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Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival Returns to Fredericton in September

Fredericton, New Brunswick has garnered a reputation as the Festival Capital of the Atlantic Maritimes. Last time I was in town, I caught up with David Seabrook, one of the founders of the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival, over a tasty Picaroons Yippee IPA at King Street Ale House, as he explained to me how he gets some of the bigger names in the music industry to play the festival every year. The line-up for the 28th annual festival (September 11-16) is one of the best yet, with Steve Earle, Mavis Staples, Sturgill Simpson, and The Blind Boys of Alabama among the 150 performers on hand for the 6-day event. When not listening to music, be sure to see the impressive collection of art at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, including works by Turner, Dali and Lucian Freud. Also try to plan your trip to Fredericton around the Fredericton Farmers Market, voted one of the "Top 10 Farmers Markets in the Country" by Canadian Geographic. The Market is open every Saturday from 6am to 1pm with over 200 vendors selling produce, home baked goods, meat, maple syrup, flowers, handcrafts, jewelry and much more.

 

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Time to Ski New England

With six feet of snow on the ground in Boston, you can only imagine what the skiing’s like in nearby New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. In fact, a friend in Vermont just told me yesterday that this is the best snow he’s seen in 20 years. New Hampshire and Maine are also reporting exceptional skiing conditions. So if you have no plans yet for February school break, head to the mountains. Temps are expected to plummet this Friday and Saturday, so you might want to visit Okemo and ride on their new heated 6-passenger bubble chairlift. Or visit Jay Peak, where you can take several runs before bringing the kids indoors to their vast water park. If you need inspiration, here’s “Why I Ski the East.” 
 
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Adventures in Oregon: First Stop, Hood River

The winds on the Columbia River Gorge were far too strong for stand-up paddleboarding when we arrived on its shores. According to friend Kirby Neumann-Rae, Editor of the Hood River News, the winds were “nukin.” That didn’t stop the windsurfers and kiteboarders from hitting the water and the air in this wind tunnel that separates Oregon from Washington. Neumann-Rae soon led my brother and me on a drive away from the river to the fertile valley backed by the snowcapped peaks of Mount Hood and Mount Adams. Called the Fruit Loop, a 35-mile drive leads to pear orchards, fields of lavender, alpaca farms, farm stands, wineries, and an emerging hard cider scene. This is not the cloyingly sweet beverage you’re accustomed to drinking. We made three stop at HR ciderworks, Fox-Tail Cider, and Hood Valley Hard Cider, and were surprised that the drink tasted more like dry sparkling wine than apple juice. It was crisp, refreshing, and could easily be paired with the Chinook salmon and steelhead trout the region is known for. Sample the cider on the back deck picnic tables of the Solera Brewpub in Parkdale and you’ll be mesmerized by the spectacular view of Mount Hood.  

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Italy, Turkey, Lake George, and Favorite All-Inclusive Resorts in our August Newsletter

In this month’s ActiveTravels newsletter, we describe our recent trip with the family to Istanbul and Cappadocia, an outfitter our clients love in Italy, some of our favorite all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean, a Quick Escape to my boyhood stomping ground, Bolton Landing, New York, on the shores of Lake George, and how Award Wallet can save all your airline mileage onto one nice app. 
 
Off to Ithaca to drop our son off at college. I’ll be back with a new entry on Tuesday. Enjoy this last glorious month of summer and Happy Travels!
 
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Gamirasu Cave Hotel in Cappadocia, Turkey

    “Urgup?  You stop in Urgup?” I asked the bus driver slowly in English as I pointed to our ticket.
    “Yes, Urgup.  Coming.  Coming,” the man replied as he continued driving like a maniac. Something was seriously wrong. We had passed Goreme about an hour ago and, according to my trusty guidebook, Goreme is only five miles from Urgup in the heart of Turkey’s intriguing Cappadocia region. 
    “Urgup, we’re going to Urgup!” my wife repeated loudly, approaching the point of hysteria. The driver nodded in agreement and grinned.
    We eventually arrived in Urgup seven hours later, in the middle of the night. A pack of wild dogs howled as they followed us to our inn. There was nothing wrong with my guidebook. In a rush, the driver had sped past Urgup to the next city. He didn’t speak our language, we didn’t speak his. Insanely frustrated, we arrived at the bus station, only to learn that the bus back to Urgup didn’t leave for another five hours.
    When we awoke the following morning in our Urgup hotel room, the strange scenery surrounding us seemed more bizarre than the previous evening’s events. We were inside a 1,000-year-old Byzantine monastic retreat carved out of a cave, now an 18-room hotel called Gamirasu. When Mount Erciyes poured lava over this region thousands of years ago, the volcanic ash formed a surreal, lunar-like landscape consisting of cone-shaped monoliths and layers of soft volcanic rock called “tufa.” Early Christians found the pervious terrain ideal for escaping persecution by Romans and Arabs. When wet, the tufa could be easily carved like soap to make caves out of the pinnacles as well as underground cities descending hundreds of feet below the surface.
    The first Christians came to the valleys of Cappadocia in the 4th century, led by St. Basil. They formed communities within the caves building living areas, bakeries, and workshops. The people of Cappadocia continue to live in these caves. The rooms are cooled by volcanic rock, which helps protect the 8th-century frescoes seen on the hotel walls.

I’m off to New York on Monday, back on April 11th. Have a great week!
 

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Top 5 Paddling Spots, Boundary Waters, Ely, Minnesota

Maybe it’s the 1,000,000-plus acres of seemingly endless wilderness—a whopping 1200 miles of canoeable waters through countless lakes, rivers, and ponds—that gets paddlers all dreamy-eyed over Minnesota’s northern frontier, the Boundary Waters. You can go days without seeing another person, replaced instead by moose, whitetail deer, black bears, beavers, otters, and those laughing loons. Wilderness Outfitters has been taking people away from civilization since 1912. Fish for smallmouth bass as you canoe from Mudro to Crooked Lake in early June, or wait for fall foliage in late September and you can paddle when moose are in heat. They also offer canoes and maps for self-guided trips. 
 

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Another Ridiculous Assignment from an Editor

Yesterday, I received a call from an editor of an auto magazine in Detroit, wanting me to rent a Chevy Malibu in Boston and drive to Washington, DC. A photographer will be joining me to take shots. She wants me to describe the drive. Okay, not exactly the most scenic stretch of highway in America, especially when you’re passing the chemical plants in northern New Jersey. I’ve been a travel writer for 20 years, so I’ve had my fair share of absurd assignments. The worst was a request from Men’s Journal to backpack along a stretch of the Mojave Desert with a guy who was designing a long-distance Desert Trail though the Western states. I had to backpack in with over 30 pounds of water and my own blend of dehydrated food. The heat was brutal and the only signs of civilization I saw were deflated balloons hanging from the cacti. You want to know where your kid’s helium balloons go when they lose them? This forgotten hellhole. By the third day, my feet were covered with blisters, my supply of water was sucked dry, and the tape in my trusty microcassette recorder had melted. The editor ended up cutting my 1500-word story to 500 words due to space limitations. But I did better than the photographer I was traveling with, who had to schlep in his heavy camera equipment on top of the water. They didn’t accept any of his work. Must have been that glaring sun.
 

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