacetic time to check out even the most popular hot springs and geysers.
ANNUAL VISITORS: 2.84 million. (High: July, 768,040. Low: November, 13,422.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: With 100 miles of shoreline and nearly 150 square miles of surface, Yellowstone Lake’s chilly, crystalline waters invite unforgettable multiday SEA KAYAK jaunts. Several outfitters offer guided trips and lessons, among them Jackson Hole Kayak School (800-733-2471, ).
HEADLAMP READING: Hiking Yellowstone National Park, by Bill Schneider; The Wolves of Yellowstone, by Michael Phillips and Douglas Smith
LOCAL SPECIALTY: Eisenhower was president when Helen Gould began serving her crowd-pleasing Hateful Hamburger at Helen’s Corral Drive-In in Gardiner, Montana, at the park’s northern entrance. Forty-two years later, Helen is still behind the counter, serving up burgers, fries, malts, and tales of times gone by.
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 307-344-7381,

Olympic

Washington’s Coolest Rainforest

The thick foliage of Olympic National Park

Established 1938
922,651 Acres
FEW NATIONAL PARKS make picking your poison so gut-wrenching: Should you light out for the 7,000-foot-and-higher peaks, glaciers, and sparkling lakes of the Olympic Peninsula’s interior? The rugged headlands and tidepools of the 57-mile Coastal Strip, the longest ribbon of primitive coastline in the Lower 48? Or the moist air, gushing cascades, and brooding old growth of the temperate rainforest? Tough call, but this should help: For a gratifying combo of remoteness, adventure, and greenery so lush you’d almost swear you can hear the plants breathing, set aside three or four days to BACKPACK a portion of the 31-mile out-and-back Queets River Trail, in the park’s southwestern spur. To reach the trailhead, coax your jalopy 45 minutes or so from mile marker 144 on U.S. 101 along a one-lane gravel washboard, and then strap on your Tevas to ford two rivers, the shallow Sams and the trickier Queets, one of 13 major streams that drain the Olympic Mountains. (Though the distance isn’t long, take caution crossing the Queets; the riverbed is rocky, uneven, and slimy in spots.) From the far bank, mostly level trail meanders through a wonderland that contains about as much biomass as anywhere on earth: hypertrophic Sitka spruces, Douglas firs, hemlocks, red cedars draped with epiphytes, and ferny undergrowth. Plus you’ll find riverside sandbars inviting quick dunks in the martini-cold Queets and many a well-situated tent site. Elk herds have been known to make a cameo. Words to the wise: Pay close attention the last three miles before the trail turn-around, because the path is easily lost here; rainfall during your journey could swell the river and strand you on the wrong side; and bear-resistant food canisters are yours to borrow from any ranger station ($3 suggested donation).
WHEN TO GO: After Labor Day, when summer crowds have ebbed and the weather’s still relatively unsoggy.
ANNUAL VISITORS: 4.18 million. (High: August, 732,335. Low: January, 158,250.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: Take a full-moon HIKE in the mostly treeless Obstruction Peak area off winding Hurricane Ridge Road (if you luck into clear skies); SOAK yourself at Sol Duc Hot Springs in the park’s northern quarters.
HEADLAMP READING:Olympic Mountains Trail Guide: National Park and National Forest, by Robert L. Wood; Cascade-Olympic Natural History, by Daniel Mathews
LOCAL SPECIALTY: Many a hiker has replenished his lipids with a greasy burger and a blackberry shake at Granny’s Cafe, on U.S. 101 between Port Angeles and Lake Crescent.
INSIDE SCOOP: As national-park corpse stories go, it’s hard to top this one: In 1937, a local waitress named Hallie Illingsworth vanished unaccountably. Three years later, two fishermen on Lake Crescent, a 600-foot-deep glacial reservoir along the park’s northern boundary, discovered her floating body. It had risen from the lake’s sunless bottom, where in the 44-degree water it had saponified—changed to the consistency, as eyewitnesses put it, of Ivory soap. Shortly thereafter, her third husband was convicted of her murder.
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 360-565-3130,

Theodore Roosevelt

Rough Riding North Dakota’s Badlands

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Established 1947
70,447 Acres
“A DESOLATE, GRIM BEAUTY,” said this park’s namesake, who hunted bison and dabbled in cattle ranching on its stark rolling prairies and broken badlands in the 1880s. Most visitors sample the park from their cars via scenic drives in one of its two units—North and South, separated by 45 miles as the eagle flies; a hardy minority brave the Easy-Bake summer climate to hike the park’s long looping trails. The most tantalizing local adventure, however, lies mostly outside park boundaries: MOUNTAIN BIKING the Maah Daah Hey Trail, 96 unpaved and remote miles that connect the two park units not far from the Montana border. Fat-tire junkies are already calling the trail, completed just three years ago, “the new Moab.” Heady stuff, but consider the evidence: the nation’s longest uninterrupted bikeable track, with some surprisingly demanding stretches, winding through buttes, canyons scooped out by the Little Missouri River and its feeder streams, rain-sculpted hoodoos, steep ravines, sagebrush valleys, thick stands of cottonwood and juniper, dry riverbeds and wet ones too. Four backcountry campgrounds spread out along the way either have potable-water wells, or will by sometime this summer, so you can make yourself at home where the buffalo really do roam (antelope, wild horses, and rattlesnakes, too). Bikes aren’t allowed within national park boundaries, so a spur trail out of Sully Creek State Park does an end-around to the west to skirt the South Unit. Take care not to spook the hikers and equestrians you’ll occasionally encounter along the Maah Daah Hey (a Mandan Indian term meaning either “grandfather” or “be here long”). Factoring in the heat, through-cyclers should allow at least five days to complete the trail, though backroads access also allows for a variety of sampler day rides; be forewarned that rain transforms the trail’s surface clay into a nasty, slick gumbo. Whichever direction you ride, arrange for a shuttle pickup to get back to your car through Badlands Guide Service (701-225-6109) or Little Knife Outfitters (800-438-6905), which also rents bikes.

WHEN TO GO: Spring rains generally taper off after mid-June. If you can wait, a killing frost usually arrives by September 10 or so, cooling the daytime swelter, zotzing mosquitoes, and triggering the onset of fall colors.
ANNUAL VISITORS: 438,391. (High: July, 117,191. Low: December, 1,210.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: If the river’s high enough, CANOE the Little Missouri through both sections of the park and the grasslands between—110 miles of drifting through high banks, casting for catfish, camping in cottonwood groves, and occasionally walking your boat through rocky shallows. Paddlers often put in at Medora and finish up at U.S. 85 near the North Unit. River conditions are usually best mid-May to mid-June; check water levels on the Web at (click on the Current Streamflow Conditions link).
HEADLAMP READING: Exploring the Black Hills and Badlands: A Guide for Hikers, Cross-Country Skiers, and Mountain Bikers, by Hiram Rogers; Theodore Roosevelt National Park: The Story Behind the Scenery, by Bruce M. Kaye and Henry A. Schoch
LOCAL SPECIALTY: If all that meat on the hoof gets your mouth watering, the Iron Horse Saloon and Restaurant in Medora grills up a mean buffalo steak.
INSIDE SCOOP: Cyclists should Slime their tires and bring a patch kit and at least two spare tubes. The Maah Daah Hey’s prickly-pear cacti and sharp rocks bite—and so will your ride if you aren’t prepared for flats.
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 701-623-4466, . (For Maah Daah Hey trail information, see the Dakota Prairie Grasslands Web page at , or .)

Virgin Islands

Caribbean Windjamming

The coast of St. John’s, Virgin Islands National Park

Established 1956
28,582 Acres
WITH ABOUT 60 PERCENT of its lush green hills and white crescent beaches set aside as national park, the island of St. John isn’t all that different from what Columbus saw when he claimed these islands for Spain. All things considered, it’s still the virgin Virgin. But with increasing numbers of day-tripping cruise-ship passengers catching the ferry over from St. Thomas, you need to pick your spots a little more carefully these days. In short, you need to charter a boat and go SAILING. Cruise among secret coves, secluded anchorages, 40 beaches, and the reefs that ring St. John (many of them within park boundaries) for ten days or more without exhausting the idyllic possibilities. Hawksnest Bay is a locals’ favorite, with three gorgeous beaches, where incurable Type A’s can usually find that day’s New York Times at nearby Caneel Bay Resort by midafternoon. Leinster Bay’s Waterlemon Cay is a blissful spot for ogling corals, starfish, parrot fish, sergeant majors, spiny lobsters, octopuses, and intriguingly ugly scorpion fish. Along the south shore, Salt Pond Bay offers more great snorkeling and a sheltered mooring, and from there you can catch the switchbacking trail for a mile through agaves and cacti up to Ram’s Head, a prime vantage for winter whale-watching. Since no water-skiers or jet skis are allowed in park waters, the only “noise” you’ll hear at sunset is the gentle slap of wave on hull and, presumably, the clinking of glasses. For crewed charters, contact Yates Yachts (866- 994-7245, ), the Virgin Island Charter Yacht League (800-524-2061, ), or Island Yachts (340-775-6666, ), which can also arrange bareboat charters. Prices vary widely, but figure about $1,300-$1,400 per person per week for a crewed boat (based on a group of six or so); bareboat charters start around $1,700-$2,500, depending on the season.


WHEN TO GO: For fewer visitors and lower off-season rates, find the gaps on the calendar between winter’s peak crowds and August-to-October’s hurricane season—namely, May through July and November to mid-December.
ANNUAL VISITORS: 703,992. (High: March and April, both about 82,600. Low: September, 26,134.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: None of the park’s 22 HIKING trails is longer than a couple of miles, but all lead to extremely pleasant diversions: ruins of Danish colonial sugar mills and plantations, petroglyphs, aromatic tropical forests, and views of Tortola and the rest of the British Virgin Islands.
HEADLAMP READING: A Natural History Atlas to the Cays of the U.S. Virgin Islands, by Arthur Dammann and David Nellis; Lonely Planet’s Diving & Snorkeling the British Virgin Islands
LOCAL SPECIALTY: At Skinny Legs, a beach-shack hangout in Coral Bay on the island’s east side, you can enjoy a proverbial cheeseburger in paradise and a Blackbeard Ale while mingling with the yachties who stop in after picking up their mail next door.
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 340-776-6201,

Isle Royale

Michigan’s Superior Beneath the Surface

Isle Royale National Park

Established 1940
571,790 Acres
KAYAKERS COME to this roadless, carless Lake Superior island for its rocky shoreline; fishermen and canoeists, for its 22 inland lakes; backpackers, for its wooded basaltic ridges populated by moose and timber wolves; and hermits, because in its entire season Isle Royale sees 40,000 fewer humans than Great Smoky Mountains gets on an average July day. A savvy and intrepid handful of park trailblazers know how to really get lost here: Venture below the lake’s forbidding surface for SHIPWRECK DIVING. Ten major vessels have come to rest in park waters in the last 125 years, and the same frigid 40-degree water that forces divers to don drysuits has drastically slowed the wrecks’ decomposition. Visibility is so good you can survey a ship’s exterior 40 feet down without a light. The shallower remains are most popular, such as theAmerica, a package freighter that sank in 1928 and whose bow lies just a few feet below the surface. Others sit farther down; the Kamloops, a Canadian freighter that took 50 years to locate after it succumbed to a blizzard in 1927, lies between 175 and 260 feet under. Most divers join one of two Park Service-sanctioned dive-charter operators—Superior Trips (651-635-6438, ) and RLT Divers Inc. (507-238-4671, )—and spend a week diving and camping in any of the park’s 36 designated campgrounds. Isle Royale is only open mid-April through October; ferry rides from Grand Portage, Minnesota, or Michigan’s Upper Peninsula take three to seven hours.
WHEN TO GO: The number of visitors—as well as blackflies and mosquitoes—subsides in the shoulder seasons, before June and after August, if you don’t mind risking more fickle weather and rougher chop on Lake Superior.
ANNUAL VISITORS: 15,180. (High: August, 5,664. Low: October, 112.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: HIKE a portion of the 165-mile network of trails, such as the 42-mile Greenstone Ridge or the rougher 29-mile Minong Ridge. Each traverses the island from northeast, over steep bedrock ridges, to southwest, where you’ll find thick forests of birch, maple, and other northern hardwoods. The Minong’s marshy wetlands are prime moose turf in the summer. Come nightfall, listen for the spine-tingling sound of wolves howling.
HEADLAMP READING: Shipwrecks of Isle Royale National Park: The Archaeological Survey, by Daniel Lenihan, et al.; Isle Royale National Park: Foot Trails and Water Routes, by Jim DuFresne
LOCAL SPECIALTY: At the Harbor Haus in Copper Harbor, Michigan, the picture windows overlook Lake Superior, the walls are adorned with deerskins and beer steins, the German-leaning kitchen serves up lake-caught whitefish, venison sausage, and desserts made with local thimbleberries, and the table-waiting frauleins duck out onto the back patio for a Rockette-style kick line to greet the ferry returning from Isle Royale.
INSIDE SCOOP: The park is a remarkable case study of the peculiar cycles of island biogeography. In the mid-19th century, it harbored populations of caribou, coyotes, chipmunks, and redbacked voles—none of which exist there now—but not a single moose or wolf. Prevailing speculation suggests that the moose swam over around 1900, and that wolves arrived in the winter of 1949-1950, the last time ice formed an unbroken bridge to the mainland.
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 906-482-0984,

Rocky Mountain

Hugged a Colorado Fourteener Lately?

Falls River, Rocky Mountain National Park

Established 1915
265,769 Acres
JUST AN HOUR AND A HALF’S DRIVE from Denver and less than an hour from Boulder, Rocky Mountain National Park draws legions of Front Range residents with its elk meadows, hikes to chilly alpine lakes, and Trail Ridge Road, its Divide-straddling highway. Less appreciated is that when it comes to CLIMBING, the park’s got something for every subculture: alpine routes, sport climbs, bouldering, ice climbs, ski-mountaineering tours. At 14,255 feet, Longs Peak is “the granddaddy of them all,” says Jim Detterline, a ranger who’s summited Longs 186 times and counting. Perhaps as many as 20,000 other people also reach the top each year, most of them by the Keyhole Route (the only way to hike to the top) and most of them in August. Very few brave the Stettner’s Ledges route on the mountain’s East Face. Their loss. Rich with alpine history, the climb, rated a Grade III 5.8, was first ascended in 1927 by a pair of German-American brothers from Illinois; at the time, it was among the continent’s toughest routes, and it’s still no gimme, even for those acclimatized to high altitude and up to the task. Stettner’s entails a pre-climb backcountry bivouac, a glacier crossing, and ten pitches (the last four on the Kiener route) over fractured granite, chimneys, cracks, ledges, and past rows of rusting pitons from generations ago, all capped by a 600-foot scramble over scree to the top. Typically, this means six to eight hours of heroics after a 5 or 6 a.m. start to avoid afternoon lightning. But you’ll still want to pause to catch your breath and take in your surroundings, which include a close-up view of the Diamond, a 1,200-foot-tall face that Detterline likens to a Yosemite-style big wall, only with high altitude thrown in for good measure. Those who prefer to start on a slightly smaller scale can contact the Colorado Mountain School in Estes Park (970-586-5758) about lessons and guided climbs.

