Top Five Travel from YankeeMagazine.com

Best 5 Fall Camping Spots

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0100

We asked Carol Cambo, co-author of New England Camping (Avalon; $21.95), to choose the five best places to pitch your tent or park your RV during the height of autumn color.

Little Moose Management Unit
Greenville Junction, ME
Backcountry hikers in the mood to rough it may choose from a handful of primitive sites on Big Moose Pond. The rewards: miles of trails with views of Little Moose Mountain. Open all year.
207-778-8231
outdoors.mainetoday.com/hiking/trails/LittleMoose.shtml

Mount Philo State Park
Charlotte, VT
If you prefer certain amenities to complement sweeping views of Lake Champlain, choose one of 10 mountaintop sites. Most rigs can tow a small RV up the steep slope. Open through Oct. 12.
802-425-2390
vtstateparks.com/htm/philo.cfm

Lost River Valley Campground
North Woodstock, NH
Two rivers run through it, so car and tent sites sit by the rushing water. Kids love wriggling their way through Lost River Gorge and Boulder Caves across the road. Open through Oct. 12.
800-370-5678, 603-745-8321
lostriver.com
603-745-8031
findlostriver.com

Clarksburg State Park
Clarksburg, MA
Plunked in the middle of an unspoiled northern hardwood forest with views of the Hoosac Range, Mount Greylock, and the Green Mountains are 45 sites near Mauserts Pond, offering fishing, hiking, and bird watching. Open through Oct. 12.
413-664-8345
mass.gov/dcr/parks/western/clsp.htm

Oak Embers
West Greenwich, RI
Get your foliage fix on horseback. This family campground is adjacent to Arcadia Management Area, crisscrossed with riding trails, and across from Stepping Stone Ranch and its trusted steeds. Open through Oct. 31.
401-397-4042
oakembers.com
401-397-3725
steppingstoneranch.com

MORE SITES: Camping Under New England Stars

Five Favorite New England Inns

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:00:00 +0100

Best 5 Mountain-Bike Trails

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:00:00 +0100

College Art Museums: Top 5 in New England

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0100

We asked critic Edgar Allen Beem, author of Yankee's art blog, "Just Looking," to name the five best college art museums in New England. After "weeks of soul searching" (and omitting the obvious giants, such as Harvard and Yale), he made his choices.

Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Brunswick, ME
This McKim, Mead & White jewel box houses a treasure trove of some 14,000 art objects, ranging from Winslow Homer's watercolor box to fabulous Assyrian bas-reliefs.

Colby College Museum of Art
Waterville, ME
In terms of sheer space, this is one of the most impressive college museums in America. While it has only 6,000 objects, its 13 light and airy galleries seem to just go on forever.

Rhode Island School of Design Museum
Providence, RI
It's the 20th largest art museum in the country and one of New England's best-kept secrets.

Smith College Museum of Art
Northampton, MA
The real strengths of the Smith collection are its 1,600 drawings, 5,700 photographs, and 8,000 prints.

Williams College Museum of Art
Williamstown, MA
You'll find a collection of some 12,000 objects, close to half of which are works by American artists.

Tops in Chocolate Shops in New England

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:00:00 +0100

Bookstores: Best 5 in New England

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0100

Diners in New England: Top 5

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:00:00 +0100

Nobody knows more about these classic eateries than Richard Gutman, curator of the Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI, and author of three books on the history of diners. When we asked him to name his five favorites, he groaned, "There are more than 300 diners just in Massachusetts!" Still, he agreed to confide all five of his top picks, with a little lore about each of them.

Find 20 more classic New England diners selected by Richard Gutman.

Trees: Five New England Favorites

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:00:00 +0100

Foresters estimate that, give or take a few million, New England has over 26 billion trees. With so many, it is easy to miss the trees for the forest. What follows are just some of New England's most notable trees. Like the New England forest itself, they are a mixture -- some are distinctive for the role they have played in history, or their sheer jaw-dropping size, or their breathtaking loveliness. Or because of the hand that planted them.

The Family Tree

The Pinchot sycamore is the largest tree in Connecticut: Ninety-three feet high, with an average branch spread of 138 feet, its trunk measures 25 feet, 8 inches in circumference. Families often link hands to circle the tree.

