State abbreviations: MA=Massachusetts, VT=Vermont, NH=New Hampshire, ME=Maine.
We flew to Boston (MA) and spent two nights there to recover from jet-lag before renting a car (pre-arranged from Britain). All the hotels we used, with the exception of the Howard Johnson's in South Portland (ME), were researched on the internet or in the Rough Guide to New England. All were booked on-line except for the Gale River Motel (NH), which was booked by post.
We were very lucky with the places we booked. All of them were clean and comfortable, and we would happily stay at any of them again.
Our route was roughly circular, clockwise from Boston. In hindsight we would have preferred to stay longer in one place, rather than moving on so often.
Boston is an expensive place to stay. We chose to stay at the Chandler Inn, a fairly large multi-storey hotel above a gay bar. The only snag from our point of view is that because it was September, and therefore after the summer period, they had just removed the air-conditioning units from the rooms. However, the weather was thundery and muggy and sticky, and air-conditioning would have been very welcome. Luckily, our room was on a corner, so we could open the windows on each side and get a through-draught. A major thunderstorm cleared the air a bit.
We walked almost the whole of the "Freedom Trail", which covers most of Boston's historic buildings and sights, and thoroughly enjoyed everything. Boston Public Garden is wonderful - grass and trees and a lake. It was just before the Presidential election, so campaign posters and campaigners were out in force.
We were disappointed by the famous (or infamous) Ramrod bar. Because the bars have no definite closing time, there never seemed to be any great concentration of men in any one bar, which meant that things never seemed to get going. Of course, the nights we were there were Tuesday and Wednesday, so we assume that weekend nights must be better! The bar we enjoyed most was the one below our hotel.
[Often abbreviated to P-Town] We so enjoyed the atmosphere of Provincetown (MA) that we stayed an extra night, even though that meant an extremely long journey to Vermont the following day. Provincetown lies right at the tip of Cape Cod, a 70-mile spit of land curving upwards from the mainland. The drive along Cape Cod, though pretty, is very slow, as there is a well-justified 40mph speed limit on the narrow road. If you don't want to drive from Boston, there is a very good ferry service direct from Boston.
P-Town is a gay place, even out of season (which we were). Approximately 50% of the permanent residents are gay or lesbian, living mainly by running art and craft galleries or restaurants. This gives the place a unique character - totally relaxed for gay men, and with the (few) straight visitors looking rather out of place, though there was no obvious discrimination against them.
We stayed in the Boatslip, a famous gay hotel, now somewhat decayed, which holds a tea-dance on the deck several times a week in high season, and on Saturday afternoons out of high season (another reason for staying the extra night). During a huge storm, the roof of our balcony leaked, and the whole place could do with an overhaul.
We spent our evenings drifting between the three raunchiest gay bars, and met new friends each night. When the bars close at 2am, everyone congregates outside a pizza place, and the chatting (and cruising) continue. On my way to an assignation on the beach with a new friend, we followed a skunk down the alleyway - fortunately it wasn't bothered by us, and didn't stop to spray. Very beautiful animals.
Our last day was hot and sunny, and we walked to the Herring Cove Beach, over dunes, through a shallow lagoon, and over the main dunes. I swam in the sea and sunbathed nude (though this is apparently disapproved of), and we walked a long way along the beach cruising the lovely men. On the way back we cruised some more in the dunes (with great success!) and discovered that the tidal lagoon was by then thigh-deep.
We also discovered that leaving your room door open in the hotel may lead to interesting encounters...
The end of our last night was spent getting to know two new friends - Jeff and Dave - very well indeed. If they would like to contact us, we'd be glad to see them again.
We stayed in an interesting farmhouse motel-style place called the Colonial House Inn. Everyone ate the (huge) breakfast in the dining kitchen, presided over by the owner, who cooked waffles and pancakes on the spot. They also make wonderful pies and biscuits, which constituted our picnics for the next few days.
Stowe is a major skiing resort in winter, and also the home of the [Sound of Music] Von Trapp family. We booked into a wonderful place, the Inn at Turner Mill, a wooden building next to a mill-stream about 4 miles outside the centre of Stowe. One disadvantage of Stowe (and many other American towns) is that it spreads very widely, so it's necessary to drive to reach many of the shops and restaurants.
We had booked into a motel called the Gale River Motel, which seemed to have no internet presence, so we knew little about it. We arrived there about midday, and found a very ordinary-looking low motel block. We parked the car in front of our room, got out, and turned round, to be amazed by the wonderful view!
This was the highlight of the trip. Bar Harbor is the main town on Mount Desert Island, a tiny space (16 x 13 miles) which contains America's second-most-visited (and New England's only) national park - the Acadia National Park, a fjord, and the highest headland on the Atlantic coast north of Rio de Janeiro. Out of high season it is all reasonably uncrowded, and a completely delightful place.
We stayed in a grand 19th-century mansion, Cleftstone Manor, one of the few old houses to survive a terrible fire in 1947. Bar Harbor is small enough to walk round, which was refreshing, and contains a very good selection of restaurants (many serving lobster, if you like that sort of thing).
We took the catamaran out beyond the lighthouse to watch whales, and were lucky enough to see three humpback whales which we watched for over an hour. The sea was quite rough, and several very green people stayed below (though they'd have been better out on deck in the rather cold wind).
In some ways it's a pity that you can drive right through the National Park - it would be better if they had a bus service with a hop-off hop-on system - and there is also a separate network of carriage roads (built by John D. Rockefeller, Jr as a protest against the 1913 vote that allowed "infernal combustion engines" onto the island).
There are a few more pictures of this (and other) holidays here.
Please contact me at jld1@cam.ac.uk if you want to know more about any of the places, or what we got up to.