WHEN TO GO: The last two weeks in October are a good bet—winter hasn’t yet arrived, and most tourists have departed.
ANNUAL VISITORS: 3.4 million. (High: July, 774,781. Low: January, 79,126.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: The elk put on a blockbuster show from late August to early October, when bulls battle for mates and eerie bugling echoes through the meadows. Catch the performances sans the mob in the Arapahoe Meadows and Lily Lake areas.
HEADLAMP READING: Rocky Mountain National Park Climber’s Guide: High Peaks, by Bernard Gillet; Rocky Mountain National Park Natural History Handbook, by John C. Emerick
LOCAL SPECIALTY: If you’re really determined to go native, drop in at the Buckhorn Exchange, Denver’s oldest restaurant, for the Rocky Mountain oysters (translation: fried bull testicles).
INSIDE SCOOP: Rumor has it that stashed away in a file at park headquarters, there remains a sheet of butcher paper on which a pair of hikers years ago sketched an outline of a five-toed, 24-inch-long, humanlike footprint they found in the mud in a seldom-visited area of the park—evidence, some allege, of Rocky Mountain’s very own Bigfoot.
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 970-586-1206,

Lake Clark

Untamed Alaska, and Lots of it

Twin Lakes, Lake Clark National Park

IF YOU’RE LIKE ALMOST EVERYONE else on earth, you’ve managed to overlook Alaska’s Lake Clark National Park and Preserve and its four million acres of stunning alpine and tundra wilderness. Ranger Dennis Knuckles sums up the amenities in this roadless domain nicely: “There’s no 911, no cell-phone structure, and nobody saving your bacon.” If remote and unforgiving terrain and capricious weather appeal to you, this huge tract on Cook Inlet 150 miles southwest of Anchorage won’t disappoint. Visitors are few and natural spectacles plentiful: the jagged 6,000-foot Chigmit Mountains, three National Wild and Scenic Rivers, glacier-gouged lakes and valleys, boreal forests, and even two active volcanoes. A FLY-IN BACKPACKING trip is the best way to see a portion of the park’s vast western interior. Have a floatplane deposit you above tree line at the shores of Turquoise Lake, whose milky aquamarine surface reflects the surrounding mountains (if you get dropped at the south shore, you can avoid a potentially hairy crossing of the Mulchatna River). Pitch your tent anywhere you like and stash your watch deep in your pack—you won’t be needing it. You’ve got seven days (or whatever you and your bush pilot agree upon) to downshift. Explore the shrubless tundra. Hike to a living glacier. Wake to thousands of caribou outside your tent. Commune with moose and Dall sheep. See no humans. Gradually meander ten to 12 miles south to the north shore of Lower Twin Lake, the vegetation slowly shifting from tundra to scrub to black spruce and dwarf birch. If you wouldn’t mind a little hand-holding, Alaska Alpine șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs guides trips here in summer and fall (877-525-2577; ). For air-taxi information, go to .
WHEN TO GO: Late June and early July promise a decent chance of sunshine and close encounters with the Mulchatna caribou herd, some 200,000 strong, plus 19 hours of daylight; for the warm-blooded, March is great for epic winter camping and cross-country skiing around the lakes.

ANNUAL VISITORS: All of 4,397 (High: June, 954. Lows: November through April, all tied at about 150.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: RAFT or KAYAK the Tlikakila, the only river that flows entirely within park boundaries. It runs swift and shallow, slicing by forests of spruce, aspen, and birch, snowcapped peaks, waterfalls, and sheer cliffs. Three- to four-day trips from Summit Lake usually run about 45 miles; if you choose to float without a guide, have your pilot take a pass over the river beforehand to scout for logjams. Go to for a list of kayaking and rafting guides who serve the area.
HEADLAMP READING: Looking for Alaska, by Peter Jenkins; One Man’s Wilderness, by Richard Proenneke and Sam Keith
LOCAL SPECIALTY: Cast into Lower Twin Lake for grayling or lake trout. Both take well to a dry fly and (shortly thereafter) a little butter and cornmeal.
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 907-781-2218,

Great Smoky Mountains

The Southeast’s Backwoods at its Best

Morning mist settles along Great Smoky National Park

Established 1934
521,490 Acres
IN THE SMOKIES, the numbers tell good news and bad: 930 miles of trails, almost 500 miles of fishable streams, hazy blue ridges topping out above 6,000 feet (the highest east of the Rockies), 4,000 species of plants, 65 of mammals…and upwards of nine million humans every year. So head where the masses aren’t—the Greenbrier area, across the North Carolina border on the Tennessee side—for three sweet and soothing days of HIKING and FLY-FISHING. Start hoofing it at the Porter’s Creek trailhead, reached by entering the park off Highway 321 east of Gatlinburg. Follow the wide creek for five miles until you reach the evocatively named Campsite 31, gaining about 2,000 feet of elevation in the process—good reason to stop and wet a line. Casting is easier here than in many of the park’s cramped, brush-banked streams, and you can catch browns, rainbows, speckleds, and brookies (throw back the latter; they’re the only natives). Legend has it one ranger landed a 21-inch trout in Porter’s, so come prepared. Next morning, backtrack a couple miles from your campsite to the Brushy Mountain Trail, where you’ll cross more trout streams and roam through tulip poplars, hemlocks, rhododendrons, and mountain laurels. Bunk that night at the Mount LeConte shelter, a three-sided stone structure at 6,593 feet (free; reserve through the backcountry office at 865-436-1297). Or book a slot at the LeConte Lodge, a rustic haven reachable only by trail and lit by kerosene lamps (cabins and group lodges start at $81.50 per adult per night; call 865-429-5704). On the third day, march six more miles on the Boulevard Trail, encountering many a heart-stopping mountain vista, to another shelter, at Icewater Springs near the Appalachian Trail (70 miles of which traverse the park). Finally, a two-mile taste of the AT takes you to Newfound Gap Road, where you thoughtfully arranged for a shuttle to pick you up ($44, A Walk in the Woods, 865-436-8283).
WHEN TO GO: Early spring before school’s out, and September after Labor Day. Flower fans, mark your calendar accordingly: April brings ground flowers; May, mountain laurel; June, rhododendron. Yes, the fall leaves are pretty, but skip October—that’s the park’s second-busiest month.
ANNUAL VISITORS: 9,196,408. (High: July, 1.4 million. Low: January, 297,855.)
MORE CHOICE ADVENTURE: Treat yourself and your MOUNTAIN BIKE to eight-mile Round Bottom Road and its lightly traveled curves. You’ll find it on the North Carolina side in the park’s southeast end.
HEADLAMP READING: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, by Rose Houk, photographs by Michael Collier; The Wild East: A Biography of the Great Smoky Mountains, by Margaret Brown
LOCAL SPECIALTY: The Old Mill, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, serves up heaping helpings of southern Appalachia: rocking chairs on the porch, bluegrass on weekends, and more fried chicken than you can finish. Drop in early to avoid lines.
INSIDE SCOOP: Stock these trout flies in your arsenal, and your odds of getting skunked diminish greatly: Smoky Mountain thunderhead, Coffey’s stonefly, blue-winged olive, yallerhammer, Palmer fly, and Adams variant. Hunter Banks, a fine fly shop in Asheville, North Carolina, offers gear and advice (800-227-6732; ).
PARK HEADQUARTERS: 865-436-1200,

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La Digue

Seychelles, Indian Ocean Say you were alone on an isle packed with Euro honeymooners. You too might fall for a dark-hulled, double-ended Digwaz beauty.

Another lonely beach in the Seychelles

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LA DIGUE IS FOR LOVERS. Or so it seemed as I boarded a salty-looking schooner for the four-mile crossing from the neighboring island of Praslin. The benches around me were full of young, affluent, mostly European couples who, if they weren’t snuggling, nuzzling, or fully making out, were videotaping each other for later delectation. And once we’d arrived on this smallest of the Seychelles’ “major” islands, I had to agree: It’s a pretty romantic place, with its turquoise lagoon, its two dozen white-sand beaches, and most of all its towering granite rock formations. I, alas, was solo, not en couple, something the locals could never quite accept. “Madame is not coming down this morning?” the woman who served breakfast at my hotel kept asking. No, Madame wasn’t.



The Freudian term for my behavior during my first few days on the island is, I believe, sublimation. Each morning I set off on little bike rides—they can hardly be otherwise on La Digue, where there’s only one five-mile-long road—that somehow morphed into epic, Conradian quests. One day I rode down the windward side of the island and then, at road’s end, found myself scrambling off-trail to find a coastal route from Anse Caiman to Anse Cocos, two of the island’s most remote and unspoiled beaches. The distance was negligible—perhaps half a mile—but the terrain was fantastically rough, a jumble of pink granite monoliths the size of houses, and it took me several hours of tropical bouldering (flip-flops only) and full-contact bushwhacking to claw my way through the jungle.

Another day, after a heart-pounding dip in the breakers at Grand Anse, a favorite boogie-boarding and surf spot, I off-trailed it to the Nid d’Aigles, or Eagle’s Nest, the spectacular lookout at the top of the island. Fleets of low, moist clouds, a result of the southeast monsoon, were streaming in off the Indian Ocean at a dizzying clip. At dusk, the flying foxes came out—not flitting like bats but gliding between the fruit trees—and then the moon to light my ride home.

By day four, though, I was getting lonely. My hands were raw (from bouldering, you understand), and my legs looked like I’d been through some medieval rite of self-mortification. And then, just in time, I found her.

Access & Resources: La Digue

Private motor vehicles aren’t allowed on three-mile-long La Digue. By special dispen-sation, the island priest bops around on a Vespa, but everyone else rides mountain bikes. Be prepared for sticker shock: from $5 cigarettes to $35 paperbacks, the Seychelles are pricey.

GETTING THERE: Air Seychelles (800-677-4277; ) flies to the main island of MahĂ© from major cities in Europe (round-trip from Paris costs about $800). There’s no airport on La Digue, so unless you spring for Helicopter Seychelles’ chopper from MahĂ© (about $120, 011-248-37-39-00; ), you’ll need to take a ferry or an Air Seychelles Twin Otter to the neighboring island of Praslin, then head to La Digue via ferry (Inter-Island Ferry Service; 248-23-23-29). Mountain bikes are available for about $7 a day in La Passe, at Chez Michelin (248-23-43-04) and other places.

WHERE TO STAY: At La Digue Island Lodge (248-23-42-32; ), aging bungalows go for $265­$380 a night. Better deals are Chateau St. Cloud ($180; 248-23-43-46; or e-mail stcloud@seychelles.net), centered on a restored plantation house; and L’Ocean ($250; 248-23-41-80; or e-mail hocean@seychelles.net) at Anse Patates; and Choppy’s Beach Bungalows on Anse La RĂ©union ($150; 248-23-42-24; or e-mail choppys@seychelles.net).

WILD LA DIGUE: The $2 entry fee to L’Union Estate includes passage to Anse Source d’Argent, the magnificent boulder-strewn beach featured in all those Bacardi ads. La Digue ranks high on the list of the Seychelles’ top dive spots; check out the island’s only dive center, at La Digue Island Lodge. Gerard Payet (look for him on the dock in La Passe) will set you up with snorkeling trips to Îe Coco, Grande Soeur, Petite Soeur, and FĂ©licitĂ©(about $40, including lunch). For deep-sea fishing and multiday yacht cruises, call Mason’s Travel (248- 23-42-27; ) or Travel Service Seychelles (248- 23-44-11; ).

ISLAND EATS: Most restaurants are attached to hotels. The two exceptions, Zerof and Loutier Coco, serve French-Creole dishes such as curry spiced with piment.

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Rarotonga

Cook Islands, South Pacific Hoist a frosty fruity, sniff the hibiscus, imbibe the swaying palms. The South Seas are still the spot for Everyman’s tropical fantasy.

Access & Resources

I was floating about eight feet above a sandy-bottomed reef, staring into the Day-Glo face of a sunset wrasse, when the notion struck me. Fish are not generally known for their prodigious brains, yet when you come face-to-face with poisson of the non-man-eating variety in their natural element, a strange exchange can take place. This one, for instance, seemed intrigued. Unlike the octopus that had shot under a rock, fast and bulbous, when I’d surprised it only moments earlier—shedding light on that obscure adage “Never trust a mollusk”—the wrasse seemed to want to dialogue. Most of his neighbors were too busy munching on coral to care, but he was trying to make a connection. When I blinked, he blinked back. When I raised my eyebrows, he emitted a stream of bubbles. Something was happening here. One small step for me, perhaps, but one giant leap for piscine-hominid brotherhood.

You could call it a eureka moment, I suppose, but it was really nothing more than the product of many hours of painstakingly indolent and hedonistic study. I had come in search of the True Essence of Nowhere, and had adhered to a strict regimen of snorkeling, lollygagging, and consuming exotic fruits, big blue drinks, and much fresh fish (sorry, bro). My wilderness study area, in this case, was the island of Rarotonga, a lush, craggy mountain of green that erupts out of the otherwise wide blue expanse of the South Pacific. At a humble 40 square miles, Rarotonga is the largest of 15 atolls, volcanic outcroppings, and sandy mounds that make up the Cook Islands, a far-flung group of landmasses that hover between French Polynesia to the east and New Zealand to the southwest. Which is a diplomatic way of saying the middle of nowhere. So I’d come to the right place.

Nowhere, I found, has its advantages. Being in the middle of it means that McDonald’s, Sheraton, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Chanel, and the like have yet to establish beachheads, and that walking around in a loud floral shirt is construed as a fashion-do.

It also means that dogs and roosters pretty much run the joint. Roosters let you know this by crowing at 5:30 a.m. and at precise 20-minute intervals thereafter for the next 13 hours. Dogs let you know this by taking their own sweet time crossing the road—usually at the exact moment you’ve had the first of many lazy island epiphanies like “Hey, I’m driving 30 miles an hour on an island in the middle of nowhere. What do I have to worry about?” Roosters and dogs have their own worries, though. Due to their annoying punctuality, roosters get a lot of stuff thrown at them, so they’re a little skittish around humans. When it comes to dogs, well, as one guidebook flatly states, “Dogs are sometimes eaten by young men on drinking sprees”—in some parts of the world a fashion-don’t.

My search for the True Essence of Nowhere was arduous and thorough. The art of doing nothing is very hard work. You have to unhinge the shackles of time and space and bob on the slipstream of whatever slipstreams bob on. Rarotongans make it look easy. When not tending the papaya and taro crops that dot most patches of cleared land, or managing a host of businesses in the bustling, postage-stamp-size capital of Avarua, or cruising Muri Lagoon in an outrigger to inspect the traditional nets and traps they’ve been using for centuries, they can usually be found plinking ukuleles and singing old Maori folk songs to the wind. They’re not slacking, they’re just…passing time. It’s no wonder the standard greeting on the island is Kia orana—”May you live on.”

My wife, who threw herself into the search with vigor, became obsessed with finding the perfect abandoned shell—no easy task. Rarotonga is the tip of an ancient dormant volcano girdled by 20 miles of submerged coral and rock. The nubbly white-sand beaches are therefore spangled with a fresh crop of seaborne detritus with each new tide. You’ll never see more shells, and you’ll never drive yourself more crazy.

It was a benign lunacy. Myself, I became transfixed by the waves. On the west coast of the island, near the village of Arorangi, the reef is only about 200 yards offshore. You can sit for hours and muse on fish brains while watching meaty turquoise rollers pound the barrier with metronomic precision, only to flatten out like backwash on their final dash to the beach. I took about 30 snapshots of this phenomenon (known in common parlance as, uh, breaking waves). Hear me, fellow pilgrims: I was trying to capture that sublime moment when a wave flips up to a perfect pre-curl, like a jaw about to slam shut. I never got it right on film, but I could have watched them break for the rest of my days.

Our days, however, were numbered, and we caught only occasional glimpses of pure Nowheresville. Like the morning I opened the door of our bungalow in time to see a coconut fall and hit the sand with a tremendous thud. Or the afternoon we snorkeled the calm, cerulean lagoon at Aitutaki, an “almost atoll” about 140 miles north of Rarotonga, and communed with a school of bigeye bream. They just hung there, suspended in tight pods, beckoning me with their big freaky eyes, as if to say, “One of us, one of us…” (Oh yeah, they can think.)

Then one evening, while strolling on the beach as dusk succumbed to nightfall, we looked up and beheld the True Essence. Above us, the Milky Way had cracked open the heavens, spilling stars like snowflakes on black velvet. “Can you believe where we are?” I asked my wife. “No, I can’t,” she said. Pause. “But where are we?”

We were Nowhere and Everywhere at the same time. And we were doing nothing. And it felt great.

Access & Resources: Rarotonga

You know that Gilligan’s Island clichĂ© of South Seas islanders as lei-wearing, ukulele-playing, hula-dancing happy people? Well, it’s not just a clichĂ©; here it’s a refreshing reality.

GETTING THERE: Fly Air New Zealand (800-369-6867; ), the only major carrier that lands in Rarotonga. Direct from Los Angeles takes just under ten splendid hours (prices start at about $1,200).

WHERE TO STAY: Crown Beach Resort in Arorangi (011-682-23-953; ) has 22 one- and two-bedroom wood-paneled and thatch-roofed villas with eat-in kitchens ($214­$281 a night) perched directly on or just off the strand. Bungalows at the Muri Beachcomber ($93­$138; 682-21-022; ) and Palm Grove ($69­$108; 682-20-002; ) are only slightly less posh—think linoleum rather than stained wood. Most units come with kitchens, and many sit right by the beach. For those hitchhiking their way across the Pacific, the ack-packers International Hostel ($6.50­$11; 682-21-847; or e-mail annabill@backpackers.co.ck) is surprisingly homey, with a big communal kitchen and a rooftop sundeck.

WILD RAROTONGA: Car, scooter, and bike rental shops (in Avarua try Budget/Polynesian Bike Hire, 682-20-895 or Avis, 682-22-833; car rental is about $22 per day) pop up all over the island, making transportation easy. You can snorkel almost anywhere, but the best site is on the south side off Titikaveka. Expect to see sunset wrasses, Moorish idols, yellow boxfish, and the occasional octopus. Barry Hill at Dive Rarotonga ($22­$26; 682-21-873; ) knows every cave, drop-off, and wreck around the island, and has swum with humpback whales (“That’ll give you dreams for a week,” he says). If you’re keen to hook fish rather than swim with them, Trevor Yorke at Manatee Fishing Charters can take you out beyond the reef to troll for barracuda and dogtooth tuna ($27; 682-22-560).

