I have just returned to my home in New York from an unusually satisfying vacation of one week's duration. The holiday was relaxing, restorative and gratifying because it took place in (a) a small town of 500 people, (b) staying in an old-fashioned home with porch and garden.
I'm not suggesting that you can vacation enjoyably in any small town of America. The town--an overgrown village, to be candid--must (a) be in a place of attractive nature, and (b) must have a smidgeon of culture--a library, an historical society, an art gallery or bookstore, and at least one good restaurant.
And abundant nature is important. Taking your daily walks along lakes or ponds, through verdant forests or awesome landscapes, along country roads with farms, barns and livestock, is one basic ingredient for a pleasant escape from the frantic urban settings in which most of us live.
Every state in America has such places, at least within an easy drive of a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles from where you live. Although my vacation was in tiny Winter Harbor, Maine, it could have been (in my case) in any of scores of small towns in upstate New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire or Vermont (or in thirty other states, if I lived in the midwest, south, southwest or west). I'm writing about small towns where you interact with your friendly neighbors, buy your foodstuffs in a grocery where you soon become known, stop for a snack or drink in a small and unpressured bar or cafe.
Another ingredient for a fine vacation interlude is a house--not a hotel or motel, but a house, an old but comfortable house with a porch on which to sit, a spacious kitchen for making some meals, a living room in which to relax. In small towns all over America, various local entrepreneurs rent out vacant houses to tourists for a week or so.
The market for such vacation homes is so strong that giant, nationwide firms or websites--Homeaway.com, EVRentals.com, Rentalo.com, Flipkey.com, among them--have emerged to make such dwellings available on a short-term basis. But the websites I've mentioned, being nationwide in scope, are obviously renting homes that they--the renting agents--have not themselves seen.
I prefer going to a local real estate broker, one with limited inventory that they have themselves inspected. By simply accessing the internet, and scanning the options in a town you have chosen, you have a good chance to find a reputable agent, as I recently did. He was Peter Drinkwater of the small but exquisite waterfront town of Winter Harbor, Maine, who--with his wife Sandy--owns the Captain Bickford House (where we stayed) and also finds other such house rentals for persons calling or inquiring about his main property (P.O. Box 340, Winter Harbor, Maine 04693, 207/963-2710, wh5n10@myfairpoint.net). Next door to that home is an RV camp that has several additional small bungalows for rent; and not far from Winter Harbor is another and even smaller seaside town called Prospect Harbor, with an outstanding bungalow colony called Albee's Shorehouse Cottages, 70 Main Street, Prospect Harbor, Maine 04669, theshorehouse.com (207/963-2336).
A small town with a restaurant serving local specialties, a bungalow, a pleasant library, and nature--the combination of those features, all enjoyed at a very modest cost, gave me a fine recent vacation, and I came home feeling rested, strong, and happy.