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A Wonderful Week at The Basin Harbor Club

To celebrate my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday, my wife’s family headed to the Basin Harbor Club last week. And what a spectacular week it was! 127 years after Ardelia Beach started taking in summer boarders at her 225-acre working farm on the shores of Lake Champlain, the club’s fourth-generation hosts, siblings Bob and Pennie Beach, are proving that a family business can prosper over time. It helps that they have one of the premier locales on the lake, 740 acres overlooking one of the narrowest parts of Champlain. We did it all—golf, tennis, sail, sea kayak, stand-up paddleboard, swim to the trampoline, and my favorite activity of all, biking. Basin Harbor Club is based in Addison Valley, one of the most fertile parts of the state, where around every bend is a dairy farm, rolled hay, a carpet of emerald green, views of the lake, and the Adirondack and Green Mountains forming a ridge of peaks on either side of you. 

 
Basin Harbor Club is perfect for multi-generation family reunions, because everyone can do what they want during the day and meet for dinner that evening. The food was surprisingly good for a property that offers all-inclusive rates. A highlight was the lobster clambake on the shores of the lake while the sun was setting. Magical! The following day, we danced to a live band playing Nat King Cole favorites as we celebrated my 16th birthday (at least that’s what it said in the daily newsletter). Not surprisingly, many families book the same cottage for the same week the following year before they leave. No doubt, we’ll be joining them. 
 

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Mashpi Lodge to Debut in Andean Rainforest in April 2012

Looking to combine that trip to the Galapagos with an immersion into the Ecuadorean rainforest? A 2 ½-hour drive northwest of Quito will bring you to the slopes of the Andes and a new upscale green resort called Mashpi Lodge, ready to be unveiled in April. Smack dab in the middle of the 3,000-acre Mashpi Rainforest Biodiversity Reserve, you’ll leave each morning to go on guided hikes to secret waterfalls through a rainforest overflowing with ferns, bromeliads, and hundreds of orchids. A mind-boggling 500 species of birds inhabit the forest, including hummingbirds and those multi-hued toucans. Also expect to see monkeys, the pig-like peccaries, even pumas, especially aboard their aerial tram that glides above the rainfortest canopy. Back at the lodge, you can refresh yourself in a Jacuzzi or opt for a massage. Many of the herbs found in the meals are indigenous to the local rainforest. The lodge is owned by South American travel company, Metropolitan Touring, who also just opened a 31-bedroom boutique hotel, Casa Gangotena, in a restored mansion overlooking Plaza San Francisco in Quito. 
 
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Montreal Knows How to Party, Even in the Heart of Winter

Last winter, Montreal unveiled the continent’s first Snow Village at Parc Jean-Drapeau. This was no miniature dollhouse or a series of ice sculptures. No. The Snow Village included a 30-room ice hotel, an outdoor spa, ice bar, ice restaurant, ice chapel for marriages, a maze, slides, and much more. The show’s promoters first encountered the Snow Village concept in Finland and wanted to recreate the idea in North America. Entering its second season, Snow Village Canada will feature a New York theme in 2013, so expect to see the Empire State Building carved out of ice. If you visit in January, you’ll have the additional bonus of checking out Igloofest, a winter outdoor electronic dance celebration drawing up to 10,000 people a night over 3 weekends. 

 
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Canada Week: Walk in the Footsteps of Canada’s Group of Seven Artists

Enter Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario and you can’t help be mesmerized by Canada’s source of artistic pride, the Group of Seven. These renowned landscape painters first exhibited together in 1920 at this same museum. Peering at the impressive mountains, lakes, and sky, I’ve often thought to myself that I’d love be at these exact spots in person. Over the years, some of my favorite stories have been following in the footsteps of artists, like visiting Winslow Homer’s Prouts Neck, Maine, or Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George. Now I’m hoping to get the chance to visit the landscape that inspired several of these Canadian greats, specifically A. Y. Jackson and Franklin Carmichael who used northeastern Ontario as their backdrop. First stop is Sudbury, where I’ll see many more works by these artists at the Art Gallery of Sudbury, and my first scenic overlook, the A. Y. Jackson Lookout outside of town. The highlight is Killarney Provincial Park where I’ll be hiking and paddling smack dab in the middle of a Carmichael canvas, ringed by the La Cloche Mountains. I’ll continue along the Georgian Bay coastal route, with a must-stop at Manitoulin Island before returning to Sudbury. 