ISLAND EATS: You can’t take a step without tripping over pawpaws (papayas), star fruits, bananas, or guavas. And then there are the fish: oysters, lobsters, wahoos, eels, yellowfins, scallops, green mussels, parrot fish—all just-off-the-hook fresh. Check out the Windjammer, Tumunu, and Flame Tree restaurants for steaks and seafood, fine New Zealand and Australian wines, and utensils. Other roadside attractions: the Ambala Garden & CafĂ© in Muri for organic breakfasts and lunches in a private botanical garden; in Avarua, Raro Fried Chicken, where the chicken-and-chips combo will easily satisfy your daily grease-‘n’-salt quota.

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Cat Island

Bahamas On this low-key string bean of land in the Out Islands, sip-sip and dominoes are about as rough as it gets

Access & Resources

MAYBE THERE’S SOMETHING on Cat Island that didn’t arrive by mail boat—some bag of cement, some chicken coop, some case of Gilbey’s gin, some straw-hatted old lady in a pretty calico dress. Anything is possible. But I came to Cat on the Sea Hauler, and so did a Chevy S-10 and a Ford F250 and an off-brand minivan, rolled aboard with much fanfare over two dry planks. And so did the gospel choir from the Dumfries Church of God and a side-by-side refrigerator marked “Frank” and a white sash window for “Mr. Butler Sr.” and somewhere on board a live squid, whose owner, a well-groomed businessman, described his missing charge as “a member of the octopus family.”


The Sea Hauler is a lovely old tug, diesel-soaked and coated in grime thick as bacon. We pulled out of Nassau on a hot, still afternoon, the conch sellers waving from Potter’s Cay pier on one side, a booze cruise­load of sun-pickled tourists on the other. Captain Allen Russell steered us southeast, the Church of God congregation crowded into the wheelhouse with him, belting out “Uncloudy Day.” We left the first of the Exuma Cays to starboard at sunset as men sprawled on coils of rope sat sipping Kaliks and two little Nassau girls—Lakeisha and Yeronnicker—taught me schoolyard games on the upper deck. We all slept where we lay, the girls and I spooned with our heads on my pack, safe under the stars and the satellites overhead.

At 4 a.m. on Cat Island, the bonefish were still sleeping, the clear waters of Smith Bay still opaque. A crowd had gathered, waiting for packages and family and news and sun. In the growing light Cat Island looked rough and beautiful, unapologetically unscrubbed, an older, more blessedly real Bahamas than the one we’d left behind.

Like everything else on Cat, the dock at Smith Bay clings to the lee side of the island, its gossip-linked small settlements strung 48 miles up and down Exuma Sound. I was picked up like a parcel and taken the mile south to Fernandez Bay Village resort, a collection of limestone cottages where, beware, days blur from beachside coffee to beachside cocktails with, if you’re determined to rally, bonefishing or snorkeling in between. On the second morning (or was it the third?), a little 19-foot Abaco motored in, piloted by marine biologist Stevie Connett, dropping in to see resort owners Tony and Pam Armbrister and to check on Cat Island’s sea turtles. The only way to count a turtle is to catch him, and so at high tide Stevie and I ran the Abaco south ten miles into Joe’s Sound, me standing lookout, the skiff’s deck blinding against the turquoise creek. The water moved and the clouds moved over it, tortoiseshelling the pocked sand bottom in shadows that resolved themselves into grass and algae and back into shadows again. Suddenly Stevie shouted and I cannonballed in, chasing a green sea turtle through the sun-filtered water. He was small, and I managed to grab a flipper, and then his shell; on deck we turned him over and he lay there panting, his turtle breast heaving. We tagged him with a leather punch, #BP9815, took his mug shot, released him. Track me, he said, see if I care.

In some elemental way, Cat Island is like that turtle. It just goes on doing its thing with or without you. Tourism is of the low-key, thatch-roofed variety— diving, a little bonefishing, catch a marlin, sure. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs, when they happen, happen on island time. The typical tourist is a naked German lady stuck in a cave at high tide, waiting for the police. The typical expat washed up on a sailboat and never left. Cat is the kind of place where on Sunday mornings in the village of Old Bight, the regulars at the Pass Me Not Bar lock the front door out of respect for the Baptist church across the street and play dominoes under the tamarind tree out back as the Baptist ladies holler scripture through megaphones. Where children roam under the midnight moon, catching hubcap-size palm crabs, and where you best not ask about obeah, or black magic, but where anyone will tell you that 21-Gun Salute, a bush-medicine Viagra, is “guaranteed to raise the dead.” Cat is the kind of place that doesn’t need you, but it likes you just fine.

There are unseen powers on Cat Island, demons that throw dishes, hands that reach down in the night. Cat has 2,000 caves and plenty of blue holes, but you won’t catch a Cat Islander in any of them: “Take us to one of the blue holes,” says island historian Eris Moncur, “and there’s something that happens to our skin.” Moncur is a sober man: white shirt, shiny shoes. As we sat under the thatched roof at Fernandez Bay, he told me about the island’s namesake, the pirate Arthur Catt, its past life as San Salvador, Columbus’s first landfall, and its first son, Sidney Poitier. Then he told me about spirits, and about the legendary nyankoo, a three-foot-tall gremlin with a human face. “You’re laughing,” Moncur rebuked me. “What we can’t control,” he intoned, “is safest for our sanity to deny.”

Late one afternoon, as the sun slanted into Exuma Sound, I threw a mask and fins into a kayak and headed up Fernandez Bay’s Bonefish Creek toward the Boiling Hole, a bluewater cavern that, through some alchemy of ocean, current, and creek, churns like a pot at high tide. I paddled for an hour, keeping the markers, tied to the mangrove branches, on my left. I passed the last one; no hole. I kept going. I got a feeling in my stomach that the water was sliding downhill, that I was being sucked into a drain. Spooked, I started to follow my wake back out, but the water had begun to percolate. Beneath the kayak the silt bottom opened into a limestone cavern, its recesses reaching farther than I could see. The idea had been to hop out and go snorkeling. You’d see great fish down there—snapper, grouper, barracuda.

But floating above the darkness, I suddenly understood. Cat Islanders have got it right; there are things you don’t fool with, powers bigger than tourism, or recreation, or paradise. God only knew what monsters swam in that hole. “Maybe live, surely die,” one islander had shrugged brightly to me at a midnight wake for his brother, who’d sat down on his front porch and never stood back up. You got to enjoy the time you got, drink your bush medicine, take the bright gifts the ocean offers. But don’t mess with the invisible. Ain’t no way, I thought, as I hung above that black water—ain’t no way I’m going in that hole.

Access & Resources: Cat Island

Don’t come down here thinking you’re going to “do” Cat Island. Oh, it’s all here to do—paddling, fishing, snorkeling, scuba diving—but you’ll be too deep into your blissed-out island reverie for anything too ambitious. And rightly so.

GETTING THERE: Visit during the Rake ‘n’ Scrape Festival, a feast of traditional music the first weekend in June, or for the Cat Island Regatta, a rowdy homecoming the first Saturday in August. Forty dollars will buy you 12 hours of chop on the Sea Hauler— or dish out $70 for the 45-minute plane hop from Nassau on Bahamasair (800-222-4262; ). In New Bight, you’ll pay dearly to rent a rusted-out Chevy Caprice at Gilbert’s Car Rentals ($65 a day; 242-342-3011).

WHERE TO STAY: Fernandez Bay Village is all outdoor showers, crisp linens, and a thatch-roofed bar (cottages, $160­$305; 800-940-1905; ). The beachfront Hotel Greenwood, with its 20 motel-style rooms, is a mix of hippie Berliners and dolphin therapists from Miami ($79­$105; 800-343-0373). Sport fishermen stick to Hawk’s Nest Resort and Marina ($124; 800-688-4752; ).

WILD CAT: Hotel Green-wood runs the only dive operation (two-tank dives, $75; 877-228-7475). Both scuba divers and fishermen will appreciate Cat’s Tartar Bank, an abrupt plunge from 60 to 6,000 feet. Hawk’s Nest’s fishing charters cost $400 half-day, $675 full-day; Mark Keasler is the island’s wiliest bonefish stalker ($195 half-day, $280 full-day; 242-342-3043). On your own, snorkel wherever the spirit moves you—any road off the Queen’s Highway leads to another deserted Atlantic beach. Just don’t leave Cat without a sunset picnic at the hermitage on 206-foot Mount Alvernia, the highest point in the Bahamas.

ISLAND EATS: Tear yourself away from that tenth plate of pigeon peas and rice at the Blue Bird Restaurant in New Bight and head for Hazel’s Seaside Bar in Smith Bay, where sassy octogenarian Hazel Brown offers up Kaliks, sip-sip (gossip), and dominoes. Soon you’ll be ready to lose your shirt down at the Pass Me Not in Old Bight, where the pros play. Dominoes under the tamarind tree and Percy Sledge on the jukebox—the perfect Cat Island combination.

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Grenada

Caribbean Islands Catch the fever dream, and let Boney take you on a wild ride past rocky cliffs, soursop trees, and the molasses devil that cavorts through town

In the drink: an offshore view of Grenada

Access & Resources

ON GRENADA, YOU DRIVE in the left lane and shift with your left hand, but it’s trickier than just that. Grenadan roads contain no straight lines. The narrow pavement follows the island’s volcanic contours with blind curves linking together for miles and sudden fearful inclines that match any in San Francisco. Roads are occasionally flanked by hundred-foot drop-offs with no guardrails. And around most every turn, something darts into your path: a bush dog, a Rastafarian, a coconut, a hobbling old-timer with a cane, an armadillo. Maps are of little use; street signs rarely exist. Taxis aim at oncoming traffic as if engaged in a good-natured game of chicken.

In time, my wife and I came to love driving on Grenada, but on the last afternoon of Carnival, we were sternly warned against it. There would be roadblocks, people said, and mobs of revelers. You’ll never make it around the island on your own. Hire a driver. Give Boney a call. And so we did.

He grew up near La Sagesse, a lovely bay on Grenada’s southern shore. His mother named him Stephen Morain, but 33 years ago, when he was 19, an Englishwoman rechristened the skinny kid Boney, and it stuck. A father of seven, he’s been a Rasta man, a policeman, a driver for the prime minister. He was taught by his grandmother, who lived to be 105 and passed on wisdom about plants that few remember anymore.

On a steep hill overlooking St. George’s, the capital, and the Carenage, the city’s artfully distressed harbor of anchored sloops and pastel warehouses, our education begins. Grenada’s roadsides are both pantry and pharmacy for those who can decipher the tangle of greenery. “This is dasheen,” Boney tells us, easing his maroon van to the shoulder and pointing to a spinachlike plant that’s the key ingredient in callaloo, the island’s signature soup. Next to it is a soursop tree, with huge, bumpy green fruits. There are breadfruits, mangoes, pawpaws, sugar apples. He fingers a weedy-looking vine—coriley, he calls it. “I take it once a month. Very bitter. For my kidneys. It help you a lot. A lot, my friend. Two or t’ree mout’ful a dis once or twice a month.”

He threads past a hilltop graveyard and down a twisting, plummeting backstreet, narrating all the while. There’s Fort George, on a brow of hill over the Carenage, where in 1983 a rival faction executed Prime Minister Maurice Bishop days before U.S. troops landed. Over there was an ice factory in the days before refrigeration, when the delivery man would announce his arrival in towns by blowing into a conch shell. On Grenada, most exchanges still begin with “Good morning” or “Good afternoon,” and even Boney’s irritation with other drivers seems tempered. To a passing minibus driver, as calmly as a schoolteacher: “Drive betta dan dot.”

We work our way clockwise along the western coast, past yawning valleys of coconut palms, enormous drooping banana plants, stately nutmeg trees. Here’s MoliniĂšre Reef, a few snorkelers undulating with the swells among the parrot fish and sergeant majors. We pass small vintage billboards for Ovaltine and Vita Malt, and an ominous sign: “Caution—Drive Slowly—Broken Road Ahead.”

At four o’clock, we enter Gouyave, a fishing village, just in time to witness a fever dream. Grenada’s Carnival takes place in August in part because it has roots in a harvest festival that started in the 1800s as Cannes BrulĂ©es (“burnt cane”), which gradually merged with the celebration of the 1834 emancipation of Grenada’s West African slaves, from whom most islanders are descended. There’s great commotion ahead on the main thoroughfare, so Boney diverts his van a block or so, darting down alleys, the houses close enough to touch. It works: We pull into a gas station at the town’s center, and the hallucination begins.

A flatbed truck leads the parade procession loaded with coffin-size speakers thumping out calypso at a deafening throb. Men on the truck bed are covered with glitter, some with red and blue body paint, some with huge blue horns flaring out from their skulls. Several dozen follow on foot, carrying a banner: “Splendid Pirates,” old and young alike wearing wigs and garish balloon pants of brown, red, green, yellow, white, and purple, stepping in unison to the beat as if in a trance. Then comes a marching pirate ship, a mock funeral, a brigade of men in identical Arab costumes. A fight erupts among four snarling dogs; a painted man beats them with his floppy straw hat. Here comes Death in his skeleton garb, and Jab-Jab, the molasses devil. Men and women walk in formation clutching tall cans of Heineken with straws poking out. Now comes a round-rumped gentleman wearing nothing but a lacy transparent curtain. Boney roars with laughter, though we can barely hear him above the din.

On to St. Patrick parish, on the island’s north side. Loaded vans and minibuses whiz past, slogans on their windshields: Humble Thy Self, Thug Life, Jah Rules. We enter Sauteurs, where Boney weaves through another mob, fragrant of ganja, and then throttles up a tightrope back alley lined by concrete troughs deep enough to swallow a jeep. He does this fast, uphill—and backward. He turns off the engine atop a cliff overlooking a rocky shoreline. From this spot in 1654, a small band of Carib Indians, trapped by French soldiers and fearing a life of enslavement, leaped to their deaths.

The sun sinks, and we arrive at an old airstrip, defunct since the new airport opened in the 1980s. Here sits an old Cuban turboprop, forlorn and abandoned in the grass. Boney has a dream about this plane: He wants to tow it closer to the sea and convert it into a restaurant. He’s talked to government ministers, but so far his plan has gone nowhere.

The notion still enthralls him, though. “If I had that airplane…,” he muses. He’s grinning broadly, gazing slightly heavenward. “I’d have some sparkling ladies there; old people in the kitchen; grilled foods, not fried; some guava ice cream, mango ice cream, soursop ice cream, chocolate, coconut…”

We vanish into the black night. Boney slaloms his van through unlit switchbacks, narrowly missing dreadlocked ramblers, dreaming aloud about empty fuselages and mango ice cream and a sweet-smelling entourage he’s sure will soon arrive. It’s a dazzling vision, on a day when no vision seems impossible.

Access & Resources: Grenada

Rumors of Grenada’s Club Med­ification have been exaggerated. Yup, there’s a new shopping mall near Grande Anse, the two-mile crescent of white sand where the island’s plushest resorts sit. But there’s also this sign just down the street: No Tethering of Animals Allowed.

GETTING THERE: Fly American (800-433-7300), British West Indies Airlines (800-538-2942), or Air Jamaica (800-523-5585). Rent a car from Avis in St. George’s (about $50 per day; 473-440-3936). Boney, aka Stephen Morain, charges $20 an hour to be your driver and guide (473-441-8967).

WHERE TO STAY: The 66-room Spice Island Beach Resort on Grande Anse is inches from the Caribbean ($214-$173; $359; 473-444-4423; ). A more economical choice is the nearby Blue Horizons Cottage Hotel, with a cool veranda restaurant called La Belle Creole ($170-$173;$190; 473-444-4316; ). La Sagesse Nature Center is a nine-room onetime English manor house on a gorgeous, palm-shaded cove ($70-$173; $125; 473-444-6458; ).

WILD GRENADA: Summit the 2,300-foot, delightfully named Mount Qua Qua in Grand Étang Forest Reserve or hike to the Seven Sisters, a misnamed series of five waterfalls. It’s worth it to hire a guide, and probably the island’s best is Telfor Bedeau, a 62-year-old Grenadan who’s hiked the island’s highest peak, Mount St. Catherine, more than 100 times ($25-$173; $30 for one person, $15-$173; $25 per person for groups; 473-442-6200). To see the island from the water, sign on with First Impressions for a jaunt up the west coast aboard the Starwind III, a 42-foot catamaran ($45 half-day, $60 full day; 473-440-3678). Divers mingle with barracuda around the wreck of the Bianca C, an Italian luxury liner that sank off St. George’s in 1961. Reputable dive operators include Dive Grenada (473-444-1092; ) and Sanvics Scuba (473-444-4753; ).

