A rental lodge on Sebago Lake, Maine.

One of the best things you can do for your family is to spend a week in the summer on Sebago Lake in Maine. I guarantee you that you will have the best family vacation you’ve ever experienced, and you will create memories that you will cherish for your entire lifetime. Indeed, I pretty much guarantee that once you visit, you’ll find yourself going back again year after year.

Sebago Lake (also known as “Big Sebago,” and yes there is a “Little Sebago”) is the second largest, and the deepest, lake in Maine. It’s located just a half-hour from Portland, making it a very convenient location to many tourist destinations and activities. It is a very popular spot in the summertime, which means you need to plan in advance to find a camp that suits your needs.

In Maine, a “camp” refers to a cottage or cabin on or near the lake. Accommodations range from the truly rustic to the truly luxurious. Many camps are not “winterized”, meaning they do not posses the construction or the insulation to be inhabited in the winter. Some camps have only the basics – a loft with bunks for sleeping, simple furnishings, and no television or internet. Other camps are really decked out with luxurious bedrooms, gourmet kitchens, television and cable and internet.

I ask you, though, who the heck wants to spend all their time indoors watching TV or on the computer when they have a lake, fireflies, campfires, canoeing, and loons beckoning outside the door?

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The Ferris Wheel at Palace Playland in Old Orchard Beach.

The Amtrak Downeaster Rail begins in Portland, Maine and ends in Boston, Massachusetts. In between there are stops in Old Orchard Beach ME, Saco ME, Wells ME, Dover NH, Durham NH, Exeter NH, Haverhill MA, and Woburn MA. For this series of articles I will expound upon the merits of each stop along the Downeaster Amtrak tour.

Old Orchard Beach is a fantastic destination for vacationing families. Indeed, it’s one of the top tourist destinations in the state and hosts a regular influx of Canadian visitors every summer. OOB, as the natives call it, is one of those places that becomes a traditional, yearly destination for visitors and locals alike.

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Hammonasset's marshy side

Here’s where you can kick it old school like Native Americans did before settlers came in 1639.  This is a beach with a long history.  Hammonasset means “Where we dig holes in the ground,” and it was where the natives farmed corn, beans, and squash, and fished and hunted.  Since then, the beach has been a rifle testing site, an army reservation, and an aircraft range, but now it’s just a plain old state park.

I grew up in Connecticut on the Long Island Sound, where there’s barely ever any surf and the beach smelled like sewage in the 70′s.  It’s better now, but I do remember that if we wanted to go to a “real” beach, we went to Hammonasset.  But it’s not just beach-type things you can do there although you can fish, sail, and bodyboard because the surf gets a bit bigger than elsewhere in Connecticut and there are spots where there are less rocks.  There’s a nature center, a kick-ass campground, and hiking and biking trails, too.

Families with young kids will like: Meigs Point Nature Center, and the ample facilities.

Families with teenagers will like: The bigger waves, relative to other beaches nearby.

Other travelers will like: If you are into rocks, there’s a lot of information about the geology of Hammonasset Beach available on the CT State Park website.

Best months to visit for weather: May through October

Nearest major cities: New Haven, CT

More info can be found at the always helpful California State Park site.

Photo courtesy of: msgsti217 via Flickr

Tags: Huntington Beach State Park, USA, things to do, California

Parking is $20 per car for state residents and $30 per car for non-residents.  That same type of pricing applies to the camping, which is amazing and beautiful in this park, and priced at $30-$70 per night.

Photo courtesy of slack12 via Flickr.

Manarola from the hiking trail

The Cinque Terre region of Italy is one of the most beautiful spots in the country. Cinque Terre means “Five Lands” in Italian and is a collection of five small villages nestled into the cliffs on the Ligurian Sea. The villages were founded on agriculture and fishing, but now survive with the help of tourists dollars.

Cinque Terre is an easy day trip from Florence, Pisa or Milan (Pisa is the closest airport), but you should plan at least two days on the shortest trip, and more like 4-5 if you really want to relax. There’s not a whole lot to do in Cinque Terre really, but that is its charm.

Each of the five villages has its own distinct personality. Monterosso is the most resorty of the towns. It is the only one with full-service hotels and a true beach – though it is a rocky one. Just south of the town is Vernazza, another village popular with tourists and known for its picturesque harbor (it also has a very small beach).

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