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My Top 5 Adventures in 2009, Mountain Biking the Kingdom Trails, Vermont

Last Memorial Day, I returned to a network of mountain biking trails I first wrote about in 1996 for Men’s Journal magazine. Back then, two or three avid fat wheelers were connecting farmland and cutting a web of trails through the woods of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The rolling countryside dotted with mountains, rivers, meadows, forest, and dilapidated barns is one of the most majestic sites in the Northeast, especially behind Darling Hill Road. So I wasn’t surprised to see cars from as far away as Connecticut and Ontario sampling the trails. And they were sweet, rolling up and down the hillside under the towering pines and atop ridges with vistas of the whole valley. What surprised me even more than the popularity of the mountain biking was how quickly my 13-year old son Jake took to the sport, grinding up and sweeping down the challenging terrain. He kicked my ass and I was happy to write about the experience for The Boston Globe.
 

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Top 5 Dream Days of 2018, Sailing to Anegada in the BVIs

My barometer for an authentic travel experience is one that plants you squarely in the present where your mind can’t drift to other thoughts and worries. This was certainly the case aboard the 41-foot Island Karma last February when we made the crossing from Virgin Gorda to the remote British Virgin Island of Anegada. Sailing at a speed over 8 knots, the boat was on its side, heeling over in the blustery tradewinds. But under the competent helm of my friend, Josh, and the watchful eye of our Captain, "Boss," I never panicked. With the occasional splash aboard to keep me alert and very much alive, I was relishing the adventure at hand. After 2 hours, we finally reached this sliver of land lined by sparkling white beaches and surrounded by the most spectacular turquoise waters I’ve seen since diving in French Polynesia. We pulled up to a mooring, motored the dinghy to land, and caught an open-air taxi to dreamy Cow Wreck Beach, passing rambling goats and cows along the way. We arrived at a long stretch of desolate sand and a small beachfront bar, planted our bums in Adirondack chairs, took out our books, and started to read. Ahh, sun, sand, sea, sky, serenity. 

 
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New Holland America Cruise from Boston to Greenland in 2021

Holland America just announced a new cruise departing from Boston to Greenland the summer of 2021. Three 17-day Greenland, Newfoundland & New England Discovery cruises aboard the Rotterdam will depart in July and August and sail roundtrip from Boston to the remote shoreline of Greenland and Newfoundland. Ports include Paamuit, Qaqortoq and Nanortalik, Greenland; St. John’s, Red Bay, St. Anthony and Corner Brook, Newfoundland; Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia; Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; and Bar Harbor, Maine. If you book a suite on any of the 2021 Canada and New England itineraries by February 28, 2020, they’ll throw in free drinks, free dining package, and free gratuities. Please let ActiveTravels know and we’ll check availability and pricing. 

 
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An Ideal Maine Island Getaway, the Inn at Diamond Cove

When the owners of the Portland Harbor Hotel decided to create a new property from the former barracks of circa-1896 Fort McKinley, I was intrigued enough to include it in a round-up for Yankee Magazine on the latest New England resorts to debut. Unfortunately, the Inn at Diamond Cove was already closed for the season when I wrote the article. I finally paid a visit to the property over the weekend and came away impressed. As soon as you board the Casco Bay Ferry in Portland and start cruising to the islands, the stress of the mainland is washed away by the salty sea breeze. Thirty minutes later, you arrive at Great Diamond Island and are whisked away to the hotel past a vast village green that was once the military parade. 
 
We dropped off our bags in the spacious room and began to explore the island. Children were biking and skateboarding on the paved trails to an indoor basketball court, bowling alley, tennis courts, and outdoor pool. We strolled through the forest to find an exquisite beach where sea glass and its soft edges could be spotted all over the sand. A lone kayaker and whole parade route of ducks, some who looked like they were just hatched, drifted by as we skipped rocks. This is just one of the five beaches on island available to hotel guests. We also wandered past blooming lilacs and sweet honeysuckle lining the summer estates to see Sunset Point on the western shores of the island. When we returned back to the hotel, we dined on tasty blackened bluefish paired with lobster hash. 
 
With full kitchens in each room, families could easily spend a week in summer here. Portland Paddle leads guided sea kayaking and SUP jaunts, a tennis pro is on staff for round robin tournaments, and a yoga instructor teaches both outdoors and indoors. This is the perfect place to unwind and relax far from the crowds. 
 