ISLAND EATS: Cuisine centers around fresh-plucked fruit and the daily catch, with a local twist: More nutmeg grows on this 21-by-12-mile island than anywhere else except Indonesia. A fine perch from which to sample local grub is The Nutmeg, on St. George’s harbor. Above Grand Anse is Calypso’s Terrace, which serves up nighttime views of St. George’s and a fine rum-and-coconut-cream blend called a Painkiller.

Back to the top

Best Islands for Sea Kayaking

Round up: paddlers prepare to shove-off in Belize

Exuma Cays, Bahamas
This 90-mile-long mosaic of more than 365 sandy cays is blessed with calm seas and dozens of flourishing reefs. The Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, a 130-square-mile marine wilderness, has a strict “no take” rule (that means you, cockleshell klepto) that has allowed hundreds of species to thrive. For information on guided trips, contact Ecosummer Expeditions (800-465-8884; ).

Rock Islands, Palau
Paddling the air-clear water of the Rock Islands, a group of deeply undercut, plush green knobs, feels more like flying than floating. Swoop over barrel sponges and giant clams and buzz the open maws of dark sea caves before you touch down on an exquisite, deserted slice of sand—your camp for the night. Sam’s Planet Blue Sea Kayak Tours (011-680-488-1062; ) can help with gear and guides.


Isla Espiritu Santo, Mexico
Leave the cockfights and tequila worms behind and head for this desert island in the Gulf of California, where turquoise coves slice into volcanic cliffs, sea lions raise their pups, and black jackrabbits look for shade in the sun-baked canyons. For a guided trip, call Baja Expeditions (800-843-6967; ).

Glover’s Reef, Belize
Sapphire-blue seas, the world’s second-longest barrier reef, and six palm-studded cays crying out for the creak of a hammock…all in an 82-square-mile lagoon. Contact Slickrock șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs (800-390-5715; ).

Best Islands for Communing with Nature

Dominica
Peaks shooting 4,000 feet from the surf, rare Sisserou parrots, 100-foot waterfalls, an undersea hot springs called Champagne—welcome to the Caribbean’s most primeval isle. Play “Me Tarzan, you Jane” at the orchid-filled Papillote Wilderness Retreat ($90; 767-448-2287; .

Kangaroo Island, Australia
Eucalyptus-stoned koala bears roam this 1,737-square-mile island off Adelaide. Hundreds of miles of hiking trails take you through 21 parks, where you’ll spot sea lions, kangaroos, and nocturnal penguins returning to their colony at Penneshaw (Alkirna Nocturnal Tours, ).

Madagascar
Nearly all 30 species of lemurs live on this 995-mile-long island off Africa—broad-nosed gentle, ring-tailed, red-bellied, fat-tailed, hairy-eared dwarf—and despite a host of other exotic animals, they steal the wildlife show. Contact Lemur Tours (800-735-3687; ).

Fernandina Island, Ecuador
Flightless cormorants, pelicans, marine iguanas, and sea lions congregate on Punta Espinosa in the GalĂĄpagos Islands. Contact Galapagos șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs (561-393-4752; ).

San Miguel Island, California
San Miguel is unique for its seal and sea lion colonies; Point Bennet is the only place in the world where six types of pinnipeds congregate. Click on .

Best Islands for Scuba Diving

Cocos Island, Costa Rica
To witness what lurks in the current just off this jungly island 300 miles west of Costa Rica, you’ll need to go long and deep. Live-aboard dive boats make the rough, 36-hour crossing; then it’s a 60- to 135-foot dive down to see hammerheads, white-tipped sharks, and manta rays. Book a trip on the Okeanos Aggressor (800-348-2628; ).

Little Cayman Island
Still home to some of the deepest walls and clearest water, and still scarcely inhabited, this Frisbee-flat isle 80 miles northeast of Grand Cayman belongs on every diver’s life list. Kick through tunnels, chimneys, and canyons; sail over 1,000-foot drop-offs; and come face-to-face with sea turtles. Book a diving package at quirky Pirates Point Resort (345-948-1010).


Wakatobi, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia
Waka-who-bi? Largely unexplored, the Wakatobi National Marine Park in the Sea of Banda teems with everything from pilot whales to pygmy sea horses. Stay at the Wakatobi Dive Resort on Tomia Island (011-62-361-284-227; ), which has lodging for 22 guests.

RoatĂĄn, Honduras
Visit 33-mile-long RoatĂĄn and you’ll be faced with tough decisions: Reef-, wall-, or wreck-diving? Full-service dive resort or primitive beachfront cabana? Elephant-ear sponges and black coral or black groupers and whale sharks? RoatĂĄn Charter (800-282-8932; ) offers tank dives or weeklong packages.

Gizo, Solomon Islands
Diving near Gizo, in the western Solomons, means exploring coral-encrusted World War II wrecks and 100-foot walls surrounded by slow-cruising manta rays, tuna, barracuda, and a parade of confetti-colored reef fish. Topside, Gizo is a lush fantasy island smothered in orchids and mangroves. Call Dive Gizo (011-677-60253; ).

Best Islands for Fishing

Cast away: afloat off the Florida Keys

Madeira, Portugal
Obsessive record-stalking anglers descend on this mountainous, vineyard-covered isle 320 miles north of the Canaries hoping to haul in a “grander”—a thousand-pound-plus blue marlin, one of two things Madeira is famous for. The other is a sweet wine that’s sure to ease your pain over the one that got away. Charter a boat and guide from Nautisantos (011-351-291-222667; ).

Midway Atoll
Once a World War II battle zone, this U.S. National Wildlife Refuge 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii began allowing visitors five years ago. Since then, more than 20 world-record catches have been hauled in, including a 78-pound giant trevally. Stay in Midway’s only accommodations, the spruced-up (and surprisingly pleasant) former Army officers’ quarters.Contact Destination: Pacific (888-244-8582; ) to plan your trip.

Mauritius
This volcanic melting pot 450 miles east of Madagascar, with its Creole-speaking Franco-Anglo-African-Indian-Chinese population, offers superb fishing for black and blue marlin, sailfish, and sharks. Captains generally keep your catch and sell it; if you insist on catch-and-release, expect to pay about $75 for each fish you land in this not-so-green economy. Call Sportfisher (011-230-263-8358; ).

Marquesas Keys, Florida
Monster tarpon, permit, and bonefish loll in the turquoise shallows of this handful of uninhabited islands in the Key West National Wildlife Refuge. Work the Marquesas on daylong charters out of Key West.Call Key West Fishing Guides (800-497-5998; ).

Best Islands for a Multisport Vacation

Corsica, France
Scraggly peaks and 620 miles of rugged coast draw Euro-masochists for canyoneering, sea kayaking, diving, climbing, mountain biking, and sailing, plus paragliding off 8,877-foot Monte Cintu and rafting the Class IV Golo River. But the sportif notch to carve on your belt is trekking the grueling Fra I Monti, or GR20 Trail, a 104-mile grind along the island’s spine. Call France-based Corse Aventure (011-33-495-259119; ).

St. John, USVI
Virgin Islands National Park, which claims about three-fifths of this emerald isle, is crisscrossed with 20 miles of jungle trails for hiking and biking and blessed with pristine coral reefs for some of the best snorkeling and diving in the Caribbean. Arawak Expeditions gets you out in the park on weeklong trips (800-238-8687; ). But schedule a few extra days to enjoy lounging like a Rockefeller.


Kauai, Hawaii
Mount Waialeale, near the island’s center, which gets more than 480 inches of rain a year, is a verdant backdrop for horseback riders, mountain bikers, hikers, and windsurfers. Kauai’s trophy trek, the 11-mile Kalalau Trail, leads you from the cliffs of the Na Pali Coast, past 300-foot Hanakapiai Falls, deep into the spectacular Kalalau Valley. For camping permits, contact the Hawaii Division of State Parks, 808-274-3444.

Dominican Republic
Hike 10,417-foot Pico Duarte, raft Class III­V Yaque del Norte, mountain bike in the Dominican Alps, windsurf off Cabarete, and surf the ten-foot waves near Sousa. Go green and stay at Rancho Baiguate, an eco-resort in the highlands (809-574-4940; ).

Best Islands for Boardsailing

El Yaque, Margarita Island, Venezuela
Fifteen- to 30-knot sideshore winds blow over water so shallow here that you can bail 400 yards out and still walk back to land. High-quality rental rigs, cheap Cuba libres, and pulsing merengue compensate for crowds. Call Club Margarita Windsurfing for details (011-44-1920-484121; ).

Flag Beach, Fuerteventura, Canary Islands
Wide beaches and sartorially challenged German sunbathers dominate this arid Spanish island 70 miles west of Morocco. At Flag Beach, low pressure from the Sahara pumps in sideshore winds and Atlantic storms kick up jumpable swells. Call Flag Beach Windsurf Centre in Correlejo (011-34928-866389; ).


Taranaki, North Island, New Zealand
Mast-dwarfing walls sculpted by 20-knot winds along the mountainous West Coast are ridden most days by only a handful of wild-eyed, whooping Kiwis. Get local wisdom and a bunk at Wave Haven lodge in Oakura (011-646-752-7800; or e-mail wave.haven@taranaki.ac.nz).

Fisherman’s Hut Beach, Aruba
Bankable trade winds and planeable flatwater lure windsurfers to this cactus-spiked isle. Goofy diversions—casinos, jet skis, rum-‘n’-strum cruises—keep fidgety nonsailors happy, too. Call Sailboard Vacations (800-252-1070; ) for rentals and lodging.

Hookipa, Maui, Hawaii
Kneel at the feet of the airborne masters of Hookipa’s North Shore and perfect your carve-jibe in the sideshore trades off Kanaha Beach Park. Call Hawaiian Island Surf & Sport (800-231-6958; ).

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Early this summer, demographers coined a new word for the kind of town you can now find outside metropolitan areas all across America: a “boomburb.” Surely you’ve been to one. They have 100,000 to 400,000 residents; no downtown; auto-centric development, strip malls, and subdivisions; and double-digit population growth. If you enjoy such surroundings, you’re in luck. The nation now has 53 boomburbs, plus hundreds of smaller copycats. When you’re in one, you could be virtually anywhere. Undoubtedly some developer has co-opted that name: “Welcome to Virtually Anywhere—Gracious Living Close to Golf—Financing Available.”

Camden Harbor, Maine

Thanks, but no thanks. We all know that a town and its people can do much better than that. Take the ten best outdoorsy communities we found, explored, and scrutinized—places where the miles of singletrack far exceed the miles of six-lane beltway, where you can stroll or pedal to the farmers market, where the arts scene doesn’t stop at the multiplex, where you don’t have to count the number of garages from the corner to tell which house is yours.
Our formula is simple. First, each place offers close access to a mother lode of usable outdoors, so that a paddle, a hike, a few wave sets, or a bump run after work is not just possible but routine. Each one also provides some realistic hope of making a living (enough to support a family), and a healthy supply of sub-millionaire housing. Some of our towns are classic meccas, some relatively uncelebrated burgs, but all are places that haven’t bulldozed their character and don’t intend to. Places that no one could mistake for Anywhere.

Bellingham, Washington

Upshot: Quintessential Northwest

Bivy near Mount Shuksan’s Sulphide Glacier

Texans talk about football, Manhattanites about real estate, Coloradans about inches of new powder. In Bellingham, they know their anadromous fishes. One recent night, Lummi tribespeople held their annual First Salmon Ceremony on the reservation just up the coast. Dancers brought in the year’s first catch, and after salmon prayers and songs, everyone nibbled a bite of fish and the bones were cast into the bay. The next night, at the terminal where ferries depart for Alaska, hundreds of Anglos crowded the Jammin’ for Salmon benefit, with four bands and a mascot in a sequined fish costume. Different melodies, same backbeat. For back-to-the-landers and those who never left it, Whatcom County casts a potent spell.

By the numbers, it offers 143 miles of shoreline, 3,000 miles of river and stream, jagged Cascade peaks topping 10,000 feet, thousand-year-old cedars. In one epic day—well, maybe two—you could wade in a tidepool, paddle from shoreline bluffs to a San Juan Island, snowshoe along a crevasse, plunge down rapids, scale a volcanic cliff, and canoe past organic berry farms on a paper-flat floodplain. One acre of every seven is a park or other green space.
Even so, Bellingham feels like a place in flux. A new waterfront spa sits next to a boiler works. The old homes on South Hill, near Western Washington University, overlook both the San Juans and the smokestacks of the Georgia Pacific paper mill. But townsfolk remain frighteningly pleasant—and why not? They’re 90 minutes from Seattle, an hour from Vancouver, and a ferry ride from Alaska. Trivia bonus: You can enter Canada by heading southwest.

PLAYGROUNDS: Few places could host Bellingham’s 82.5-mile Ski to Sea relay, held every Memorial Day weekend and open to hardcores and duffers alike. It starts with cross-country skiing at 10,778-foot Mount Baker, followed by downhill skiing, running, road cycling, Nooksack River canoeing, mountain biking, and five miles in a sea kayak across choppy Bellingham Bay. On the other 364 days, add to the mix kayaking and sailing in the San Juans, hiking and mountain biking in the foothills, beachcombing and scanning for harbor seals along the rocky shore, and wandering the 29 miles of trails threading through town. An hour or two away, there’s fly-fishing in remote alpine lakes and hiking and climbing on a gargantuan scale in North Cascades National Park.

WORK: Be warned that the local alternative paper calls this the City of Subdued Incomes. Georgia Pacific just let go more than half its workforce, and Alcoa’s aluminum smelter has stopped smelting for now, although petroleum refineries still pay well. Many people work at the university, hospitals, and Haggen Food’s grocery headquarters; some latch onto TV or film production in Vancouver. Career baristas reach retirement before exhausting the possibilities at Brewed Awakening, Buzzz, Jitters, and their ad-infinitum rivals.

NEST: Check out the huge range: a modest chalet in the county’s hinterlands for under $125,000, a needy farmhouse on 20 acres for $175,000, an 80-year-old three-bedroom with unblocked bay views for $327,000, a $4 million minilodge with 800 feet of Lake Whatcom shoreline that screams, “I sold my Microsoft at $110 a share!”

NEIGHBORS: Olympic kayaker whose team has won three straight Ski to Seas; Lummi majoring in environmental policy at Western; fisherman who gave it up to grow bamboo.

HOW TO GO NATIVE: Don wool socks and sandals for a night on the town; plant rhododendrons in your yard; shoot your own indie film.

WATERING HOLES: Popular downtown dance halls, full of cheap beer and collegians, include the Royal, 3B, and the smoke-free Wild Buffalo.

THE PRICE OF PARADISE: Recent projections call for 50,000 more county residents by 2010, so conflicts over the land-trust ethos, north-spreading sprawl, and affordable-housing gap seem likely to boil over in the years to come.

Build Your Own Utopia

Somewhere between a community’s basic necessities (good schools, low crime, reasonable real estate) and its most coveted luxuries (singletrack in the backyard, Class III whitewater on the outskirts of town) are the little perks that can make the difference between a fine outdoor-sports town and a downright dreamy one. Here’s our highly subjective recipe for perfection, the ingredients in no particular order:


 •Â Seasonal farmers market
 •Â Outdoor lap pool
 •Â Artsy movie house
 •Â Bike lanes
 •Â natural-foods grocery
 •Â Resident oddballs
 •Â Water running through it
 •Â Climbing gym
 •Â International-magazine newsstand
 •Â Plans to fight sprawl
 •Â Clean air
 •Â Outdoor music venues
 •Â Dog parks
 •Â Local parades
 •Â Alternative weekly
 •Â Good local public radio
 •Â Fresh-fish vendor
 •Â Outdoor-skills clinics
 •Â Juice bar
 •Â Summer mountain-bike racing series
 •Â Minor League baseball
 •Â Big trees
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And the Survey Says. . .

When we asked you to plug your most beloved outdoor towns on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online, we knew we’d get some winning suggestions, but we didn’t expect such an outpouring of civic pride. The following ten towns are the recurring favorites, straight from the mouths of those who know best: the locals.


