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What is There to See In New England?

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(page 6 of 10)

When this port town at the mouth of the Piscataqua was young, sailors called it Strawbery Banke for the profusion of fruit on its shores. The nickname sticks to this day to a fine museum that shows how people lived here over the last three centuries. That's not to say that Strawbery Banke ignores the 21st century -- its Dunaway Restaurant quickly made a name for itself in Portsmouth's already competitive dining scene.

Fine farmhouse fare makes up the spread at the Shaker Table in Canterbury Shaker Village, one of two New Hampshire communities of this mystic sect. The other sprawls in Enfield, almost within hailing distance of the Connecticut River, the handsome Dartmouth College campus in Hanover, and the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, where yet another Granite State art colony flourished.

With astonishing mountain vistas, rolling pastures, and primal northern forests, New Hampshire is a state of grandeur. But grandeur doesn't preclude intimacy. Waitresses at the breakfast cafes always seem to call you "hon," the aroma of warm cookies wafts from little B&Bs in the afternoons, and you'll surely get an earful of local gossip at the village church's Saturday night bean supper.

Massachusetts: The Bay State

By David Lyon and Patricia Harris

Massachusetts may have forgotten more history than most states can remember, but there's more to the Bay State than 10th grade U.S. history books suggest. Forty miles of high dunes and Atlantic surf form the Cape Cod National Seashore, the ultimate playground for sunning, swimming, surfing, collecting seashells, surf-casting for bluefish, or just taking a break as the sun sets over Cape Cod Bay. Out on Cape Cod's tip, Provincetown jangles through the season as a carnival of art galleries, ice cream cones, and tanning oil. Wellfleet's briny bluepoint oysters are reason enough to visit.

North of Boston, on the other Massachusetts Cape -- Cape Ann -- artists have painted Gloucester's fishing harbor and the towering granite headlands of Rockport for nearly two centuries. Yet this cape may be most famous for the fried clam, invented by Chubby Woodman in Essex on July 3, 1916, and still served there by his descendants.

It seems unfair that a state so blessed with coastline should be bracketed on the west by the gently rolling hills of the Berkshires, an epicenter of summer arts. Spread a gourmet picnic on the lawn as the musicians warm up for a Tanglewood concert or catch modern dance on a mountaintop at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. All year round, the former mill buildings of North Adams almost vibrate with the charged contemporary art of Mass MoCA, while Stockbridge still looks just as Norman Rockwell painted it.