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Be Active This Presidents’ Day Weekend

Looking out my 3rd-floor office window, it’s a winter wonderland from another fresh coating of snow, the 4th snowfall in the past two weeks. We haven’t seen this much snow in two years. So take advantage of this latest deluge to get outdoors and invigorated this weekend. Mass Audubon is hosting numerous events across the state this weekend and next week for February school vacation, including guided snowshoe treks at Broadmoor, Pleasant Valley, North Hill Marsh, and Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuaries. Ski New Hampshire is reporting 2 to 4 feet of snow across ski areas this past week. Sunday River and Sugarloaf in Maine are experiencing record February snowfall, over 5 feet since the beginning of the month. Trapp Family Lodge, the premier cross-county skiing (and now craft beer drinking) venue in Stowe is offering a 20% off sale through today. Liftopia is offering discounts across the country this week, including 25% off lift tickets at Stowe and 25% off a 2-day ticket at Snowbird in Utah. So get out there and start making snow angels. 

I’ll be back next week with my favorite family adventures over February break. 
 

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Puerto Rico Hotel Update

According to the Puerto Rico Tourism Company (PRTC), 75 percent of Puerto Rico’s hotels, or 113 out of 149, are open and operating. They include the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel, Hotel El Convento, Wyndham Rio Mar, La Concha Renaissance, Olive Boutique Hotel, and the San Juan Marriott Resort. El Conquistador, A Waldorf Astoria Resort, plans to open April 1, 2018. Dorado Beach, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve will reopen October 1, 2018. The Ritz-Carlton San Juan Hotel and Hotel St. Regis at Bahia Beach Resort also plan to reopen on October 1st. W Retreat & Spa Vieques will reopen Dec. 31, 2018. Cruise ships running in and out of San Juan are now 90% operational and expect to be 100% operational by Christmas. Puerto Rico desperately needs your business and there are good deals on hotel rates and cruises to get you back down there. Contact ActiveTravels and we’ll fill you in. 

 
 
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Maine Huts & Trails Week: Day Two, Mountain Biking to Poplar Stream Falls Hut

In September 1996, a relatively new magazine called Men’s Journal gave me an assignment to write a story on mountain biking in Vermont. I biked with extreme skier John Egan in the Mad River Valley before heading north and meeting Jeff Hale, a route designer on a network of singletracks he was calling the Kingdom Trails. On a spongy mat of trails dusted with pine needles, we cruised past century-old barns and small, dilapidated sugar shacks lost in the countryside and I immediately saw the potential for an off-road biking route in this sylvan slice of the state. Well, the Kingdom Trails has exploded, with more than 60,000 visits just this past year. 


I see the same potential for Carrabassett Valley, Maine, especially when fat wheelers realize that NEMBA has teamed up with Maine Huts & Trails to create a mountain biking hut-to-hut network. We left Stratton Brook Hut this morning on a sweet trail cut last year into the deep forest, Oak Knoll. The dirt was smooth with high banks around each turn on zigzagging switchbacks. At the Stratton Brook trailhead, we met up with Jon Boehmer who knows a thing or two about mountain biking, having lived in that legendary mountain biking town of Crested Butte, Colorado, for 6 years. 

Boehmer is excited to show us some of his favorite singletrack runs, many that branch off from the Narrow Gauge Pathway, a rail trail that hugs the Carrabassett River. Grassy Loops is a nice warm-up on soft dirt through a meadow of high grass. Meade is a gem of a trail that lines the banks of the river, bopping up and down around tall pines and over roots and rock bridges. Sargent and Crocker Town are more technical runs, with short uphill and downhill turns thrown into the mix. Boehmer also took us to the nearby Sugarloaf Outdoor Center, where you can rent bikes and venture onto their vast network of trails that loop around lonely ponds, with that mountain view always looming in the background. 

We rested our legs on a downhill run on the Narrow Gauge while watching families swim in the boulder-strewn river. Then had our last taste of singletrack that connects with the Maine Huts Trail and led uphill on a tough climb to the Poplar Stream Falls Hut. Lisa and I said goodbye to Jon and thanked him for a memorable day of riding. To top it off, we walked down to the waterfalls and watched the water careen down the craggy old rock into a cool pool of water. There was no one else enjoying this serene scene. Well, at least not yet, but word will spread. 
 
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The Royal Hotel in Levuka, Fiji

While there are more than 300 islands in Fiji, most visitors opt to stay on the main island of Viti Levu where the international airport and the country’s two largest cities, Nadi and Suva, are located. Knowing that intimate Fijian villages and remote islands are less than an hour boat ride away, it pains me to meet people who spend their entire trip on this one commercial isle. Stay a night or two on the Coral Coast, one hour south of Nadi, to relax after the 10-hour flight from Los Angeles. Then ferry over to the town of Levuka on the island of Ovalau. More than fifty stores and hotels built in the 1850s still stand in this former capital of Fiji. Walk past the ficus trees down Beach Street to the most prestigious establishment of all, The Royal Hotel. Continuously operating since Levuka’s heyday, this is the oldest hotel in the South Pacific. Walk around the lobby and you feel like you’re entering a novel by Somerset Maugham or Robert Louis Stevenson, who both spent at least a night here. Inside, you’ll find rattan chairs, ceiling fans, a large stained oak bar, and a 100-year-old snooker table. Thankfully, one doesn’t have to be an acclaimed man of letters to afford this lodging. Cost of a room starts at $32 a night, including toast and tea for breakfast. 
 