Asheville, North Carolina
Population: 66,000
“Artsy, liberal-minded, infested with singletrack, surrounded by whitewater, and affordable.” —Cynthia Palmeri

Ashland, Oregon
Population: 19,500
“Cheap living above the valley fog, close to Mount Ashland skiing, Mount Shasta, and the Rogue and Klamath Rivers.” —Michael Bate


Boulder, Colorado
Population: 95,000
“Bike to breakfast at Espresso Roma, ski in the morning, kayak in the afternoon, climb the Flatirons by moonlight. Enough said.” —Andrew Luter


Bozeman, Montana
Population: 28,000
“Views of five mountain ranges, lots of backcountry wilderness, trophy homes, feng-shui consultants, the rich and aimless, upscale dinner parties, etc. It’s Ed Abbey’s nightmare vision of a thoroughly New Age, New West town, and I wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else!” —Carl D. Esbjornson


Burlington, Vermont
Population: 39,000
“Kayaking Lake Champlain; hiking, mountain biking, or skiing the Green Mountains—and gusto enough to hold an outdoor Mardi Gras party in February.” —Dan Jones


Flagstaff, Arizona
Population: 60,000
“Climb the San Francisco Peaks while the rest of Arizona sizzles; come winter, ski the local Snowbowl. And the Grand Canyon is only an hour away in any season.” —Dee Sprinkle


Hanover, New Hampshire
Population: 9,500
“Hike the Appalachian Trail along Main Street, ride countless mountain-bike trails and back roads. Plus, great schools, a laid-back New England college-town lifestyle, and no sales tax.” —Heath Gosselin


Madison, Wisconsin
Population: 201,000
“A thriving, bike-friendly university town with a four-season climate and cross-country skiing and ice skating right downtown.” —Anne Mosser


Park City, Utah
Population: 6,500
“Terrific powder skiing in the Wasatch, and the best early-summer wildflowers I’ve ever seen.” —JoAnne Borchardt


Portland, Maine
Population: 63,000
“Home to the best sea kayaking in the United States. From my front door, I can carry my boat to the Presumpscot River and paddle it to the Atlantic.” —Bill Barker

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Yoga near Chimayo, NM

This is how Santa Fe usually sets the hook: The unwitting mark passes through town on a college road trip. Nearing the Plaza, she blinks in disbelief at adobes blushing umber in late afternoon, red-chile ristras dangling out front, courtyards shaded by lopsided cottonwoods. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains seem as close as an old movie backdrop. The next morning, she idly thumbs through the classifieds over huevos rancheros, lets up on the gas when she spots a front-yard “For Sale” sign, thinks about massage classes. Back home, friends try to talk her out of it. Too late. Another infatuated victim. Eventually, the country’s oldest and highest capital city (a.d. 1610 and 7,000 feet, respectively) shows up on many a must-do list. It’s not just the aesthetics—no other place looks like this—and the juxtaposition of American Indian, Hispanic, and Anglo ways that draw them. It’s also the backyard perks—ski runs 30 minutes from town, 320,000 acres of adjacent wilderness, Rio Grande whitewater—not to mention a thick schmear of highbrow culture and a size that guarantees you’ll run into friends on trails or in grocery aisles. Some stay for love, some because of inertia. Around here, you can’t always tell them apart.

PLAYGROUNDS: Southern Rockies meet high desert, with the overall vibe more easygoing than fanatical (and the weather cooperative nearly every day of the year). The Santa Fe National Forest’s Winsor Trail, beloved among local mountain bikers and hikers, climbs from desert scrub through zones of spruce, aspen, and pine; the three-and-a-half-mile Atalaya trail is a right-in-town favorite. Santa Fe Ski Basin, atop 12,053-foot Tesuque Peak, has about 1,650 feet of vertical, with adjacent backcountry chutes and 225 inches of powder annually; Taos is about 90 minutes north. On the Rio Grande, the 17-mile Taos Box runs Class III and IV in season, and the Race Course, Class III—both less than an hour afield. Year-round climbing routes await at White Rock and Diablo Canyon.

WORK: Government and tourism services account for two-thirds of employment. Santa Fe is the nation’s third-largest art market (with 200-plus galleries) and is a magnet for alternative health practitioners of every subniche. Other small clusters include a dozen or so “informatics” software geekeries and a bit of publishing, including art books and (ahem) this magazine.

NEST: Pricey but wide-ranging, now that the early-nineties gold rush has passed. On the East Side, where old family adobes ooze postcard rusticity, sales of $1.5 million aren’t unheard of, but every so often a fixer-upper there lists for $200,000 or so. Many opt for the family-friendly ‘hoods of Casa Alegre and Casa Solana, where a one-story charmer that needs updating might go for $130,000.

NEIGHBORS: Retired roofer with a Virgin of Guadalupe tattoo and an old Toyota Land Cruiser; skier/kayaker/climber/ landscaper (in that order); East Coast divorcee who exercises frenetically and paints—badly.

HOW TO GO NATIVE: Bag old Spanish retablos at the weekend flea market; order “Christmas” when asked if you want green chile or red; never, ever use your turn signal.

WATERING HOLES: Lots of comfy hangouts, among them the Dragon Room, El Farol, and the Cowgirl BBQ & Western Grill. For a double shot of only-in-Santa-Fe, go salsa dancing at Club Alegria, serenaded by Franky Pretto, Catholic priest and keyboardist, and his band.

THE PRICE OF PARADISE: At times a high-desert oasis, even a lovely one with museums and artists and world-class restaurants, feels. . . well, like the desert.

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Upshot: Old South Meets New Urbanism

Sunset on Chattanooga’s century-old Walnut Street Bridge

Chattanooga’s darkest hour arrived in 1969, when Walter Cronkite dropped a bombshell on the six o’clock news: The EPA had ranked the nation’s worst cities for air pollution, and Chattanooga—an enviably scenic town ringed by mountains and split down the center by the meandering Tennessee River—topped the list. “I about dropped my fork,” says Jim Brown, a native who now runs the Tennessee River Gorge Trust, a conservation nonprofit. “That woke everybody up. From that point on, things started to change.” Now change is the civic mantra—well, one of them. Enter the city and you risk attack by a swarm of progressive buzzwords: sustainability, greenways, revitalization, strategic revisioning. In practice, those translate into nearly half a billion dollars sunk into lifestyle upgrades. The downtown banks of the Tennessee lure locals with arts and bluegrass festivals, miles of riverfront walkways, and seven-acre Coolidge Park. The next phase calls for a 75-mile web of creekside trails linking parks, neighborhoods, and protected green space. Careful—the boosterism is contagious.

Ironically, Chattanooga would probably still draw outdoor jocks even if the smog had never cleared. In the hills just outside of town, the Cumberland Plateau offers a jackpot of rock- and water-based diversions—dense hardwood forests, trailheads, put-ins, and caves—all close enough for junkets before or after work. If life in a city reinventing itself sounds appealing, you won’t get many chances like this.

PLAYGROUNDS: Whitewater is the marquee attraction. The Ocoee River, 50 miles east of Chattanooga, hosted ’96 Olympic paddlers, and many creeks, such as North Chickamauga (a mere five miles from town), run up to Class IV when it rains. A 46-mile “blueway” trail was just christened on the Tennessee, where bird-sanctuary islands attract herons, sandhill cranes, and bald eagles. Just outside city limits, Prentice-Cooper State Forest has a vast network of singletrack and hiking trails. Climbers go to Sunset Rock on 2,135-foot Lookout Mountain; cavers have a few limestone caverns right in town and abundant choices north toward Kentucky; and fly-fishers wade the Hiwassee River or drive 90 minutes northeast to the Great Smoky Mountains’ countless trout streams.
WORK: The crossroads of interstates, rail lines, and a major river keeps transport and warehousing high on the list of mainstays, along with health care, insurance, and factories that make everything from industrial gases to nanofibers to Moon Pies. Headquarters for the Tennessee Valley Authority and Olan Mills photography are here, too, as well as Litespeed titanium bicycles. The amount of clean, green industry hasn’t caught up with the rhetoric so far, but the paint’s not yet dry on the renaissance.

NEST: North Chattanooga is a hot ticket, with 1920s Craftsman-style two-bedrooms along winding, magnolia-lined roads, just a stroll from the riverbank, selling fast for around $140,000. Bargain hunters shop precincts on the upswing like St. Elmo and Highland Park, where $60,000 to $100,000 buys a historic cottage badly in need of TLC.

NEIGHBORS: Whitewater junkie who became a firefighter for the generous time off; thirtyish refugees from Atlanta buying and rehabbing sickly old bungalows.

HOW TO GO NATIVE: Employ the verb “to creek,” as in “We went creekin’ off Highway 27 yesterday.” Get jiggy on Bessie Smith Strut Night, a bluesy street fest outside the African American Museum. Curse Atlanta traffic but brave the hour-and-a-half drive (on a good day) for concerts and shopping anyway.

WATERING HOLES: The Big River Grille, a brew house in an old trolley barn, is the nightlife epicenter. The IPA goes down easy.

THE PRICE OF PARADISE: Some ghosts of the downbeat past—Superfund sites, polluted streams, vacant storefronts—still linger.

Eureka/Arcata, California

Upshot: Sweet Isolation on the North Coast

Redwoods riders on the Lost Coast, south of Eureka

A couple of years ago, a USDA economist cooked up a method of quantifying the unquantifiable: how attractive a place is. He created a scale that factored in climate, surface water, and variety of elevation—the hillier, the better—and fed stats into his program from every county in the Lower 48. When his computer burped out the results, the winner had notched a perfect score of 21 for its topography: Humboldt County. Five hours north of San Francisco, this wonderland boasts 110 miles of lonely coastline, thousands of acres of ancient redwoods, several wild rivers, and a 20-to-1 countywide ratio of acres to humans. And no one told the hard drive that Eureka, the county seat, has thousands of redwood-framed Victorians enhancing its Sesame Street grid (A-B-C streets one way, 1-2-3 the other). Or that it has a burgeoning art scene, with gallery-hoppers strolling along F Street through the revived waterfront Old Town and a new art museum in a renovated library. Eureka isn’t all spit-shined and polished yet, though. Fishy warehouses and railroad tracks still border Humboldt Bay. Stacks of plywood fill the yards of outlying lumber mills. Jack London would feel right at home.

Then there’s Eureka’s sidekick five miles up the bay, Arcata. In this aspiring ecotopia, site of Humboldt State University, the wastewater plant is a marshy sanctuary that draws egrets, binocular-toting hikers, and joggers crunching gravel underfoot. The Alliance for a Paving Moratorium calls Arcata home, as do Green Party faithfuls, hippie kids, and zealous recyclers. Order a coffee to go without presenting your travel mug? Unthinkable.
PLAYGROUNDS: A sampler platter: In Redwood National Park, a UN-designated World Heritage Site half an hour north, you can trek among 1,500-year-old trees and ferny canyons. Cyclists choose between foothill climbs and long, rolling rides in the ag-heavy bottomlands near the shore. Of the nearby rivers, the Trinity gets the heaviest traffic, with swimming holes and long, flat drifts punctuated by turbulent stretches up to Class IV and V; head northeast to reach a similar mix on the Klamath and Cal-Salmon. Surfers don wetsuits about ten minutes north of town at Trinidad, and sea kayakers like the sloughs and inlets of Humboldt Bay. An hour or so inland, in the Trinity Alps Wilderness, backpackers find stuff on par with Yosemite, but without the crowds.

WORK: Service jobs predominate—government, health care, teaching at HSU or College of the Redwoods, real estate, tourism—along with a hodgepodge of cottage industries: Yakima racks, cheesemaking, oystering, organic farming. “A lot of people don’t make much money here, but they live well,” says one Arcatan, “and not always from growing pot.”

NEST: A bargain by coastal standards, as plenty of Bay Area refugees will attest. In Eureka, a restored Victorian with woodstove and fish pond, $265,000; modern four-bedroom on an outskirts acre, a bit less; three-bedroom Craftsman, $125,000. In Arcata, add 20 to 30 percent.

NEIGHBORS: Real estate agent/river guide who throws in a raft trip with every home sale; members of the band The Depavers, who recorded the single “Have a Global Warming Day.”

HOW TO GO NATIVE: Attend yoga class on the beach; after graduating college, stock produce to avoid leaving town.

WATERING HOLES: The Logger Bar in nearby Blue Lake, close to the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre, holds out the possibility of mimes and lumberjacks bonding over brewskis.

THE PRICE OF PARADISE: Some folks are thrilled to live in a foggy, slow-paced, low-paying town 250 miles from almost anywhere—and some folks aren’t.

Win Lottery, Move Here

Towns with the most beautiful scenery and most enviable outdoor recreation are also often the ones with astronomical real-estate prices—or few jobs. If you can ply your trade anywhere or don’t need to make a living, go ahead and move to paradise; we’re not bitter. Just keep the guest house warm.

Bishop, California
Population: 4,000
The High Sierra multisport hub: More fly-fishing, backcountry skiing, and climbing, at or above tree line, than almost anywhere—and a fraction of Tahoe’s tourists.


Charlevoix, Michigan
Population: 3,400
Everyone’s a nature photographer, cross-country skier, beachcomber, or berry picker in the Upper Midwest’s version of Valhalla—surrounded by Lake Charlevoix, Lake Michigan, and three wildlife preserves.


Crested Butte, Colorado
Population: 1,500
Steeper lift-served skiing than Telluride, tougher singletrack than Aspen, and a downtown with infinitely more character than Vail. Get there before the megaresorts do.


Cruz Bay, St. John, USVI
Population: 3,500
Sea kayak and sail sapphire waters, mountain bike and hike jungle trails, dive rainbow-colored reefs. Sixty percent of the island is national park.


Haines, Alaska
Population: 1,400
Wedged between the Chilkat Mountain Range and the Coast Range, Haines offers hiking, backcountry skiing, rafting, and Glacier Bay sea kayaking.


Hanalei, Kauai
Population: 5,000
The funkiest town on Hawaii’s greenest isle. Backpack along the 4,000-foot cliffs of the Na Pali Coast; snorkel Hanalei Bay; return to a bungalow in the shadow of Bali Hai.


Key Largo, Florida
Population: 9,100
Multifarious fish around the federally protected reef quickly lengthen any diver’s aquatic life list. Above water, sea kayak the Everglades, day sail among mangroves, burn your coat and tie.


Sandpoint, Idaho
Population: 6,800
Artists discovered its low-rent beauty. Soon others came to hike the Selkirks, shred Schweitzer ski resort, and land trout and salmon on Lake Pend Oreille. They’re all still here—and as mellow as ever.


Waitsfield, Vermont
Population: 1,500
Steepled churches and old-timey barns, along with prime New England outdoors: glade skiing at Mad River Glen, hiking on the 270-mile Long Trail, and quiet, bikeable back roads.


Wilson, Wyoming Population: 1,300
The benefits of Jackson—a 4,000-foot ski area, fly-fishing and rafting on the Snake River, climbing in the Tetons—without Wild West trinket shops.

Camden, Maine

UPSHOT: Coastal Camelot

Camden, its harbor, and Penobscot Bay from a high perch on Mount Battie

DON’T BOTHER LOOKING FOR A PRETTIER TOWN; none exists. Schooners bob on Camden’s glistening harbor, guarded by a tiny island with its very own lighthouse. Mapled lanes meander among rows of bright Federals, Capes, and Victorians, tricked out with enough bay windows, widow’s walks, and shutters with historically correct paint jobs to launch a Ralph Lauren housewares line. The 1928 brick library overlooks a village green designed by Central Park creator Frederick Law Olmsted. Even the seagulls look coiffed. The oh-so-adorable boutiques lining Main Street and the rows of B&Bs suggest pure Vacationland—lights out after Labor Day. But looks deceive. Camden boasts a bubbling economy as well as a rich cultural landscape. The splash of the decade was the 1993 relocation of credit-card behemoth MBNA New England into a once-empty woolen mill here. So far, the company has drawn raves for its role as corporate sugar daddy, hiring thousands for decent-paying desk jobs in Camden and nearby burgs, and pumping millions into causes like the Coastal Mountains Land Trust and a new high school.

Camden draws its share of people who could live anywhere, making for a lively stew. A pod of Polarfleece-clad hardcores marks the seasons by rotating the cargo on their roof racks from bike to canoe to battered skis. Artists and other creatives flock here, following in the wake of FitzHugh Lane and the Wyeths. So do tech-industry honchos such as former Apple head John Scully and Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe, who back big-think events like the annual October Technology Conference and a springtime foreign-affairs powwow. (Also here, for reasons uncertain: a subculture of CIA retirees.) Somehow, though, a folksy, Our Town feel survives the highfalutin civic tone. “More people than not,” says one transplant, “go home for lunch and walk the dog.”
PLAYGROUNDS: More L.L. Bean genteel than highly caffeinated. Waterfolk from far and wide descend on Camden Harbor and the pine-and-birch-forested islands of Penobscot Bay in Forbes-worthy yachts, but also in dories and kayaks. Join the Maine Island Trail Association and, in exchange for helping with cleanups, you can camp on the rocky shores of dozens of privately owned islands. Cyclists fill the rosters of road, trail, and cyclocross clubs—as well as spring and fall races on nearby Ragged Mountain. The well-worn trails of Camden Hills State Park lure hikers and mountain bikers to soaring views of the harbor and Megunticook Lake, blocks from downtown. Locals ski, board, and toboggan at the town-run Snow Bowl (where you can gaze at the ocean from the chairlift), cross-country ski at Tanglewood 4-H Camp about ten miles north, and paddle and fly-cast on nearby lakes or the St. George River’s affable whitewater. Taller mountains and/or more boisterous rapids await within three hours in the White Mountains, Acadia National Park, and the West Branch of the Penobscot River.