Where: Cross the steel bridge over the Farmington River on Connecticut Route 185 south of Simsbury Center. The tree stands in a small park.

The Survivor

Well-known to Dartmouth College students, the Parkhurst elm is loved for its tenacity as well as its beauty. It's a majestic tree, 94 feet tall, whose leaves turn yellow-gold in autumn. This elm survived the Hurricane of 1938, then Dutch elm disease. Twenty years ago, some of its roots were severed during a road project, but the elm continues to thrive.

Where: On North Main Street in Hanover, New Hampshire, in front of Parkhurst Hall.

New England's Largest Turkey

With a trunk almost 17 feet in circumference, this is a magnificent specimen of the turkey oak (Quercus cerris), 64 feet high, New England's largest. Native to Europe, it has wavy-edged leaves and large acorns with bristly cups. Some say it's called a turkey oak because its leaves look like the fanned-out tail of a tom turkey.

Where: Bushnell Park, Hartford, Connecticut.

The Trees the Settlers Saw

Gifford Woods, a small, under-ten-acre stand of old-growth forest in a Vermont state park, gives visitors a glimpse of how the New England forest looked to the first settlers. Some trees rise more than 100 feet from the forest floor. Most of the sugar maples date from Revolutionary times, and there is also a 400-year-old hemlock. A state park and campground allows visitors to sleep within sight of these trees.

Where: Gifford Woods State Park, Sherburne, Vermont, 1/2 mile north of Route 4 on Route 100.

The Tree of Independence

This very large and beautiful horse chestnut was planted by one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, William Whipple, upon his return from Philadelphia in 1776.

Where: On the lawn of the Moffatt-Ladd House on Market Street, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

"The Forest Primeval"

Along the Elwell Trail at Paradise Point Nature Center is a stand of giant hemlocks that began their lives in the 17th century, well before Longfellow wrote of "the murmuring pines and the hemlocks" in "Evangeline."

Where: Paradise Point Nature Center, North Shore Road, East Hebron, New Hampshire. 603-744-3516.

The Endicott Pear

The oldest living fruit tree in the United States has blossomed and borne fruit for more than 300 years. In 1964 vandals cut off its branches, but the tree was saved by grafting.

Where: On Endicott Street, behind the Sylvania Plant in Danvers, Massachusetts. Take exit 24 off Route 128.

"Tree at my window, window tree ..."

From 1900 to 1909 Robert Frost lived on a farm in Derry, New Hampshire. He once wrote, "I might say the core of all my writing was probably the first five years I had there." His children may have played by this magnificent maple near the barn.

Where: Frost Farm, 2 miles south of Derry Circle on Route 28. 603-432-3091.

The Sculptor's Honey Locust

This tree stands in front of the house where famed sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens lived. It was planted by Saint-Gaudens in 1886 and is the largest honey locust in New Hampshire.

Where: Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish. Take I-89 to exit 20, drive south on Route 12A. 603-675-2175.

The Castine Elms

Considered one of the finest stands of elms in New England, over 300 of these great trees grace the village of Castine, Maine. Townspeople have labored long and hard to help their trees withstand Dutch elm disease, and these elms are among Castine's treasures.

Where: Especially notable along Main Street.

Portland, Maine, Restaurants: Top 5

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:00:00 +0100

Portland's culinary reputation continues to grow nationwide. Several of the following restaurants have received prestigious awards for their excellent and delicious meals. Travel to Portland, even if only to dine at their incredible restaurants and you will not be disappointed.

Sam Hayward, Fore Street
The plates that come from Sam's kitchen carry strong Mediterranean influences, but the ingredients and simplicity are undeniably coastal Maine. Fore Street's signature dish, for example -- mussels with garlic and almonds -- gives a nod to French and Spanish cuisine, but the orange nuggets of cold-water mussels coaxed from their blue-black shells are all about the briny seas around Coombs Island in Gurnet Strait, where they're harvested by hand.

Fore Street's many-windowed dining room is rustic and minimally decorated, but like the food, it's a well-thought-out operation: comfortable and natural with exposed brick, rich wooden tables, and an open kitchen centered around a wood-burning oven that reaches 800 degrees and a grill that glows from the live flames beneath its grates.

