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Support the Active Community Transportation Act of 2010

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I like to write about rail trails across North America. Discarded rail lines converted into biking and jogging routes are not only a great way to spend a morning or afternoon, but add necessary commerce and a sense of pride to small, often rural communities across the country. That’s why I’m happy to support the Active Community Transportation Act of 2010 introduced by Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. The Act would create a $2 billion program over five years to help hundreds of towns across the country improve their trails. Please encourage your representative to co-sponsor this significant legislation. 
 

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Kiteboarding the Madeleine Islands

In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the dozen or so Madeleine Islands are unlike any other destination in Quebec—green hillsides, long stretches of beach, red cliffs, and the brightly painted houses of its inhabitants. Once there, you can explore the islands by horseback or bike, try deep-sea fishing, scuba diving, sea kayaking, or the latest craze, kiteboarding. Home of the Kiteboarding World Cup in 2006, the Madeleine’s strong, prevailing winds are ideally suited to a sport that uses a kite to propel you along the water. Give it a go at the first kiteboarding school in Canada, Aerosport, with more than 10 years of experience under their belt. 
 

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Harbour Island, the Best of the Bahamas

With more than 700 islands (20 of them inhabited) scattered from Florida’s doorstep to the edge of the Caribbean, the balmy Bahamas offers every type of warm-weather lifestyle imaginable. For some, the Bahamas is an afternoon’s port of call in Nassau and Freeport. Others are lured by the massive Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island, where the beach life includes large pools, water slides, and a walk-though aquarium. Yet, there’s another side of the Bahamas called the Out Islands that have yet to be discovered. My favorite is Harbour Island, a three-mile-long, half-mile-wide speck off the coast of Eleuthera. With 18th-century clapboard houses edged with picket fences, this tiny island looks as if someone shrank Nantucket and plopped it down in the tropics. Cars are all but forbidden, replaced by golf carts.  Aptly named Pink Sands Beach runs the length of the island, speckled with the perfect blush of flamingo pink. Kids can ride horseback along the shores or don mask and snorkel to go eyeball-to-eyeball with the fishies. Stay at the Coral Sands Hotel, smack dab in the middle of that pink beach.  

 
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Driving New Brunswick’s Acadian Coast—Good Eating in Caraquet

Continuing north from the Acadian Peninsula, the town of Caraquet is best known as the home of Festival acadien de Caraquet, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary this August. The two-week event, one of the most popular festivals in the Atlantic provinces pays tribute to the vibrant Acadian culture through music, cabaret, poetry, and wild parades. Yet, there’s another event happening here the rest of the year that food lovers in particular will cherish. Thanks to chef Karen Mersereau, Caraquet has become a hotbed of gastronomy. 
 
Mersereau was a food marketing rep in Toronto when she met Gerard Paulin, the third-generation hotelier of Hotel Paulin, a Victorian-era gem perched on a hill above the water of Caraquet Bay. A dozen years later, the couple are parents of a boy, Jules, and Karen is firmly entrenched at the helm of the hotel’s kitchen. She has wisely aligned herself with the top food harvesters in the region. 
 
The forests surrounding Caraquet are ripe with morels, chanterelles, oyster mushrooms, and other goodies like the foot of the cattail. Jean Patenaude made a name for himself scouring the countryside for edibles, bringing home laundry baskets full of wild mushrooms on ideal days in summer. Out on the water, Gaetan Dugas’ Caraquet Bay oysters are a prized commodity in high demand from chefs around North America. Especially the petites, small oysters that are both succulent and briny. Dugas’ ancestors include a pirate who commandeered a ship against the British in the 1750s, but it’s his father who taught him how to oyster farm and his grandfather who taught him the traditional ways of the local Mi’kmaq people. 
 
Mersereau takes advantage of both these men’s expertise to create a memorable wild mushroom oyster bisque. To ensure that every spoonful is chockful of meat, she throws in the native palourdes clam, similar to a quahaug. The bevy of local supplies would make most chefs weep with joy. Snow crabs, tuna, Atlantic salmon, shrimp, lobster, and halibut right off the boat, goat cheese and spring-fed lamb found in nearby farms, and blueberries and cloudberries grow wild along the coast, perfect for making a sublime pie. At Hotel Paulin, the locavore movement has reached its crescendo.
 