WORK: More slots than bodies to fill them, mostly thanks to MBNA. Otherwise, half the economy is hitched to tourism, but options exist: Northeast Health employs 800 or so, and nearby Rockland still has manufacturing (FMC BioPolymer extracts chemicals from seaweed; Fisher Engineering makes snowplows). Plenty of people here still get by performing any task that can be done from, on, or to a boat.

NEST: Houses don’t languish on the market. Historic District Capes on Sea Street or Bayview near the harbor start at around $250,000 and head for the stars, but you can find something suitable farther from the water for $80,000 to $100,000 less. Just south, in less-manicured but up-and-coming Rockland, homes still list under $100,000.

NEIGHBORS: Native Camdenite newspaperwoman who swims in Nortons Pond every summer morning; fourth-generation boatbuilder who actually knows how to operate a lobster trap; retired Navy captain who runs a bed-and-breakfast.

HOW TO GO NATIVE: Methodically shun the summer-vacation gridlock on Route 1; rabidly follow high-school basketball; run a monthly tab at French & Brawn market.

WATERING HOLE: The Waterfront Restaurant, where locals cluster on the deck to watch the “obscene” summer yachts drift by.

THE PRICE OF PARADISE: “Camden nightlife” is an oxymoron; young singles might find Portland—that seething metropolis of 63,000 a couple hours to the south—less claustrophobic.

Blacksburg, Virginia

UPSHOT: Appalachia gone wired

“TODAY IS WEIRD,” REPORTS BOB SUMMERS, whose office overlooks an emerald landscape of hardwoods and rolling hills veiled in Blue Ridge mist. “I’m wearing shoes. But only because it’s raining.” At age 28, Summers is CEO and founder of nanoCom, a videophone software firm. In his flannel shirt and jeans he could pass for Science Club treasurer, but by company standards he’s a graybeard. The average age of his 17 employees is 22. Like Summers, most residents of this tranquil college town in southwest Virginia take pride in their digital savvy. Nine out of ten go online, and whiz-kid startups thrive like kudzu. (VTLS, for instance, which makes library software, grew out of Virginia Tech’s neo-Gothic stone campus seven years ago and now employs 100 locally.)

Despite the high-tech influence, Blacksburg’s setting in the New River Valley is as unpretentious as its inhabitants: an uncrowded ground zero for backpackers, boaters, climbers, and cyclists—with a cost of living sharply discounted from that of many towns so topographically blessed. Precious gift shops and nouveau delis have barely infiltrated Blacksburg’s small, brick-faced downtown, where commerce sticks to the essentials: cheap eats, cheap drafts, and outdoor toys. But lest you think this is a Blue Ridge backwater, take note: The college pipes in enough non-Appalachian influence (don’t be surprised to hear snippets of Chinese or German at the trailheads) to put the Deliverance jokes to rest.

PLAYGROUNDS: Local footpaths in the Jefferson National Forest are sublime—not surprising, given that Blacksburg is a mere 20 minutes from the Appalachian Trail. The two-mile hoof into the Cascades, with its 66-foot falls, is everyone’s pet hike; other favorites include Tinker Cliffs and Dragon’s Tooth. Mountain bikers head for Brush Mountain and Pandapas Pond, a hub where novice and Hail Mary singletracks intertwine; skinny-tire riders take on miles of empty country lanes a mere five minutes from their doorsteps. Best of all, perhaps, is the New River. On the closest stretches, armadas of students float the flatwater on inner tubes. Ninety minutes north and downstream, in West Virginia, the river has carved world-class Class IVÐV whitewater and climbing routes in the 800-foot-deep sandstone New River Gorge, also a major BASE-jumping site.

WORK: Although a cross-section of manufacturers remains—Volvo trucks, Corning—most prospects can be found in the Corporate Research Center, a campus of brick-and-glass warrens where about 100 tech firms employ 1,800. Or be one of 5,800 on the payroll of Virginia Tech.

NEST: Prices are creeping up. A 70-year-old Cape Cod or Tudor within earshot of roaring football fans at VT’s Lane Stadium could easily fetch $250,000 or more. Newer, four-bedroom ranch homes in the Ellett Valley, just minutes from Main Street but with views of the Blue Ridge, often list for under $200,000.

NEIGHBORS: Local-born restaurateur with a degree in wildlife management; genetic-engineering grad student from India learning to kayak and clone sheep.

HOW TO GO NATIVE: Defy fashion smarts by wearing orange and maroon together (Tech’s colors); pronounce it “App-a-LATCH-in”; for God’s sake patent something. Now.

WATERING HOLES: The Cellar attracts a townie/student mix with Italian grub and beers unnumbered. Unleash your inner Walton at Baylee’s—an eatery in a converted 1848 Presbyterian church—by dancing the Virginia reel on Old Time Jam nights.

THE PRICE OF PARADISE: The panoramic views become merely theoretical during the spring, when rain and fog hunker down for days.

Northampton, Massachusetts

UPSHOT: New England’s Little Cosmopolis

“IN MANY WAYS,” SAYS BILL STAPLETON, president of Northampton Cooperative Bank, “this is a microcosm of a large and fairly sophisticated city.” For instance? Consider the subcultures plunked down together here in the woolly Berkshire foothills, on the banks of the slow-flowing Connecticut River. Northampton is one of the republic’s artsiest small towns, thick with studios, galleries, arts councils, craftsfolk (a paint-your-own pottery shop occupies a prime slot on Main Street), and chamber-music mavens. It’s an undergrad’s town, with Smith College’s leafy campus downtown and four others—Amherst, UMass, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire—just across the Connecticut. It’s a haven for writers (Tracy Kidder lives up the road), editors, and designers with fiber-optic drip-lines to New York and Boston. You can trace much of Noho’s prosperous zeitgeist to the hippies; they tuned in, turned on, dropped out—and then got seed money. In a sense, they’ve remade the town in their image: a capitalist commune where painters, poets, and plenty of therapists keep recirculating their two-professional salaries among themselves. At times the overlap of disposable income and political correctness gets goofy: This fresh-pasta bistro is a nuke-free zone! But repentant urbanites who want their fresh-air fix, their crĂšme brûée, their Ray Charles concert, and their white picket fence find the overall package tempting.

PLAYGROUNDS: A wide array of day hikes, off-road rides, and trail runs, mostly at gradual Eastern inclines; Mount Tom and Skinner Mountain are classics. At under an hour away, Berkshire East and Jiminy Peak are the closest ski hills, and Vermont’s Mount Snow, Okemo, and Stratton resorts are within day-trip range. There are also three cool summer swimming holes nearby (Amherst Pond, Shelburne Falls’s glacial potholes, and the hyperbolic “Goshen Ocean,” a small lake). Cycling is big, with Saturday-morning platoons of roadies lighting out from the Hotel Northampton’s parking lot toward the country roads out-lying. The broad Connecticut draws flatwater enthusiasts, who head north of Coolidge Bridge in canoes, kayaks, and rowing shells. And, a couple of hours away, southern Vermont’s Battenkill spawns fly-fishing legends.
WORK: Nicely diversified, even for those for whom “my office” does not mean “my iMac in the guest bedroom.” The colleges employ many, on all levels, and a handful of small publishing houses and design studios cater to the bookish set. Don’t discount a career in the arts or retail: Lots of galleries and shops that started out as boutiques in Thorne’s Market (a funky indoor mall) have grown into glitzy storefronts of their own.

NEST: Sticker shock. Charm-oozing Victorians on one of the leafy avenues that spoke out from Elm Street and the red-brick downtown typically list from $300,000 to $350,000 and sell quickly. Less than $200,000 might lasso a nice brick Colonial across from a pond in slightly grittier Easthampton.

NEIGHBORS: Plumber whose wife makes kaleidoscopes and trains for the Head of the Charles rowing regatta; twentyish vegan with dreadlocks and chin whiskers, jerking wheatgrass juice to pay for his Rolfing lessons; Jungian therapist who likes hut-to-hut hiking and has issues with his daughter’s blue hair.

HOW TO GO NATIVE: Drive an ancient, chuttering Volvo plastered with lefty bumper stickers; bring your bandanna-wearing Lab and your baby carrier everywhere.

WATERING HOLES: The best tilt downscale. Packard’s is where locals converge for burgers, beers, and billiards. Joe’s, an unapologetically dim-lit joint with a crowded bar and homemade-style pizza, features Old Mexico-themed murals. Go figure.

THE PRICE OF PARADISE: Big-city culture draws inevitable big-city traffic; pervasive PC aura may have committed mainstreamers pining for a Hooters full of longshoremen.

Santa Barbara, California

UPSHOT: The quasi-Mediterranean good life

THE SUN IS ANGLING TOWARD THE FOOTHILLS upcoast from East Beach. A cooling breeze riffles the bougainvilleas. As dusk begins to glow, most volleyballers have abandoned their nets to the sand, but the outrigger canoe team is just getting started, surging out beyond the breakwater. Runners and cyclists whiz by along the walkway; there goes actor Christopher Lloyd, wobbling slightly on his Rollerblades. Sailboats crowd the waves between here and the Channel Islands. Shadows lengthen on the steep Santa Ynez ridge, looming over a sea of whitewashed adobes with red-tile roofs.

Santa Barbara’s heady ambience starts with a steady stream of wealth and glitz from L.A. and elsewhere funneled into the laid-back Central Coast. That mix produces a lush cityscape of palms, eucalyptus trees, and flowers, and supports legions of great restaurants—from sushi to Thai to trattoria to whole-grain to tacos to catch of the day. It sustains more culture than any town of fewer than 100,000 can rightly expect: museums, light opera, one festival after the next. The catch? Well…how does a half-million-dollar fixer-upper sound? That’s what you get when you jump into the pool with the likes of Jeff Bridges, Kenny Loggins, and Oprah. Ordinary mortals resign themselves to perma-renting or sweating an absurd mortgage. “People make sacrifices to be here,” says Joe Coito, a 37-year-old who runs Adventours Outdoor Excursions. “We all know that coming in.”

PLAYGROUNDS: To ski, run whitewater, or dogsled requires travel, but otherwise it’s all right here, year-round. On and in the Pacific, Santa Barbarans sail, sea kayak, dive, snorkel, spearfish, whale-watch, swim, and beachcomb any of several state beaches in either direction, as well as Channel Islands National Park, reachable in less than three hours by launch from the harbor. Surfers head an hour north to Jalama Beach or a few minutes south to the world-renowned break at Rincon. On the Santa Ynez ridge, which rises abruptly to almost 4,000 feet, numerous trailheads draw hikers and cyclists to steep, bony singletrack and spring-fed plunge pools. Climbers and hang gliders head up Gibraltar Road for sandstone routes and reliable thermals. The August triathlon, almost as old as the sport itself, sells out early. Servers and spikers follow in the sandy footprints of local product Karch Kiraly. On weekends, coffee shops overflow with club riders heading out to the roads.

WORK: The University of California at Santa Barbara employs the most, with government and tourism not far behind; the “Silicon Beach” cluster near campus has a healthy portion of tech companies. For retailers, the State Street shopping district could seduce a monk into maxing out his gold card. Then there are the divers, climbers, and triathletes at heart who masquerade as teachers, electricians, waiters, and graphic designers to get by.

NEST: Ready? The scale starts around $175,000 for a tidy mobile home, goes to $350,000 for a two-bedroom condo, and heads upward of $750,000 for, say, a 50-year-old, partially renovated Spanish-style cottage with some ocean views. If you require only a roof and a mattress, you can always rent a room in somebody’s condo for $600.

NEIGHBORS: French winemaker/paraglider from the Loire Valley; ag worker gradually moving his family up from Guadalajara; Jonathan Winters.

HOW TO GO NATIVE: Wear shorts and Tevas anywhere; obey an unwritten ordinance by not fussing over local celebrities.

WATERING HOLES: On the harbor, Brophy Bros. draws locals with bottled beer, decent seafood, and a view that’s pure Santa Barbara—sea and mountains through a forest of yacht masts.

THE PRICE OF PARADISE: With the lack of affordable housing, some smog and traffic, and the Bush administration agitating to increase offshore oil drilling, even this paradise has a few snakes in the garden.

Duluth, Minnesota

UPSHOT: Upper Midwest, with no apologies

“ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS I DID WHEN I moved to Duluth was get rid of my car,” says Dan Proctor, a bearded 49-year-old with graying pigtails who works at the Positively Third Street organic bakery. Before long, he followed suit with his TV, phone, fridge, and ties to the electric company. He walks, pedals, or skis to work, and voluntarily clears brush from a trail near his house, using only hand tools to avoid jangling the forest calm. Proctor’s friends have coined a nickname for him: the Unabaker.

Though perhaps not a typical Duluthian, Proctor does embody the town’s earthy ethic. Within city limits, some 23 creeks spill over basalt ledges into the west end of Lake Superior. Laced with backyard trails and waterfalls, this gateway to both the Great Lakes and the North Woods spawns die-hard paddlers, Olympic cross-country skiers, ultrarunners, and weather-be-damned mountain bikers. Black bears, moose, and thousands of hawks pass through. “I think a higher percentage of people here are tuned in to the outdoors,” says Sam Cook, the Duluth News Tribune’s outdoors writer. “There’ll be mist rising in columns off the lake, and the sun rising behind it. It’s a very moving place to live.”

Signs of gentrification have shown up near the Rust Belt waterfront, such as brick streets and overhead Skywalks in the pleasant Mini-apolis downtown, and the four-mile Lakewalk. But they can’t quite disguise Duluth’s meat-and-potatoes soul, its suspicion of anything trendy. In his book Cold Comfort, local author Barton Sutter recalls when the city gave away bumper stickers that said, “We’re Duluth and proud of it.” Sutter spotted a hand-altered one: “We’re Dull and out of it.” You could read either version as a boast.

PLAYGROUNDS: You might begin by imitating Dusty Olson, a 28-year-old carpenter and itinerant ski bum. Olson kayaks such steep North Shore creeks as the Knife, Baptism, Cascade, and Devil Track rivers, which offer Class III and IV froth in the spring. He’s run Grandma’s Marathon, held each June along Duluth’s waterfront, for ten years straight. He grew up skiing Chester Bowl, just uphill from downtown, and nearby Spirit Mountain, which has 900 feet of vertical—not Vail, but not bad. He frequents the town’s 20-odd miles of cross-country ski trails and two touring centers, and races in Wisconsin’s American Birkebeiner, 90 minutes away, most Februaries. Within 100 miles, there’s also canoeing in the Boundary Waters, dogsledding out of Ely and Grand Marais, and paddling through sea caves in the Apostle Islands.

WORK: Local wealth is historically linked to timber, shipping, and mining, all of which have taken hits lately. Technology Village on Superior Street is starting to lure high-tech employers, but for now the most reliable sectors are health care, tourism, and education at the University of Minnesota Duluth and elsewhere.

NEST: You can snag something smallish and humble on the hilly East Side for about $70,000; in the same area, multiply that number by five for a dolled-up Victorian from Duluth’s early-1900s heyday. Want a year-round vacation megacabin right on the lake? Start at $600,000 and go up, up, up.

NEIGHBORS: Geologist and wife who bring the dogs along when they ski frozen creeks; railroad worker who hunts, snowmobiles, and sweats buckshot about layoffs; sports-medicine couple who launch his-and-hers kayaks onto Lake Superior from their backyard.

HOW TO GO NATIVE: Any time you’re late say, “I got bridged”—that is, trapped on the wrong side when the Aerial Lift Bridge rose to let a freighter pass; attend a poetry reading and a polka festival on the same day.

WATERING HOLES: The NorShor for art-house flicks and live music on weekends; Fitger’s Brewhouse for local suds and shockingly tasty wild-rice burgers.

THE PRICE OF PARADISE: The standard rap goes like this: “Duluth? Where the lakes thaw just long enough for the mosquitoes to hatch? Where culture comes in six-packs?” Locals don’t mind; it keeps the riffraff out.

