Go Play!
I just spent the morning biking in nearby Dover and Sherborn as I get ready for a bike trip next month with my college buddies in Zion National Park. My usual ride around the surrounding towns gets even more enticing in autumn, when the air is crisp and sweetened with the smell of pine and fallen leaves. I ride past horse farms, 18th century homesteads that have been transformed into stylish properties, sprawling meadows, faded red barns, old stone walls, and ponds lost in a forest of maples. It’s a quintessential New England backdrop, one that deserves to be savored slowly on two wheels. September is a gift, before the dark, chilly days of winter return. Take advantage of this time to do something active this weekend—a stroll on a beach, bike ride through the countryside or on a bike trail through the city, or simply climbing a tree to pick apples, which I plan to do tomorrow morning. I’ll be back next week with my favorite Connecticut haunts in autumn, including the hidden gem, Weir Farm, which I checked out yesterday.
Cape Cod is so close to Boston that I often drive there on a day trip, which is exactly what we did yesterday to meet my cousin, Peter, and his family in town from Dallas. I took them on a ride we do each summer. We start on Main Street in Orleans in the lot next to Orleans Cycle and head out on the Cape Cod Rail Trail toward Eastham. Soon we pass the velvety marsh, where red-winged blackbirds sit atop the swaying cattails and cormorants dry their wings on floating docks. At Locust Road, we veer right off the CCRT and cross over Route 6 to reach the Cape Cod National Seashore Visitor Center. This is the start of a 2-mile bike trails that sweeps up and down through the forest and marsh, leaving you off at Coast Guard Beach, recently named one of the top 10 beaches in America. However, I think the beach up the road, Nauset Light, is even more scenic, backed by towering dunes. We lock up our bikes and walk down to the sweeping beach. Yesterday, there was at least 20 seals popping their heads out of the surf. 
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The landscape of Cape Breton is a mesmerizing mix of rolling summits, precipitous cliffs, high headlands, sweeping white sand beaches, and glacially carved lakes, all bordered by the ocean. The Cabot Trail is a road that hugs the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the rugged northwestern edge of Nova Scotia, where around every bend you want to pull over, spew expletives of joy at the stupendous vista, and take another snapshot. Indeed, it’s as close to Big Sur as the East Coast gets. Add bald eagles, moose, coyotes, and pilot whales fluking in the nearby waters and you want to leave the car behind and soak it all up on two legs. 
Take a chunk of Vermont and plop it down in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and voila, you have Prince Edward Island. This sylvan setting lends itself well to road biking, especially in the fall when the summer crowds are long gone and the maples provide a colorful backdrop. The Canadian Pacific railroad that once connected Prince Edward Island’s small villages last roared through the interior in 1989, leaving in its wake hundreds of kilometers of track. By 2000, the tracks were pulled and the line replaced with a surface of finely crushed gravel, creating a biking and walking thoroughfare called the