 
Franklin Carmichael
Light and Shadow, 1937
Courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario 
 
 
 
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Ontario Lakes Week: Final Stop, Killarney Mountain Lodge, Killarney Provincial Park

After spending 3 days on an island in a remote Ontario lake with very few people, it was an adjustment to get back to civilization. This was clearly evident when we arrived at Killarney Mountain Lodge, a busy Georgian Bay summer outpost, especially during the 3-day August Holiday Ontario celebrates. The front desk seemed ill-equipped to handle the many demands of the multi-generational families staying here and gave us bracelets to wear and a stack of cards to hand out every meal (neither were necessary during the stay). It felt far too touristy at the time. But I have to say that after spending 2 nights here, the place really grew on us and I’m glad Amy added it to the itinerary. I really enjoyed the food, especially the blueberry pancakes with regional maple syrup each morning, and the waitstaff were far superior to the front desk. I loved having our cocktail hour behind a beautiful new building they designed, made from massive logs. The patio overlooked a scenic inlet to Georgian Bay and we could spot otters gathering reeds from the water. From the resort, you can take an easy walk over a bridge to the town of Killarney, which will be commemorating its bicentennial in 2020. For lunch, we stopped at Herbert Fisheries for its award-winning fish and chips, made from local whitefish. We also took a sunset sail our last night into the many coves and anchorages in this section of the immense Georgian Bay.

The highlight of our time here were the two walks we took in Killarney Provincial Park. We started in the morning on the Granite Ridge Trail, a short climb that rewarded us with vistas of the water and the surrounding hillside. Near the top, we stopped to pick sweet wild blueberries. The Chikanishing Trail was dreamy, along the rocky shoreline to inlets and pools of the water on the bay. We slid from the rocks into the coolest water of our trip, then lied down in the sun on a perfect slab of rock under a cloudless sky. It would be our last dip of the vacation.
 
 
I want to thank Amy for designing a fantastic 8-day itinerary to the Ontario Cabin Country, visiting Algonquin and Killarney Provincial Parks and Lake Temagami. If you would like a similar rejuvenating jaunt in the region, please contact ActiveTravels and we’ll help with all the planning. 
 
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Sea Kayak with Nat Hab Adventures in Greenland, Antarctica, and the Galapagos

When I was working as a columnist for National Geographic Adventure and researching my first book, Outside Magazine’s Adventure Guide to New England, I would often go on multi-day sea kayaking trips along the Maine coast or around Prince Edward Island. The trend of long distance sea kayaking was becoming popular in the late 90s thanks in large part to one man, Olaf Malver, who was the director of development for Mountain Travel Sobek. While Richard Bangs put the sport of whitewater rafting virgin rivers on the map, Malver explored the world within the cozy confines of a sea kayak. 

I had the good fortune to catch up with Malver over dinner last week in Boston, where he was introducing the wine he produces in the Republic of Georgia to distributors (we’ll talk more about Georgia tomorrow). Olaf mentioned to me that 80% of adventure travelers only visit 20% of the world, leaving behind such gems as the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific or eastern Greenland, one of the most breathtaking landscapes he has ever witnessed. Now working with Natural Habitat as Chief Exploratory Officer, Olaf brings groups of passionate travelers to remote Greenland each summer. He also organizes trips to the Galapagos Islands, where he promises to get kayakers in secluded coves far away from the cruise ships. He even sea kayaks in Antarctica, where guests have the option to camp on the shores with the penguins before returning to their 60-foot sloop. If any of these trips interest you, please contact ActiveTravels.
 
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ActiveTravels Turns One!

I started writing this blog a little over a year ago, with readership and interest steadily growing. I know you have lots of options to read travel content on the web, so I want to personally pat you on the back and say thank you! My goal the next several months is to expand ActiveTravels to include much more of my travel content in the Go Play section, to be used as a reference. But that will have to wait until early August. I’m on assignment the next 22 of 31 days, traveling to Cape Cod, Maine, New Brunswick, Paris, and the UK. I’m gone so much that I’ve decided to give myself time off next week. So enjoy the 4th of July holiday and come back the week of July 12th when I’ll be divulging my Top 5 Wallet-Friendly Ways to Get Wet and Wild.

Best,

Steve
 

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