Missoula, Montana

UPSHOT: Montana’s enlightened cow town

IF MISSOULA WERE A WOMAN, she might show up for a first date in a battered pickup, grease on her overalls and fly rod in hand. She would look ravishing. And if you didn’t fall for her, it wouldn’t matter—the next guy would. With low wages and rising house prices, atrophied muscle cars and clear-cut blemishes, Missoula doesn’t try hard to impress, or need to. The town sits at the junction of five valleys and at least as many currents of American life. Throngs of resident writers orbit around the University of Montana’s graduate program, the trout streams, and the storied saloons. Nonprofits abound, many of them tinged with green: the Great Bear Foundation, the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Women’s Voices for the Earth, and so on. People from hundreds of miles around pilgrimage here for groceries, ballet tickets, or open-heart surgery. Little of that would exist, though, if not for the trump card, the Huge Outdoors. Encircled by national forest, watered by swift rivers, flanked by rounded hills giving way to snow-capped peaks, Missoula serves up long summer days that cure workaholics; at 10 p.m. on a June night, twilight lingers. In town, you can still picture the prewar Missoula that Norman Maclean called home. People fish the Clark Fork downtown, stately old banks and hotels grace street corners, and pawnshops stock ancient camp lanterns and rusty timber saws. (Try to ignore the day spa and the feng-shui center.) Arguably Missoula is too alluring for its own good: In the 1990s, its population swelled by more than a third. “People move here because it’s the last best place,” says Tom Maclay, a fifth-generation rancher in the Bitterroot Valley. “But there’s always somebody behind them.”

PLAYGROUNDS: The surrounding Lolo National Forest alone has 1,800 miles of foot and bike trails; nearby wildernesses—the Rattlesnake just north, the Selway-Bitterroot just south, the Scapegoat, Bob Marshall, and others within a few hours—exceed five million acres. Twenty miles east of town, Rock Creek is the most honored local trout stream. Rafters and kayakers try to do justice to 200-plus miles of floatable river close by: the Blackfoot, the Alberton Gorge of the Clark Fork, and, just 60 miles away in Idaho, the no-holds-barred Class IV-V Lochsa. Climbers and backcountry skiers choose from peaks in any direction, many topping 9,000 feet; and Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks are both close enough for weekend trips.
WORK: Since 1980, the percentage of jobs in retail, medical, and other service fields has tripled, while the wood and paper industries have shrunk by more than half. Major employers include the university and the U.S. Forest Service’s northern headquarters, as well as two hospitals that together employ 2,000-plus people. In most cases, expect to pay the “mountain tax”—small wages in exchange for big scenery. Note to aspiring wildlife biologists: Take a number.

NEST: Sixty- to 70-year-old Tudors and bungalows near campus have high curb appeal and prices to match; you could spend $200,000 on a charmer that needs new wiring, pipes, and shingles. For $125,000, you can get a three-bedroom ranch with snowcapped Bitterroot views south of town in Florence, where zip code 59833 is the fastest-growing in Montana.

NEIGHBORS: Left-leaning Democrat with llamas and a loaded gun rack; transplanted Midwesterner who catches author readings at Fact & Fiction and Packers games at the Speakeasy; freelancer by day, sheepherder by night.

HOW TO GO NATIVE: Dress up as a critter for the WildWalk parade during April’s International Wildlife Film Festival; smell like either bear oil or patchouli.

WATERING HOLES: The Missoula Club, Charlie B’s, and the Union Club are all democratic melting pots and sights to behold. “The guy next to you could be a smoke jumper, a derelict, or a professor,” says a frequenter of each, “or maybe all three.”

THE PRICE OF PARADISE: In exchange for all those near-Arctic-length summer days, you must endure months of winter gloom.

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THE STARTING POINT: What follows are six elemental landscapes—forest, desert, inland waterfront, prairie, mountain, and coast—featuring 18 blissfully unsullied locales, from Alaska to Florida, Arizona to Maine.

Clear into the next state: The view from North Carolina, near the town of Tyron, into South Carolina.

THE COST: Our survey largely showcases undeveloped private land, which remains plentiful and cheap, in a few areas, however, prices creep up to $200,000 an acre or higher. But in a nation where the median home price now tops $150,000 (or even $300,000 in California), consider what you get for your money.
THE PAYOFF: A place that may feel more like home than home. Happy hunting.

FOREST
WHEN EUROPEANS FIRST ARRIVED on this continent, historians claim, an enterprising squirrel in a pine tree on the New England coast could, theoretically, have leaped from branch to branch and made it all the way to the Mississippi without ever touching the ground. To attempt the same stunt now, the rodent would need a 12-foot wingspan and a tailwind. Sizable islands of sylvan serenity still exist, of course. But so does the timber industry. Consider yourself a shrewd buyer? Then examine the impact that logging in a nearby forest might have on a property that interests you. Lumber must come from somewhere, and that fact will be cold comfort if the chainsaws and downshifting trucks are going at it within earshot of your retreat. Or worse, if they thunder across your land because a timber company obtained a road easement.
GRAHAM COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA
FIRST THE BAD NEWS: Although this last frontier, perched just across Fontana Lake from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, had nary a stoplight a few years ago, it now has—the horror—three. But fear not. To residents, a traffic jam means getting stuck behind a stopped school bus. For those looking to vanish from the radar, this is as rough-and-tumble as it gets east of the Big Muddy—densely wooded black-bear and wild-boar turf. Sensational hiking awaits in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest and in the Snowbird Wilderness.
RECENT LISTING: A gentle ridge for your cabin and a year-round spring on 38 acres down a cratered dirt road (four-wheel-drive only), $51,300. High Country Property, 888-525-5263, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Napping in a shaded May thicket of blooming rhododendrons, not another human in sight.
FORGET IT IF: Any of the following are important: a broad selection of restaurants, nightlife, golf, or a nearby hospital.

FOREST COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
THE GENERAL VICINITY OF northwestern Pennsylvania’s half-million-acre Allegheny National Forest harbors some of the sweetest terrain in the state. Here, morning mist curls off deep-valleyed rivers like the Allegheny and the Clarion, thick moss and ferns underlie old-growth patches of white pine and hemlock, and autumn hardwoods contrast brilliantly with the evergreens. People have been tubing and canoeing on these rivers and hiking and camping in these woods for generations. Those who don’t require riverfront—which is getting scarcer and costlier—can usually find a wooded lot perfect for a family “camp” (Pennsylvanian for “cabin”) for $700 to $1,000 an acre.
RECENT LISTING: 1.5 acres bordering national forest, with an 1860s three-bedroom frame house, plus a fireplace and year-round stream, for $47,900. Timberwood Realty, 800-480-4373, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Grilling native trout on a glowing bed of campfire coals while learning to whittle (badly).
FORGET IT IF: You get nauseated plucking ticks off your dogs.

NORTH-CENTRAL ARKANSAS
BUSES FULL OF TREE-GAWKERS rumble through the Ozarks like clockwork: in springtime for the blooming dogwoods and redbuds, in autumn for the turning maples. A few retirees and assorted other downshifters have stuck around, thanks to the combination of low crime, low property taxes, and relatively low asking prices, all wrapped in a mild four-season climate.
RECENT LISTING: 180 scenic hardwood acres near the Buffalo River with pond and views of the Ozarks, $89,500. United Country/Roth Realty, 870-741-7557, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Perfecting your cannonball on the Buffalo, on a languid afternoon when the air smells like pine.
FORGET IT IF: You’re frightened of people who visit Branson, Missouri, on purpose.

DESERT

The pitchfork horizon of Arizona

UNLESS YOU SIMPLY covet a plot of earth to call your own and have zero thoughts of ever spending more than a night or two at a time there, your prime concern in casing out desert property should be—steady yourself—water. Specifically, how much there is, if any, and whether the county health department has declared it potable. You can survey for botanical clues to its presence: Cottonwoods, mesquite, and other phreatophytic species won’t grow without subsurface moisture. But assuming you’re too remote to tap a municipal pipeline, there’s no substitute for quizzing local well drillers to find out how deep they usually probe and what it will likely cost. If the seller won’t document the water supply, some buyers pay to have the well drilled before closing, with the option to decline if the drillers strike out. And to meet part or all of their energy needs, many aspiring desert rats, logically and admirably, try to harness the abundant free sunshine.

COCHISE COUNTY, ARIZONA
“THE BEST YEAR-ROUND CLIMATE IN ARIZONA” is the local brag (midnineties in summer, midthirties in winter). Altitude does the trick. Bisbee, a mining-turned-tourist burg 90 miles southeast of Tucson, and Sierra Vista, a hillier, oakier shopping hub, are both about a mile skyward, and peaks in the nearby Huachuca and Chiricahua Mountains exceed 9,000 feet. Hiking on BLM and Forest Service land and world-class birding along the San Pedro River corridor round out the boasts.
RECENT LISTING: A level 73-acre spread of undisturbed desert, with a mountain in your backyard and ocotillo, mesquite, and prickly pear in every direction, $88,614. Bisbee Realty Inc., 520-432-5439, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Jogging along the San Pedro, looking for javelinas, hummingbirds, and yellow-billed cuckoos.
FORGET IT IF: You thrive on long walks in the rain: Half the year’s precip falls during the July-August monsoon.
SAN JUAN COUNTY, UTAH
IT’S TRICKY COMING up with an outdoor sport you can’t pursue in southeastern Utah. Let’s seeÉthe surfing is lousy, and the dogsledding’s spotty at best. Oh, well. The near-infinite range of options available in Canyonlands National Park, Natural Bridges and Hovenweep National Monuments, the Colorado River, Lake Powell, and the Abajo Mountains will have to suffice. People arrive from other hemispheres to sample the local slickrock, rapids, sandstone routes, cross-country trails, and tent sites. Approximately 8 percent of San Juan County is privately owned, but the isolation—along with Moab, 40 miles to the north, hogging the spotlight—keeps demand from overwhelming supply.
RECENT LISTING: Twenty acres in Montezuma Canyon near Monticello, with peach orchards, well, house-ready solar setup, and—get this—several stabilized caves in the canyon walls, $210,000. Century 21 Red Rock Real Estate, 435-587-3166, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Grinding up to 9,000 feet in the Abajos and then riding a vertical mile of glorious downhill.
FORGET IT IF: You can’t live without Macy’s: Albuquerque, Denver, Phoenix, and Las Vegas are all at least six hours away.

HARNEY COUNTY, OREGON
“WHEN BURNS IS FILLED UP,” says a broker about Harney County’s metropolis of 3,000, “there’ll be no place else to go.” If you’re looking for the precise coordinates of the middle of nowhere, look no further (Burns is 290 miles southeast of Portland). But there’s a surprising abundance of Big Outdoors in this Big Empty: 9,733-foot Steens Mountain and its streams, canyons, and wildflowers; the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, whose vast, shallow lakes lure sandhill cranes, trumpeter swans, bald eagles, and thousands of pairs of binoculars; and such mammalian novelties as elk, pronghorn antelope, and mustangs.
RECENT LISTING: Southern-exposed hills on 318 acres, a mile from the refuge, $54,000. Jett Blackburn Real Estate Inc., 800-573-7206, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Hammock-bound, reading about how black-necked stilts nest here in summer, while eagles indicate it’s winter.
FORGET IT IF: You need a medical specialist and don’t like driving; your closest shot at one, in Bend, is at least two hours away.

INLAND WATERFRONT

Homeward found: Maine’s Mount Katahdin

SHOPPING FOR LAKESHORE OR RIVERBANK property is a bit like shopping for a spouse: Infatuation is swell, but before you commit you should picture the worst and make sure you can hack it. Don’t let the seductive vision of a moored rowboat bobbing at the dock blind you to potential problems, such as, for starters, rising water. Build on a hundred-year floodplain and you risk floating downstream on your coffee table some rainy day. States and counties often publish maps of floodplains, as does the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA’s are called Flood Insurance Rate Maps, or FIRMs). On the other hand, too little water can spoil the party. Check with locals to make sure the river you hope to paddle all summer doesn’t shrink to an ankle-deep trickle. Find out what’s going on upstream as well. Herbicide or pesticide residues from farms can taint waterways. And according to the EPA, logged areas can dump as much as 7,000 times the original amount of silt downstream. Finally, try to find out how your potential neighbors use the water. The howl of powerboats and personal watercraft, if they’re allowed, could wreck your Thoreauvian idyll.

UPPER PENINSULA, MICHIGAN
ALONG A 30-MILE SWATH of Lake Superior’s southern shore, 15 miles west of Marquette, Michigan, lies the Great Lakes’ best impersonation of Montana: dense stands of hardwood and conifer, inland lakes by the hundreds, the muscular Huron Mountains, and trout streams that reeled in Hemingway. Locals include black bears, deer, and reintroduced moose and timber wolves. Other locals—paddlers, mountain bikers, climbers, and nordic skiers—hardly know where to start in this scenic playground.
RECENT LISTING: Twenty-nine wooded acres on 141-acre Thomas Lake in the Hurons west of Marquette, minutes from Craig Lake State Park and the Moose Cafe in Michigamme, $305,000. Huey Real Estate, 800-733-4839, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Skiing through six inches of new snow on the same trail where you mountain-biked six weeks earlier.
FORGET IT IF: Winter is your least favorite season.
LAKE ROOSEVELT, WASHINGTON
PERIODIC WAVES OF URBAN REFUGEES—back-to-the-landers in VW buses in the sixties, earthquake-fleeing Californians a decade ago, retirees from Seattle (226 miles west) last week—haven’t much ruffled the tranquillity of Washington’s northeast corner. The “lake” is actually 130-some miles of dam-swollen Columbia River, flanked by the million-plus-acre Colville National Forest. Nearby, hundreds of miles of trails weave through the Selkirk and Kettle Ranges, home to pristine woods and quaint gold-rush towns.
RECENT LISTING: Piney two- to four-acre tracts with 200 feet of shore, $42,500 to $55,000. United Country/Four Seasons Realty, 509-685-9655, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Tracking black bears—at a polite distance—through a cathedral of old-growth fir.
FORGET IT IF: January’s first arctic blast leaves you convinced that a Carnival Cruise would be “really, really fun.”

PENOBSCOT AND PISCATAQUIS COUNTIES, MAINE
NORTH-CENTRAL MAINE HAS no shortage of allure: granite peaks, loon-haunted lakes, Penobscot and Kennebec whitewater, the Appalachian Trail’s northern homestretch, platoons of iconic moose. But this area, roughly 20 miles northwest of Bangor, is not exactly a well-kept secret. Timber companies, the state, and assorted land trusts own most of it, and new-money gazillionaires have snarfed up large tracts of what’s left (derisively dubbed “kingdom lots” by locals). But it’s still possible to find choice land. Since the state boasts 32,000 miles of running water, streamfront parcels are easier to locate. And if the word “pristine” isn’t an absolute prerequisite, partially logged acreage can be had on the cheap.
RECENT LISTING: More than 1,100 acres of just-thinned forest with three-fourths of a mile of Birch Stream’s bank, close to the University of Maine in Orono, $225,000. John Cochrane, 207-942-4941, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Flipping through Essays of E. B. White while icing both knees and a six-pack after bagging the summit of 5,268-foot Mount Katahdin.
FORGET IT IF: You consider blackflies public enemy No. 1.

PRAIRIE

The neighbors—and the view—in California’s Owens Valley

IT’S AN ADMIRABLE FANTASY: You drinking tea on the porch of a turn-of-the-century farmhouse surrounded by rolling acres of buffalo grass. Just beware the potential trouble that can come with living in farm or ranch country. Intrepid is the man, for instance, who homesteads downwind of a hog farm or a cattle feedlot. Stagnant water can sully the air, too. In states with “open range” laws, livestock can wander freely, and if you want them to stay off your sanctuary you have to pay for the fence. And, as Barry Chalofsky points out in his book The Home and Land Buyer’s Guide to the Environment, long-lasting residues of cropland pesticides and herbicides can invade adjacent land by way of surface runoff, tainted streams, and contaminated groundwater. If that seems probable, private labs can test soil or well water. Get a clear understanding of who your neighbors are before settling into your prairie dream.

