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Travel Like a Local on These Guided Day Trips

If you’re planning to visit New England over the next month to see the fall foliage, it might be wise to get away from the crowded roadways and sign up for one of these authentic day trips with local experts. Authenticity is the buzzword in travel these days, the chance to live and feel like a local, not a tourist. Thankfully, there are many opportunities in New England where you have the chance to go beyond the boilerplate tours and get a real feel for the region while being led by an expert on the subject. These dozen day trips, which I reported for Yankee Magazine, strive for genuine authenticity and hopefully reward you with lasting memories. 

 

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Acadia National Park Week: Biking Schoodic Peninsula

If they call the western half of Mount Desert Island the Quiet Side, they should call Schoodic Peninsula the Secret Side. Still part of Acadia National Park, Schoodic is a good hour drive from Bar Harbor, so few people outside of Mainers in the know head here. Do yourself a favor and follow their cue. You’ll thank me. On a day when two large cruise ships dropped off over 4,000 people into Bar Harbor, we took a ferry smaller than a tugboat, The Quoddy Bay, and took off to Winter Harbor, the gateway to the Schoodic Peninsula. There’s no longer any need to drive to Schoodic, especially if you want to bike the 10 to 12-mile loop. You can get here on a scenic hour-long boat ride ($39 round-trip, including bicycle), mesmerized by the views of pine-studded islands, the mountainous shoreline, and the granite cliffs. 

Acadia National Park has made it easy for bikers to access the Schoodic Peninsula. The paved road Park Loop is one way with two lanes, so cars can easily pass you. Secondly, this summer they just created 8 miles of carriage path trails, hard-packed gravel routes only available to bikers and hikers. After taking the Park Loop, we would return via the carriage path trails, crossing the entirety of the peninsula past the new national park campground that opened last Wednesday. Most importantly, there’s very little traffic here. This is a very serene part of the national park that few venture to. 
 
We biked along the rocky shoreline, stopping to walk atop a breakwater and watch the tide rush out to sea. All around you is the Atlantic with another memorable seascape to savor, be it a lone sailboat gliding through the open water, an unchartered island just offshore, or pink granite ledges that form one of the highlights, Schoodic Point. People pull over anywhere along the loop to picnic, swim, or take short walks like the East Trail, which climbs a half-mile to 440-foot high Schoodic Head. 
 
Near Schoodic Point is another worthwhile stopover, the Schoodic Education and Research Center, housed in a stone and brick building John D. Rockefeller, Jr., created for the US Navy in 1935. Recently renovated, the building is now home to the nonprofit Schoodic Institute, an educational and research group dedicated to conservation and ecology. Head inside to see exhibitions on the local wildlife and the Navy’s history of monitoring encrypted messages inside this building. There are many surprises on Schoodic Peninsula, so don’t hesitate to make the extra effort to get here. 
 
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A Quick Visit to Colombia’s Caribbean Coast: Cartagena and Barranquilla

My son Jake has been in Colombia since early June, initially traveling all over, before heading to Barranquilla. Wanting to visit before his teaching contract ends in mid-November, my husband Josh and I are just back from a quick trip. While we loved our historic, formerly grand Barranquilla hotel (El Prado), seeing the school where Jake teaches, and meeting his friends there, I’m going to focus this post on Cartagena, which I know is of more interest to ActiveTravels members. Under Jake’s guidance, we took a bus from Barranquilla to Cartagena’s Old City, separated from the modern skyscraper city by a few miles. The bus ride itself was an experience, seeing lots of small villages along the way. 

 
In Cartagena we wandered for several hours through the outdoor plazas, Plaza de Bolívar and Plaza Santo Domingo, where you’ll find artwork by the great Colombian artist, Botero. We also visited the Museo de Arte Moderno and the Palacio de la Inquisición. We watched the sunset atop the walls of the Old City. A World Heritage Site founded in 1533, the colonial buildings are well protected by what are said to be the most complete set of fortifications in South America—las murallas, thick walls built to protect it against enemies. 
 
ActiveTravels would be happy to help you “wander” too, to Colombia, including a few days in Cartagena, and perhaps the nearby Rosario Islands. Also for your consideration, Jake loved Medellin (“vibrant, safe, and booming, blessed with year round spring weather and located scenically at the base of an impressive valley”), the towns of Guatape (“a beautiful lakeside town about 40 minutes outside of Medellín”), Bucaramanga, and more of Colombia’s Caribbean coast (“Puerto Colombia, Santa Marta, Costeño Beach, Minco, and Palomino, each place more stunning than the last”). We work with a wonderful tour operator in Colombia who can package together lodging, transfers, activities, and all guides. Let ActiveTravels know if you are interested!
 