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Rafting the Green River in Colorado and Utah

Roaring 44 miles through northwestern Colorado and northeastern Utah, the Green River is one of the most desolate runs in the States. The Class III whitewater snakes through rarely seen Dinosaur National Monument, where red walls rise sharply to some 2,500 feet to effectively block out civilization. In its place, you’ll find one of the largest concentrations of endangered peregrine falcons in the States, bighorn sheep, and mule deer. John Wesley Powell explored the Green in 1869 and was so impressed with the river that he gave the most exciting rapids names like Disaster Falls, Triplet Falls, and Hell’s Half Mile. Adrift Adventures features a four-day run on the Green during June and August. Cost is $785 for adults and $250 for kids ages 6-12. Also ask about their Jurassic Journey and Rock Art and Rafting options, which add an extra day to the trip before heading down the Green. Jurassic Journey takes you to Dinosaur Quarry, where dinosaur bones have been found. The Rock Art package visits several sites near the Ute Indian Reservation to view southwestern Indian rock art. 
 

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Nova Scotia Week, Visiting Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Park

One of my favorite reads this past summer, Destiny of the Republic by Candace Millard, detailed the assassination of President James Garfield. As with Millard’s first book, River of Doubt, a spellbinding account of Theodore Roosevelt’s deadly descent down a river in the Amazon, the finest characters in the books are not the presidents. Garfield has a buffoon of a doctor who does everything wrong according to modern day standards, like plunging his none-too-sterile hands into Garfield’s wound. Most striking however, was the work of Alexander Graham Bell in trying to save the president’s life. Already famous for his invention of the telephone, Graham Bell worked feverishly night and day to invent a device that could magnetically detect where the bullet was lodged in Garfield’s body. Millard’s conclusion was that the device did indeed work in the end, but Graham Bell was looking at the wrong side of Garfield’s body, thanks once again to that buffoon doctor. 

 
So when I heard that the small town of Baddeck on the shores of Bras d’Or Lakes in Cape Breton was home to the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Park, I was there when the doors opened in the morning. Graham Bell and his wife Mabel, a former student of his at Boston School for the Deaf, first built their summer home in Baddeck in 1886, a decade after he stated those first fateful words on the telephone to his assistant, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” I really wasn’t expecting much, since this was Graham Bell’s summer home, the one that reminded him of his Scottish youth. Wrong! In 1955, Graham Bell’s two daughters donated thousands of original artifacts to the museum, including all of the models that consumed him during his lifetime. There’s a metal box he created to distill salt water into drinkable water, a bicycle that he hoped one could pedal on water, the first air conditioning blowers. He created only to satiate his curiosity, which only ceased when he died. And his experimentation was successful countless times. His invention of the gramophone improved Edison’s phonograph, the metal detector he used on Garfield was the precursor to X-rays. A hydrofoil he helped build later in life, called HD-4, reached a speed of 70 miles per hour on water, a record that wouldn’t be broken for another decade. 
 
Also on display is a portrait his wife made of Graham Bell when they were first dating. At least that’s what she told him. It’s actually a painting of an owl. She painted the bird not because it symbolized wisdom, but because Graham Bell stayed up all night obsessed with finding answers. Throw in his work with the deaf, especially giving voice to Helen Keller, and you realize why his compassion and intellect are still an inspiration. 
 
This has been a terrific week for me in Nova Scotia! I hope to return with the family some time soon. It’s an auspicious start to a big month of travel that will send me on a bike trip to Zion National Park next Sunday . I’ll try to keep you posted as much as possible, but please be patient. In the meantime, stay active!
 
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Give the Gift of Travel This Holiday Season and We’ll Donate to Ryan’s Well Foundation

On the last day of our recent safari in Botswana and Zambia, we visited the community of Nakatindi, not far from where we stayed in Livingstone, Zambia. We would learn that the villagers here once had to walk through a national park to get their water from the Zambezi River and were frequently attacked by wildlife. Thankfully a water pump was donated to the community and people can now get fresh water piped to their village directly. This was the impetus behind this year’s charity donation. 
 
If you purchase a membership to ActiveTravels, whether for yourself or someone else, we will donate half of the proceeds to Ryan’s Well Foundation. This charity brings clean water and supports sustainable water and sanitation projects to 16 countries around the globe. It was started by a first grader in 1997, named Ryan, who learned that people across the globe were getting sick or dying because they didn’t have access to clean water. He and his parents decided to change that as best they could.
 
As an added gift to the buyer of the membership, we will be sending a children’s book called The Water Princess written by Susan Verde and illustrated by one of my favorite illustrators, Dedham’s own Peter Reynolds, that tells the real-life story of an African girl’s quest for clean drinking water.
 
Have a Happy Thanksgiving and keep active! 
 

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