Among the cooks here there's a precisely choreographed hustle -- one that comes from experience, yet, centered around that fiery gleam, somehow evokes a primal dance. It's all part and parcel of dining at Fore Street.

Fore Street
288 Fore St.
207-775-2717

Rob Evans, Hugo's
Rob Evans is having a good time. After years of cooking gigs that had him bouncing back and forth between Maine and Hawaii, Rob has developed a style and a philosophy that he calls "new American." He uses his French, Italian, and Japanese cooking skills on "foods within the region that work together, while being creative and fun about it. I think about the ingredients, then build from there."

Rob loves New England's changing seasons, but at this time of year he's more than happy to be cooking with fresh, wild greens, which he gets from forager Rick Tibbetts. "The stuff he finds in the wild is more organic than organic," Rob says. "He constantly surprises me with beautiful local ingredients."

Beyond what Rob calls his "responsibility to support the local guys," using indigenous foods is important to him "because it's all part of being in the place you are. If people travel to Portland, I want them to have a Portland experience -- not to try to re-create something from the Napa Valley or Paris or Miami. This is Maine."

Hugo's
88 Middle St.
207-774-8538

Lee Skawinski, Cinque Terre & Vignola
Chef Lee Skawinski and his partner, Dan Kary, are so committed to local foods that they farm most of the produce on their menus themselves. "We support as many local guys as we can, from rabbits to chickens to lamb, because we can, and because it's a better product," Lee explains. "Part of being a cook in our restaurants is to come to the farm and pick. It makes the connection to what we cook more profound." This time of year, Lee says, "I'm like a kid at Christmas, waiting for asparagus and peas. They have a vibrancy that can't be replicated or easily described."

Lee puts the food, not his ego, at the center of the plate. During the off season, he travels to Europe to underscore "the importance of quality ingredients, taste wine, and pick up a few ideas." At Cinque Terre the menu offerings are refined Italian classics; at Vignola, dishes hail from the great Mediterranean wine countries of Italy, Spain, and France.

Cinque Terre
36 Wharf St.
207-347-6154

Vignola
10 Dana St.
207-772-1330

Steve Corry, 555

"We [the kitchen staff] poke around at the farmers' markets and snag what inspires us, what looks good; then we bring it back to the kitchen," says Steve Corry, chef and co-owner (with his wife, Michelle) of 555. "We talk the menu through, and everyone has an opinion. Some are more vocal than others, but the cooks are all passionate and intense. Sometimes it goes through a few renditions before we're all satisfied. Then it makes it to the menu."

Steve and Michelle both spent time in California before settling back among their East Coast roots. That time in Napa codified their respect for local ingredients and their love of fine wines -- both of which are front and center on Steve's menus.

Before opening the doors, Steve was clear about his cooking style and what his operation would be, "but mostly I wanted to make sure that this would be a place for people who live here in Portland -- not just for out-of-towners. We love seeing new faces for certain, but we're also open seven nights a week, no matter the weather."

555
555 Congress St.
207-761-0555

Krista Kern, Bresca

Most of Krista Kern's prior experience was in desserts, but this woman is a force to be reckoned with, from appetizer to pasta to salad to entree. Her flavors are bold, but not overwhelming. And her mark is on every dish that leaves Bresca's teeny kitchen doors. "It's like I'm hosting a small dinner party every night," she says. "I don't want to be a big operator right now. I just want to take care of this little space and the people who come here."

Early in Krista's career, she was the sole baker in the kitchen of a large fine-dining establishment, where she produced more than 5,000 pieces of bread and pastry a day, on her own. "I went to New York to get formal training and more experience," she explains. She spent the 1990s cooking and baking her way through New York, France, and Las Vegas, coming home to Maine to do her own thing. With five tables and 20 seats, "it makes sense for me to go to the farmers' markets and local grocers to buy. I could never meet the minimum orders of the large companies, and that's fine -- I'd rather have a relationship with a local producer than an 800 number."

Bresca
111 Middle St.
207-772-1004

University Art Museums in New England

rss@ypi.com (Yankee Publishing Inc.) — Wed, 21 May 2008 04:00:00 +0100