OWENS VALLEY, CALIFORNIA
THE PITCH: Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia, as well as the alpine lakes, bristlecone-pine forests, ski trails, and primo granite climbing routes of the eastern Sierra and White Mountains, are all within a quarter-tank, in a valley of affable climate where folks still leave doors unlocked. The catch: Los Angeles, 270 miles to the southwest, has been gobbling up land (and water rights) here since the 1920s, and anyone seeking the proverbial foothills cabin on five acres and a creek has a Homeric search ahead. The fix: Snag a chunk of semidesolate ag land upvalley from Bishop, plant some Arizona cypress and pi-on, and call it a homestead. Also, memorize this phrase: “Lots of potential.”
RECENT LISTING: Five flat sagebrush acres 14 miles out of Bishop, bordered by BLM land, with a well and wide-angle views of the White Mountains, $79,000. High Sierra Realty, 760-873-6227, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Pulling an all-nighter with the telescope—taking advantage of the nonexistent light pollution—to watch the Perseid meteor shower every August.
FORGET IT IF: You need a job.
SOUTHERN BLACK HILLS, SOUTH DAKOTA
COMBINE BOUNDLESS GREAT PLAINS with evergreen Rocky Mountain outcroppings, 1.2 million acres of Black Hills National Forest, and such perennial visitor magnets as Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, and Wind Cave National Park and what do you get? Four million tourists, for starters, most of them in summer. Stick around after Labor Day, however, as increasing numbers of modemites are doing, and discover what locals have known for a while. The southern end of the Black Hills, around Hot Springs and mile-high Custer, enjoys a balmier, drier climate, averaging just 38 inches of snow a year. And the farther you look from the region’s population centers (Rapid City, Custer, Spearfish), the lower the prices for good-size acreage.
RECENT LISTING: Sixty secluded acres of pines and meadows, ten miles down a gravel road and walking distance from national forest, $75,000. Black Hills Land Company, 605-673-3167.
PICTURE YOURSELF: Investing in a pet buffalo.
FORGET IT IF: You still have nightmares about family vacations. This is the land of Flintstones Bedrock City, Reptile Gardens, and chuck-wagon cookouts.

CASCADE COUNTY, MONTANA
IN 1960, THE POPULATION OF GREAT FALLS, Cascade County’s seat, totaled 55,244. Forty years later it had, um, ballooned to 56,690. So much for overcrowding. In this time-warp cocktail of Old West and Midwest, Lewis and Clark and rodeo cowboys are local heroes, and winter wheat and the four-year drought are conversation staples. The plains give way to mountains and buttes here, a commingling of geography that encourages fishing and paddling on the Missouri, and hiking and biking in the nearby Little Belt and Highwood Mountains.
RECENT LISTING: Pheasant farm and preserve on 505 acres and a mile and a quarter of the Sun River west of Great Falls, with log house and two stocked ponds, $525,000—about the price of a two-bedroom fixer in Pasadena. Holiday Realty, 406-761-8630, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Paddling downstream on the Missouri, packing a dog-eared copy of Undaunted Courage.
FORGET IT IF: You seek New West glitz. Letterman owns a ranch nearby, but he’s not exactly known for throwing lavish celebrity clambakes.

MOUNTAIN

The Vista, near Weaverville, Trinity Alps, California

FEW RETREATS ARE MORE APPEALING than a cozy hideaway in the hills. But if you intend to build on mountainous terrain, consider that the very characteristics you find so captivating about it—the slopes that afford such gawk-inducing views—tend to snarl construction. Building houses on steep terrain takes longer and costs more, and structures can suffer from soil erosion and even mudslides. It’s wise to visit a mountain lot during a rainstorm to see firsthand how water drains. And even if you find a level homesite, it still must pass all the other commonsense tests. Will the soil allow for a septic tank? Is there southern exposure for crucial winter sunlight? Might shallow bedrock make it difficult and pricey to drill a well? If the area has been or is being mined, find out whether any hazardous abandoned mine shafts remain. If someone else owns mineral rights to the property, find out whether they intend to use them. Mountains also amplify the importance of access. Your remote hilltop hideaway may seem a lot less appealing if you have to negotiate a double-black-diamond driveway during a blizzard to reach it.

TRINITY ALPS, CALIFORNIA
LAND DOESN’T LANGUISH on the market in northern California’s Trinity and eastern Humboldt Counties. Reason one: bikeable back roads and fire trails, Wild and Scenic Rivers alternating tame flatwater with Class II to V chutes, 9,000-foot peaks overlooking one of the country’s largest vestiges of ancient forest, and the Pacific just an hour or so downhill. Reason two: Prices might shock a Dakotan, but the remoteness (it’s a four-and-a-half-hour drive southwest to San Francisco) keeps them palatable by California standards. A tip: Shop around for a real estate agent knowledgeable enough to steer you clear of logging, helicopter racket, and other nuisances.
RECENT LISTING: Four acres of meadows and old-growth Douglas fir on the Trinity River, with three-bedroom trailer, near organic farms and redwoods, $199,000. Doug Thron, 707-822-4870.
PICTURE YOURSELF: Sitting on your front stoop, munching pesticide-free watermelon from the farm down the road.
FORGET IT IF: You’d feel queasy having either militia wingnuts or cannabis farmers for neighbors.
CHAFFEE COUNTY, COLORADO
SIX OF EVERY SEVEN ACRES in Chaffee County, 75 miles west of Colorado Springs, is public land, and all that green ink on the map is both blessing and curse. It means unmolested scenery—the broad valley of the Arkansas River, lined by the imposing Collegiate Peaks (Mounts Harvard, Yale, and Princeton)—and year-round playtime (with paddle, skis, boots, or pedals). It also means a relative dearth of private land, which has helped spike prices. But you still get more charm per greenback here than in nearby Summit County—without the I-70 infestation of faux-chalet condos.
RECENT LISTING: Five acres shaded by tall ponderosas at the base of 14,269-foot Mount Antero, 20 minutes from Salida’s fetching Victorian downtown, $150,000. Colorado Backcountry Realty, 719-539-0188, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Soaking in the Mount Princeton Hot Springs at eyeball level with a rushing stream.
FORGET IT IF: You want rapids all to yourself: The Arkansas draws more than 300,000 paddlers a year.

HIGHLAND COUNTY, VIRGINIA
RESIDENTS OF “VIRGINIA’S SWITZERLAND”—all 2,536 of them—claim their county has the highest mean elevation east of the Mississippi, and no one seems to be arguing. A four-hour drive southwest from Washington, D.C., the lush hardwood ridges of the nearby Appalachian Mountains top out above 4,000 feet. But it’s what surrounds the peaks that often seals the deal: sheep farms hemmed by miles of split-rail fence, trout-stuffed rivers, even a syrupy spring Maple Festival. Saunter one county to the south and you’ll find the hot springs where Jefferson himself dipped.
RECENT LISTING: Sixty-five wooded acres on Jack Mountain with poetic views, a Disneyesque cast of critters, and a stream, $136,500. United County/Shamrock & Stephenson Realty Inc., 540-468-3370; .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Devising a vacuum-tube system to tap your own maples for pancake breakfasts on the deck.
FORGET IT IF: You think the Civil War is no longer controversial.

COAST

A slice of life in Port Orford, Oregon

West Coast blist: The Pacific Ocean rolling out from Oregon’s Port Orford

FIRST, THE OBVIOUS: If you want to see blue, you gotta cough up some green. With rare exceptions, oceanfront (and ocean-view) property commands the highest per-acre asking prices of any real estate in the country. Once you get past that, you can heed some earthier considerations. If a property lies right on the water, see it at its extremes of high and low tide to find out how the shoreline fluctuates. Does the receding tide leave a mudflat where you envisioned building a dock? Does high tide lap at the margins of the only level building site? Find out how far the water might reach during a storm surge or a hurricane. Study up on zoning and building codes, too, which are often more restrictive on the coast. If you fall in love with a property’s ocean view, anticipate problems that could tarnish it. Does anyone have rights to remove the trees in the foreground? Is there a chance someone could build on the land between you and the water, high enough to block your vista entirely? Rare is the coastal town that hasn’t seen nasty lawsuits filed over issues like these.

PORT ORFORD, OREGON
OREGON’S BREATHTAKING STRING of coastal state parks and its strict land-use laws—a byzantine tangle of urban-growth boundaries, grid tests, and other conundrums—keep property values high. Which means that the price of admission, especially within sight of the Pacific, ain’t cheap. But if you don’t require urban amenities (like single-malt-and-cigar bars), Port Orford, 170 miles southwest of Eugene, offers tempting substitutes at reasonable-for-Oregon rates: pristine beaches and forests, clean-running rivers like the Elk, Sixes, and Rogue, and enough wind to keep every last boardsailor and kitesurfer stoked.
RECENT LISTING: Fifty-four blufftop and monastically private acres of Douglas fir and myrtle overlooking Humbug Mountain State Park, with a rock-fireplace-bedecked log cabin and a view of the Pacific, $399,000. Sixes River Land Company, 888-291-8275, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Beachcombing for driftwood and agates while waiting for the sunset at Cape Blanco.
FORGET IT IF: You think one grocery store, one movie theater, and zero stop signs sounds like a judicial sentence.
TAYLOR AND DIXIE COUNTIES, FLORIDA
OUTSIDE OF A SMALL SUBCULTURE of hook-and-bullet Southerners, Florida’s Big Bend country, 90 miles southeast of Tallahassee, remains an enigma on the map. Coastal towns are few and scattered, with only sporadic road access to the Gulf of Mexico (better known here as “the Guff”). It’s not a beachy stretch. Instead, tidal creeks, salt marshes, and seagrass beds support bountiful marine life; Taylor is one of the few Florida counties that still allow scalloping. Cool and crystalline spring-fed rivers invite tubing and canoeing nearby. Drowsy fishing towns like Steinhatchee attract those who like their sunsets dazzling and their seafood and ambience Southern-fried.
RECENT LISTING: 160 acres, including two barrier islands at the mouth of the Suwannee River, with mature oaks and two freshwater ponds, $350,000. United Country/Sawgrass Realty, 352-498-0119, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Humming old Jimmy Buffett tunes through your snorkel to the manatees in 72-degree water.
FORGET IT IF: You’re driven. Ambition comes here to die.

PRINCE OF WALES ISLAND, ALASKA
ON PRICE OF WALES, your natural grandeur comes with a healthy dollop of extractive-industry detritus. But the periodic clear-cuts on this third-largest U.S. island—roughly 135 miles by 40 at the widest—give way to the steep peaks of the Klawock Hills towering above glacier-gouged valleys, streams, bays, and waterfalls. Coastal temperate rainforest looms over a limestone underworld of caverns, sinkholes, and subterranean streams. Black bears, moose, and wolves overlap with bald eagles and wild salmon. And whatever you think of loggers, their thousand-plus miles of gravel roads make it much easier to get around.
RECENT LISTING: Nearly four acres with 350 feet of shoreline, sporting a small A-frame and a hand-built cedar cabin, with four-wheel-drive-only access, $185,000. Prince of Wales Island Realty, 907-826-2927, .
PICTURE YOURSELF: Venturing out in your sea kayak to hang with the neighbors—porpoises, sea otters, sea lions, and whales.
FORGET IT IF: Ten feet of windblown rainfall a year sounds like…a bit much.

Going International

No Irish luck required: the green coast of the Emerald Isle

There are hundreds of reasons why Americans become temporary expatriates: wanderlust, job transfers, and prior convictions, to name a few. But the larger, better reason, we think, is to settle into and harmonize with a different culture and landscape, maybe learn a new language, grab a fresh perspective on life.

If you’re with us on this, consider starting your search on International Living’s Web site () or on EscapeArtist.com (); both offer real estate leads worldwide. After you zero in on a locale, “Get title insurance,” says Lief Simon, a real estate consultant with International Living. “It’s cheap peace of mind.” More tips? “The asking price in most countries is just that: asking price. There is no way to legitimately and easily, except by hearsay, find out what the person next to you paid. So don’t be afraid to offer as little as 50 percent.”
Here are a few prime overseas precincts where, at the moment, the Yankee dollar goes long.

NEW ZEALAND: This perennial sweetheart of globetrotters’ “Favorite Destination” polls has endured a double financial whammy: Its currency and the underpinning of its economy (timber, wool, mutton) have sunk like anchors. This means that prime slices of its Middle Earth landscapes—ranging from tropical bay islands and aquamarine glacial rivers to snowcapped Southern Alps and mock-Irish farmlands—often come on the block at nostalgic prices. One recent example: a prim two-bedroom cottage on Great Barrier Island, near Auckland, with solar panels, diesel and wind generators, and panoramic views of Hauraki Gulf, just minutes from the beach, all for a modest $98,000.

IRELAND: Expect no bargains in and around Dublin, but in the more remote regions—County Sligo, in the less-developed western part of the country, and County Roscommon in the northwest—you can still find old stone farm cottages (in need of TLC) on three-acre parcels for less than $50,000. Both areas boast rolling hills, glacial valleys, deep glens, rushing trout-filled rivers, and enough shades of green to exhaust your supply of adjectives in no time. Bonus: Irish residential land incurs no property tax.

OUT ISLANDS OF THE BAHAMAS: Turquoise bathwater coves, sugar beaches kissed by trade winds, kaleidoscopic reef fish, and pastel villages are a given on these 700-odd outposts, sprinkled over 100,000 square miles of the Atlantic and a mere hour-long flight from Fort Lauderdale. Now factor in an English-speaking population and beach frontage for perhaps a tenth of the going rate in Nassau or Freeport. On Cat Island or Long Island, half-acre ocean-view tracts sometimes list for $50,000. Two provisos: Transfer taxes and fees can add as much as 15 percent to land prices, and the cost of living is, to put it politely, Caribbean.

FRANCE: The upshot of rural France’s youth migrating to cities is a sinking real estate market in the countryside, and such tantalizing recent offerings as these: a ramshackle 1700s stone two-bedroom on nearly an acre in the Charente region of southwestern France, with exposed beams, fireplace, and barn, for $47,000; four-bedrooms of the same ilk in the Auvergne, in the Massif Central (densely wooded, braided by rivers, and home to the country’s largest natural park), in the $60,000 range; and a stone-and-slate one-bedroom cottage with garden in Brittany, ten minutes from the beach and two hours from Paris, for $20,000.

Let’s get real estate: the nitty-gritty of buying smart

Dreaming about your off-the-grid oasis is one thing. Buying it—and building on it—is another. Add a road, a well, utilities, surveys, and permits and your purchase price could double. Then there’s the rancher with grazing rights to your land. And the noxious garbage dump right where you wanted the porch. Suddenly that steal ain’t so real. So we asked a handful of rural real estate experts for tips on how to avoid such pitfalls.

MAKING A DECISION
Begin your browsing on the Net. United Country Real Estate () and the monthly Rural Property Bulletin (www.rural property.net) offer nationwide listings of potential buys.
Visit your parcel for two or more days. “First-time buyers often purchase land that’s too isolated and end up going nuts,” says B. K. Reno, a real estate specialist in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
If your acreage is in a planned development, check the zoning laws. They usually prohibit a neighbor from turning his land into a feedlot, but beware of square-foot minimums for any shelter you might build.
If you decide on a parcel with zero development, factor in the cost of a road—$10,000 to $25,000, depending on grade, terrain, and length.
TAPPING WATER
Check with the local water board for your rights to any water running through, on (as in a pond or lake), or under the land you’re eyeing. In some states, water rights are sold separately from the property, and in arid regions of the West the water rights could be more valuable than the land itself. If you need to drill a well, budget accordingly: It could cost as much as $20,000.
For waterfront or wetlands homesites, you may need a permit from a state environmental agency before you can start clearing out the land.

LANDING YOUR LOAN
Tom Filchner, a land agent in Gunnison County, Colorado, recommends financing through a local bank. “They’re familiar with area zoning laws, building codes, and the overall lay of the land.” Translation: a better interest rate.
A land loan usually requires a down payment of 20 percent of the purchase price. But if you only plan to put up a yurt, expect to hand over as much as a 50 percent down payment and to pay a higher interest rate.
Banks generally want utilities running into the property—or up to the property line—to improve its resale value, says Ashley Burt, president of The Crested Butte Bank in Colorado. Without utilities in place, you may pay a higher interest rate or qualify only for a smaller loan.

BEFORE SIGNING ANYTHING
Ask the seller for a 60-day closing period to conduct due diligence on the title and the actual property, particularly if you live out of town. “Negotiate for a long enough period of time that you won’t be rushed,” say Reno.
“Inspect the property when you can see the ground,” says Sam Elder, a real estate broker in Marquette, Michigan. Lush foliage in the summer and snow cover in the winter can hide a multitude of sins, such as public-access jeep tracks or a granite boulder right where you want your home.
Through the county, check the deeded access or grazing rights for you and third parties. The county-held survey documents aren’t always accurate, so pay to have a property boundary survey done by a private surveyor ($500 and up, depending on lot size).
If your property abuts public land—which can increase value but doesn’t necessarily spare it from development or resource extraction—check with the local National Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, or state-parks office to see if there are any plans to sell or use it.
Pay a private contractor for an environmental study of the property ($1,500 to $5,000) to determine whether the land covers an illegal dump or a leaking septic tank. You may be stuck with the bill to clean it up if you don’t find it before the land is yours.
Talk to prospective neighbors to suss out any potential conflicts you could have with them, like their Sunday morning target practice.