Guest Post and Photo by Amy Perry Basseches
 
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Ogunquit Still My No. 1 Beach Town in New England

To celebrate a big birthday for my mother-in-law, 14 members of the family made their way to Ogunquit, Maine in mid-July for 3 nights. I haven’t been back to Ogunquit since I wrote my cover story for Yankee Magazine on the Top 25 Beach Towns in New England, naming Ogunquit over Provincetown as the best beach town in New England. I was happy to see the article from the July/August 2012 issue framed on the wall of The Beachmere Inn, where we stayed. After a memorable weekend, I can honestly say that I made the right choice naming Ogunquit my number one beach town. I ditched the car in the parking lot and didn’t see it again until I left. The view of the Atlantic and the 3 ½-mile stretch of beachfront from the Beachmere was just as glorious as I remembered. We would stroll down the sloping lawn to the Marginal Way, and either take a left to hit the beach or veer right to walk along the rugged shoreline to the restaurants in Perkins Cove. The big birthday dinner was held in a private room at MC Perkins Cove, a restaurant I first discovered when it debuted, reporting for Boston Globe Magazine’s Best of the New issue. The meal and service were both exceptional. So was our first night’s dinner at Oarweed at an outdoor table overlooking the Atlantic, digging into the freshest lobster I’ve had in a long time, washed down with a Blueberry Ale. 

Yes, both P’town and Nantucket have excellent restaurants and beaches. But where Ogunquit excels is theater and other cultural offerings. Gershwins’ An American in Paris, staged at the historic Ogunquit Playhouse, was a fantastic rendition of this complex play, featuring tap dance, ballet, and songs (see it before it closes on August 4th).  We visited the Ogunquit Museum of American Art to see the Lois Dodd show, only to be serenaded by the poetry of Richard Blanco, who just happened to be there that day. Blanco is best known as being the poet who spoke at President Obama’s second inauguration and his words, which were paired with photography on exhibit, are incredibly moving. Ogunquit, I have a feeling I’ll be returning far more frequently in the future. 
 
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My Favorite Small Outfitters, Ken’s Hinterland Adventure Tours, Dominica

Unlike the rest of the Caribbean, the attraction in Dominica is not the beach, but a lush mountainous interior ripe with every tropical fruit and vegetable imaginable and inundated with so much water that around every bend is another raging waterfall, a serene swimming hole nestled in the thick bush, or a hidden hot spring to rest your weary body after a day in the outdoors. Indeed, this island closest to Martinique has become an affordable haven for the active traveler who yearns to hike through a jungle-like forest. My guide for a week of treks into the interior was Kent Augiste of Ken’s Hinterland Adventure Tours. The highlight was a 7-hour round-trip hike inside Morne Trois Pitons National Park to the crater known as Boiling Lake. We hiked through a dense forest of tall gommier trees, staring at the iridescent purple-throated hummingbirds as they kept us company. Afterwards, we lounged in the natural hot spring at Papillote Wilderness Retreat. Owner Anne Jno Baptiste first came to the island from the States in 1961. Eight years later, she bought a 7-acre chunk of land enveloped by the rainforest that she would cultivate into a flower-rich botanical garden and one of the Caribbean’s first eco-resorts. 

 
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Bermuda’s Pink Sale Offer’s 50% Off Room Rates

Need to get away? If you live in the Midwest or East Coast and just endured temps in the single digits, I would say you’re due. You might want to know about Bermuda’s Pink Sale, where 15 hotels on island are offering a 50% discount. Book from today through January 28 for hotels stays until April 30, 2015. Bermuda has a reputation of being cold in the winter months, but average highs in Jan and Feb are 68 degrees, with temps moving up to 70 and 73 in March and April, respectively. Flights are direct and only 2 hours from New York, Boston, and DC. If you need suggestions on what to do while you’re there, check out my Boston Globe story. 

 
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VBT To Feature Culinary-Based Biking Trips in 2012

Call me nostalgic, but I’ve always been partial to VBT. In 1995, while researching my book, Outside Magazine’s Adventure Guide to New England, VBT took me on my first organized bike trip along the shores of Lake Champlain in Vermont. They have since expanded to all four corners of the Globe. Just ask my mother-in-law, who’s traveled with VBT to South Africa, Germany, and the Netherlands and raves about all those trips. This year, VBT will feature four culinary tours that sound very tasty. In April, they’ll travel to Puglia to bike along Italy’s Adriatic Coast and explore olive groves, sample local wines, and dive into dinners of fresh seafood and locally grown vegetables. In September and October, VBT will visit Provence to bike backcountry roads through the French countryside, enjoy a home-cooked meal, and stop at fromageries and wine bars. Last but certainly not least is their trip to Vietnam in November to bike past the verdant rice terraces and sample the indigenous fare at markets, family-run food shops, and your own Vietnamese cooking class. Also take a peek at their new destinations in 2012 like a sweet ride along Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. 

 

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