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1793 Blogs and Counting

I’ve been blogging since 2009, which adds up to quite a lot of content over the years. A good friend recently told me to emphasize the Advanced Search function on the blog page. Simply type in the locale you want to visit and up pops the blogs I’ve written about that destination. For example, I typed in "Mississippi" in the Advanced Search line and again on the second page Keyword line and 19 blogs I wrote on the state appeared. This includes one of my favorite stops, "Staying at the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale, Mississippi" on March 28, 2011. Before you go on your next trip with ActiveTravels, be sure to use the blog as an added resource. Much of the content, like the Shack Up Inn, is still topical. 

 
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Buy An ActiveTravels Membership and Support Heifer International

For our holiday promotion this year, we’re partnering with Heifer International. With your help, we hope to give the gift of a water buffalo to a deserving community. Why a water buffalo, you ask? Water buffalos provide rich milk with lots of protein and nutrients, and they help farmers to plant four times as many crops, till the fields, and provide necessary fertilizer. Join ActiveTravels or purchase an annual membership for a friend or member of the family and $10 will go towards the purchase of a water buffalo. If we get 25 new memberships during the months of November and December, our goal will be met and we can provide sustenance for a needy community. Already, we have 4 new memberships in the past 2 weeks. Thank you!
 
Still not convinced you need a travel agent in this day and age. Here are some thoughts to consider:
 
Overcome Analysis Paralysis—A recent study said that the average person spends 29 hours researching his next vacation. Spend as much time on the web as your heart desires, but realize that as a member of ActiveTravels, you can bounce ideas off a travel writer that’s been to over 80 countries. You’ll get unbiased travel advice from someone who’s been to that exact location. 
 
Better Rooms—In an upcoming article I wrote for the Boston Globe, I discuss how hotels treat third-party bookings from Priceline, Travelocity, Hotels.com, as their least important priority. You’re given the worst room in the house because there’s no sense of loyalty with these sites. The travel business is all about relationships. Aligned with Virtuoso, we have relationships with hotel GMs around the globe and we call them personally when we book one of our clients.
 
Customer Service—Flight cancelled? Lost luggage? Have to reschedule a flight? Good luck dealing with Orbitz and Expedia. If you’ve gone through this recently, you know the pain. A travel agent makes those calls for you and has contacts at the airlines the public does not have. 
 
Contacts Around the Globe—Want to travel independently to India, Patagonia, or Thailand? Have fun researching that journey on the web. It’s an exhausting task. We work with excellent ground operators in Delhi, Buenos Aires, and Bangkok who know their country intimately and can help with all the logistics. 
 
Annual membership to ActiveTravels is $60 per year, less than dinner for two at a halfway decent restaurant. We guarantee you’ll get your money’s worth! 
 
 
 
 
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Travel to the UK with Lisa Fagin Davis and the Medieval Academy of America

Excited to announce that our good friend and client (we designed an itinerary for her and her husband to visit their daughter in Australia), Lisa Fagin Davis, is leading a trip to the UK in October. Lisa is the Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America and we’ve seen firsthand her passion for history, including a guided tour of an exhibition she co-curated in Boston in 2016, "Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections." Participants in this October 23-28 trip will visit two rare exhibitions: "Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms" at the British Library and "Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth" at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, with curatorial introductions and expert guides in addition to Lisa. These exhibitions overlap for only one week, making this trip a unique opportunity to see them together. 

According to Lisa, the real star of the British Museum show is the Codex Amiatinus, the oldest known complete Latin Bible. It was written in England around the year 716 (that’s 1300 years ago, for those keeping score) and left England on a journey to Rome shortly after its completion, where it was to be laid at the shrine of St. Peter in Rome, a gift to Pope Gregory II from Abbot Ceolfrith of Wearmouth-Jarrow. The Abbot died enroute, but the monks who were with him finished the journey to Rome. Eventually, the manuscript made its way to the Abbey of San Salvatore in Amiata (in Tuscany), which is how it got its nickname of Amiatinus. By the eighteenth century, it had landed at the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence, where it has been ever since. But it is going back to England for the exhibition!
 
"My friends at the British Library tell me that this loan was the result of years of secret negotiations. In fact, one staffer recently told me that only a few people in the library even knew the negotiations were ongoing. It was all top secret until the deal was done," says Lisa. Read the full story of the manuscript here. 
 
The Bodleian exhibit will look at how Tolkien’s work in the field of Old English and medieval Scandinavian epic literature shaped Middle Earth, showing his correspondence, drafts, sketches. "For Tolkien geeks, it’s going to be pretty amazing," says Lisa, adding that "Tolkien wrote one of the first seminal studies of Beowulf, a classic article that students of Old English still read today, so it will be great to see the Beowulf manuscript one day and see its influence on Tolkien the next!" Price for the land package is $2580, including 4 nights lodging, most meals, guides, and tickets to all events. 
 

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