Getting Around

One of my most fervent wishes is that someday I'll be able to travel around northern New England without a car, as my ancestors did. I'd love to see a reversion to historical times, when travelers could venture to the White Mountains or Maine's Mount Desert Island or Vermont's Lake Champlain via luxurious rail car or steamship. Early in this century, visitors could even link one trolley line with the next to travel great distances between seaboard cities and inland towns.

Your Car: Leave Home Without It!

Options exist for a vacation without a car. Here are a few suggestions:

Take Amtrak to Brattleboro, Vermont, and stay at the downtown Latchis Hotel (tel. 802/254-6300), just a 2-minute walk from the train station. From this base, you can explore this small town of brick architecture, good restaurants, and quirky shops. Cross the river to hike Wantastiquet Mountain 1 afternoon. Another day, rent a canoe and explore the Connecticut River, or get a bike and head off into the hilly countryside. Canoes are available for rent at Vermont Canoe Touring Center just north of town (tel. 802/257-5008). For bike rentals, try Brattleboro Bicycle Shop at 165 Main St. (tel. 800/272-8245 or 802/254-8644).

From Boston, take the Concord Trailways bus directly to the Appalachian Mountain Club's Pinkham Notch Visitor Center (tel. 603/466-2727), high in the White Mountains. Spend a night or 2, then backpack for 2 days across demanding, rugged mountains, staying at AMC's backcountry huts (all meals provided). At the end of your sojourn, catch the AMC shuttle back to North Conway or Pinkham Notch, and then hail the return bus back to Boston.

Bus, fly, or train to Portland, Maine, where you can sign up for a guided sea-kayak excursion. Maine Island Kayak Co. (tel. 207/766-2373) is just 20 minutes outside of the city by ferry (the terminal is at the corner of Commercial and Franklin sts.) on Peaks Island, and offers trips throughout the state all summer long. You can camp within the city limits on remote Jewell Island at the edge of Casco Bay, or head out for a few days along more remote parts of the coast. Spend an extra day or 2 in Portland to visit museums and sample the excellent restaurants.

Bus or fly to Bar Harbor, Maine, and then settle into one of the numerous inns or B&Bs downtown. (There's a free shuttle bus from the airport to downtown.) Rent a mountain bike and explore the elaborate network of carriage roads at Acadia National Park, and then cruise along picturesque Park Loop Road. Another day, sign up for a sea-kayak tour or whale-watching excursion. By night, enjoy lobster or other fine meals at Bar Harbor's fine restaurants. Mountain bikes may be easily rented along Cottage Street in Bar Harbor. A free bus connects downtown Bar Harbor with more than a half-dozen bus routes into and around the park, making travel hassle-free. Try Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop at 141 Cottage St. (tel. 207/288-3886); Acadia Outfitters at 106 Cottage St. (tel. 207/288-8118); or Acadia Bike & Canoe at 48 Cottage St. (tel. 207/288-9605). For sea kayaking, the following outfitters offer half- and full-day tours: Acadia Outfitters at 106 Cottage St. (tel. 207/288-8118); Coastal Kayaking Tours at 48 Cottage St. (tel. 207/288-9605); and National Park Sea Kayak Tours at 39 Cottage St. (tel. 800/347-0940 or 207/288-0342).

Fly to Bangor, Maine, on a commercial flight. KT Aviation (tel. 207/945-5087) can meet you at the airport and take you by van to a nearby lake for a seaplane flight to a remote sporting camp. Here you can spend a week or so hiking, dubbing around in canoes, or reading and relaxing. Among the better sporting camps is Bradford Camps (tel. 207/746-7777; www.bradfordcamps.com), a compound of rustic log cabins on an unpopulated lake right out of an L.L.Bean catalog. Meals are served in a 1940s-style dining room. Also of interest is the tiny fishing community of Grand Lake Stream, which has several sporting camps (try Weatherby's, The Fisherman's Resort; tel. 207/796-5558; www.weatherbys.com). Link up with Grand Lake Outfitters (tel. 207/796-5561) for kayak or rafting tours of lakes and rivers. Charter rates to Grand Lake Stream, which is about a 30-minute flight from Bangor, start at $120 (one-way) for one person, up to $180 for three people.

By Car

The four major airports in northern New England all host national car-rental chains. Some handy phone numbers and websites are Avis (tel. 800/230-4898; www.avis.com), Budget (tel. 800/527-0700; www.budget.com), Enterprise (tel. 800/736-8222; www.enterprise.com), Hertz (tel. 800/654-3131; www.hertz.com), National (tel. 800/227-7368; www.nationalcar.com), and Thrifty (tel. 800/847-4389; www.thrifty.com). You may also find independent car-rental firms in the bigger towns, sometimes at better rates than those offered by the chains. Look in the Yellow Pages under "Automobile-Renting."

