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Adventures in the Florida Keys, Snorkeling Grecian Rocks in Key Largo

Escaping the snow of the northeast, I’m hiding out in the Florida Keys this week. My first stop is always Captain Slate’s Atlantis Dive Center just over the bridge in Key Largo. In operation since 1978, Slate is the premier snorkel and dive operator in the region. In 2004, he received the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame Award for his early work on diver and boater safety. Slate took a group of eight of us 7 miles out to sea to Grecian Rocks, a coral reef located in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Surrounded by aquamarine waters, the vibrant reef is easily one of the premiere snorkeling spots in America. Before we snorkeled, Slate took advantage of his glass bottom boat to show us the Christ of the Abyss statue, a 9-foot tall bronze statue attached to a concrete base and placed in 25 feet of water back in 1965. Then we were off the boat watching a stingray swim gracefully above the sand. Purple fan coral way swaying with the current attracting barracudas, while I spotted a very cool midnight parrotfish with her neon blue lips poking at the brain coral. Visibility was outstanding and all was bliss for the next hour. 

 

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Four Seasons Debuts New Resort in the French Alps

Next week, I’m excited to divulge my 5 favorite hotel openings in 2018. But I thought we’d get things started early with the debut of the Four Seasons’ first European mountain hotel. Especially since Megeve, France has been getting dumped on this past week, with a foot of fresh snowfall in the past 24 hours. A modern interpretation of an alpine chalet, Four Seasons Megeve offers 55 guest rooms and suites, and five restaurants and lounges, including a new incarnation of the Michelin two-star restaurant Le 1920. The only hotel directly on the Mont d’Arbois slopes, expect 235 groomed runs at your front door. 

 
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Whitewater Raft on the Concord River, Less Than a 30-Minute Drive from Boston

Every weekend now through May 22nd, you can go on a 3-hour guided whitewater rafting trip on the Concord River, just north of Boston. Zoar Outdoor, known for their rafting trips down the Deerfield River in central Mass, is leading trips on the Concord for ages 14 and up. For the price of $83, you can rip through three major class III and IV rapids—Twisted Sister, Three Beauties, and Middlesex Dam. Zoar Outdoor supplies all gear. All you have to do is show up at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center and get ready to scream. 

 
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Big Changes Are A Comin’

By now, you should have noticed the new logo and blue background for ActiveTravels.com. It’s part of a major redesign of the website my wife and I plan to launch in the next week. In fact, this blog will be moved to ActiveTravels.com/blog. Hopefully, for all you subscribers, the transition to the new web page will be smooth. Otherwise, you might have to subscribe once again. Sorry for the inconvenience. I really appreciate every one of you who have stuck with me over these past two years of blogging! I’ll fill you in on more of the changes happening at ActiveTravels when I return from Louisville on Tuesday. In the meantime, have a great weekend and keep active!

 
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Boston Needs to Take a Good Hard Look at Rotterdam’s New Food Market

Ten years in the making, the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands (less than an hour drive from Amsterdam) has just unveiled a public market that will set the standard for design of food markets for years to come. On the base floor of a horseshoe-shaped tunnel, close to 100 food stalls will sell their mix of local cheeses, meats, produce, and flowers at the Markthal. The largest art piece in the Netherlands, Horn of Plenty by Arno Coenen and Iris Roskam, wraps the curving interior walls of the hall. Projected onto the individually placed screens are larger-than-life images of vibrantly colored fruits, grains, and vegetables. Arching high in the sky and surrounding the massive artwork are 228 apartments with sweeping views of this port city. The city of Boston should take a good look at this multi-use architectural marvel. Set to debut our own public market in 2015, it seems as if we’re settling for far less by just using space in the old Haymarket building. Why not set much loftier aspirations with an emphasis on the future, not the past? 

 
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My Story on New England Art Finds in the March/April Issue of Yankee Magazine

Blame it on the majestic scenery in New England that lured artists to its shores and mountains, or savvy collectors who had the foresight to purchase the preeminent works of their time. The result is undeniable. The bounty of art found in this region is mind-boggling, from the American art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to the Hudson River School paintings hanging at Hartford’s Wadsworth Athenaeum to the Impressionist gems located at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Add university collections like Harvard’s Fogg and the recently reopened Yale University Art Museum that could rival the finest art museum in most mid-range cities, and you understand how spoiled we are. 

 
Even with this gluttony of art, there are some hidden treasures to be found. I was fortunate last summer to be hired by Yankee Magazine to describe six of my favorite art gems in New England, often overlooked: the Cushing, Maine house that inspired Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World; Winslow Homer’s studio in Prouts Neck, Maine; Albert Bierstadt’s 10-by-15-foot work, Domes of Yosemite, found in the back of the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont; Jose Clemente Orozco’s 24-panel mural at Dartmouth University’s Baker Library, now seen under new lighting; the WPA murals of a whaling scene created by Thomas LaFarge in 1938 at the New London Post Office; and the only National Park System site dedicated to an American painter, the Weir Farm in Wilton, Connecticut. All are worth checking put. You can find the story the old fashioned way, in the magazine at newsstands. It’s not online. 
 
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October is Cranberry Harvest Season in Massachusetts

The Cranberry Harvest Celebration at Makepeace Farms in Wareham, an hour south of Boston near the Sagamore Bridge to Cape Cod, might be over, but it’s still a great time to visit the bogs of Massachusetts during harvest time. We brought a journalist from Cape Town to the region last Thursday and were mesmerized by the men working waist-deep in the flooded cranberries colored a brilliant red. A.D. Makepeace Company is the world’s largest cranberry grower, a founding member of the Ocean Spray co-op, and the largest private property owner in Massachusetts. Cranberries have been cultivated in this part of the world for approximately 200 years. The temperate climate is perfect for growing cranberries with warm days in summer and cold nights in autumn. We watched as workers culled and then vacuumed up the cranberries into a truck that heads to a nearby Ocean Spray processing plant to make cranberry juice, cranberry sauce, and craisins. The harvest continues until mid-November and A.D. Makepeace is offering one last guided tour of its bog this Saturday, October 29th, at 9 am. Afterwards, stop by Tihonet Village for sandwiches and salads, chocolate-covered cranberries, and treats from their bakery like tasty cranberry macaroons. I grabbed a pint of fresh cranberries after a worker told me how to make homemade cranberry liqueur with equal amounts of cranberries, sugar, and vodka. I’ll tell you how it turns out. 

 

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