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Kicking Back in Aruba

If you dream of a Caribbean getaway with blinding white sands and aquamarine waters, a destination that has year-round temps in the mid to upper 80s, less than 15 inches of rain a year, a steady breeze, and absolutely no threat of hurricane, then it’s hard to top the Dutch island of Aruba. Only 16 miles long and 7 miles wide, this speck of land, just off the South American coast remains a popular escape year after year simply because you’re guaranteed a week or two of a warm, therapeutic climate. It doesn’t matter that the interior is mostly arid desert, not nearly as lush as other Caribbean isles like Jamaica or St. Lucia, because travelers come here primarily for that glorious 7-mile stretch of beach. To find out about activities, restaurants, and hotels in Aruba, please check out my latest story for Global Traveler. 
 
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Acadia National Park Week: Sailing Out of Northeast Harbor

If you truly want to feel like a local on Mount Desert Island, take a day sail on a Friendship Sloop from Northeast or Southwest Harbor. Sail Acadia offers the opportunity to take a 3-hour guided sail on three Friendship Sloops, vessels that were used during the late 1800s to fish for lobsters along the Frenchman Bay shoreline. We sailed on the Helen Brooks, a replica designed with sailing in mind. Under the skilled guidance of Ryan at the wheel and his sidekick Savannah, we motored past the estates lining the Northeast Harbor shores and a seal that popped his head out of the water. Near the lighthouse perched atop Bear Island, Jeff and I helped hoist the sails. Winds were strong. In fact, there was a small craft advisory in effect, so Ryan had already reefed the mainsail and we chose to use only the staysail instead of the stronger jib. Soon we were gliding at a good 5-knot clip past Great Cranberry Island and the many lobstermen picking up their traps. 

With a 6-foot keel, these sailboats can weather the strong gusts and fog often found along the Maine coast. Edged with spruce wood, the Helen Brooks is also a stylish ride. Near the beach at Manset, we spotted two porpoises gracefully arching their backs in and out of the choppy water. Then we sailed past Southwest Harbor into Somes Sound, Acadia Mountain to the left and Norumbega Mountain to the right, standing tall as gatekeepers to this long inlet. The mix of mountains, offshore islands, and granite-lined shoreline could easily entice the most jaded sailor to buy his own sloop and sail these legendary cruising grounds on a daily basis. Far too quickly, we were back on the docks of Northeast Harbor. Cost of the sail is $75 per person or you can rent the entire vessel for $375. 
 
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Spending the Week with Austin Adventures in Colorado

During his 40-plus years in the travel industry, Dan Austin has reaped accolades like “World’s Best Tour Operator for Families” by Travel & Leisure. We can vouch firsthand for Dan’s exceptional product, having taken the kids to the Canadian Rockies on one of his guided multi-sport adventures. Each day, we sampled a different activity including whitewater rafting, hiking, biking, and rock climbing. It was one of our most memorable trips as a family and it led to this story in The Boston Globe. Yes, that’s my son, Jake, falling off the raft in the photo! 

 
This week, I have the good fortune to cross paths with Dan again as he designs a new family adventure in Colorado with his dynamic daughter Kasey, recently voted “Outside Magazine’s Top Family Guide.” We’ll visit one of the most stunning rick formations in the West, Garden of the Gods, then spend the night at Cloud Camp, sitting at a cool 9,300 feet overlooking the entirety of Colorado Springs. The next day we hike 5.5 mile through the aspen and pine-covered hills of Pike National Forest to Emerald Valley Ranch, where we saddle up and go for a ride. We wake up the next morning and head to Seven Falls, a majestic series of waterfalls flowing through a 1,400-foot-wall box canyon, where we harness up and go on a zip line adventure. Last but certainly not least, we arrive at one of the classic resorts in Colorado, The Broadmoor, for dinner. 
   
I’m hoping to persuade Dan and Kasey to design a family trip exclusively for ActiveTravels members, preferably in his home state of Montana to visit Glacier National Park and a ranch outside of Missoula. So be on the lookout in early January, when we debut our first batch of custom-designed trips. I’ll be back next week with a more detailed account of our trip and some of the highlights. 
 

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