A famous New England joke ends with the punch line, "You can't get there from here," but you may conclude it's no joke as you try to navigate through the region. Travel can be convoluted and often confusing, and it's handy to have someone adept at map reading in the car with you if you veer off the main routes for country-road exploring. North-south travel is fairly straightforward, thanks to the four major interstates in the region. Traveling east to west (or vice versa) across the region is a more vexing proposition and will likely involve stitching together a route of several state or county roads. Don't fight it; just relax and understand that this is part of the New England experience, like rain in the northwest or rattlesnakes in the southwest.

On the other hand, New England is of a size that touring by car can be done quite comfortably, at least in New Hampshire and Vermont. You can drive from Portland to Burlington quite easily in a day across the heart of the region. Note that Maine is much larger than the other two states; when making travel plans, beware of two-sided maps that alter the scale from one side to the other. Remember when budgeting your time that Portland is closer to New York City than it is to Madawaska at the state's extreme northern tip.

Traffic is generally light compared to most urban and suburban areas along the East Coast, but there are exceptions. Traffic on the interstates leading north from Boston can be sluggish on Friday afternoons and evenings in the summer. A handful of choke points, particularly on Route 1 along the Maine coast, can back up for miles as tourists jockey to cross two-lane bridges spanning tidal rivers. North Conway in New Hampshire is famed for its hellish traffic, especially during the foliage season. To avoid the worst of the tourist traffic, try to avoid being on the road during big summer holidays; if your schedule allows it, travel on weekdays rather than weekends and hit the road early or late in the day to avoid the midday crunch.

If you're a connoisseur of back roads and off-the-beaten-track exploring, DeLorme atlases are invaluable. These are now produced for all 50 states, but the first one was Maine, and the company's headquarters is here. The atlases offer an extraordinary level of detail, right down to logging roads and public boat launches on small ponds. DeLorme's headquarters and map store (tel. 800/561-5105 or 800/642-0970; www.delorme.com) are in Yarmouth, Maine, but their products are available widely at bookstores and convenience stores throughout the region.

Travelers who are organized to a degree that sometimes alarms their family and close friends probably already know about MapQuest (www.mapquest.com) and Yahoo! Maps (maps.yahoo.com). These handy websites calculate distances and driving directions from any point in the country to any other point. Type in where you want to start and where you want to go, and the online software calculates the total distance and provides detailed driving instructions, along with maps if you want them. Before departing, you can plot your route and print out a daily driving itinerary.

Moose X-ing--Driving across the northern tier of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, you'll often see MOOSE CROSSING signs, complete with silhouettes of the gangly herbivores. These are not placed here to amuse the tourists. In Maine, the state with the most moose (an estimated 30,000, at last count), crashes between moose and cars are increasingly common.

These encounters are usually more dramatic than deer-car collisions. For starters, the large eyes of moose don't reflect in headlights like those of deer, so you often come upon them with less warning when driving late at night. Moose can weigh up to 1,000 pounds, with almost all of that weight placed high atop spindly legs. When a car strikes a moose broadside in the road, it usually knocks the legs out and sends a half-ton of hapless beast right through the windshield. Need we dwell on the results of such an encounter? I thought not. In 1998 alone, the state of Maine recorded 859 crashes involving moose, with 247 injuries and 5 fatalities. When in moose country, drive slowly and carefully.

By Bus

Express bus service into the region is quite good, but beware of trying to travel within the region by bus. Quirky schedules and routes may send you well out of your way, and what may seem a simple trip could take hours. One example: A clerk at Vermont Transit explained that the 65-mile trip from Portland to North Conway was necessarily via Boston and, with layovers, would require approximately 9 hours -- somewhat longer than it would require a moderately fit person to travel between these points by bicycle.

Traveling north-south between towns along a single bus route (for example, Concord to North Conway or Portland to Bangor) is feasible, but east-west travel across northern New England is, by and large, impractical. For information on travel within northern New England, call Vermont Transit Lines (tel. 800/451-3292 or 800/642-3133; www.vermonttransit.com) or Concord Trailways (tel. 800/639-3317; www.concordtrailways.com) for service in New Hampshire and Maine.

By Plane

Service between airports within the region is sketchy at best. You can find limited direct flights between some cities (such as Portland to Bangor), but for the most part, you'll have to backtrack to Boston and fly out again to your final destination. Convenient it's not.

By Train

Amtrak provides limited rail travel within the region, and is mostly confined to a few stops in Vermont, New Hampshire, and southern Maine. For more information, call Amtrak at tel. 800/872-7245; www.amtrak.com.