While offering heavenly views, Purgatory Chasm can be hell on your ankles. So it's probably a good idea to let sure-footed Sheryl Farnam lead you this Sunday through the strangest geological mystery in central Massachusetts.

Video: Go inside Purgatory Chasm

For weary New Englanders, vacations didn't always mean battling traffic to a crowded beach on Cape Cod, Jet-Skiers whooshing across Lake Winnipesaukee or removing your shoes at Logan for a cramped flight to Cancun.

Video: Check out "Always Delightfully Cool" at the Boston Athenaeum

The exclusive Winvian resort in Morris, Conn., in the scenic Litchfield Hills, looks a lot like what would happen if you gave a child - with very expensive taste - an unlimited budget to build the playhouse of his or her dreams.

In fact, 15 architects were given the task of creating the ultra-luxury property's 18 cottages, each with a theme, and with no expense spared. Horse lovers can stay in a space modeled after stables. Duffers can stay in the golf cottage where you can putt through on the undulating floors. Choose the theme of flight and you share space with a 1968 Sikorsky Sea King Pelican helicopter.

On those days when you fantasize about escaping to a movie-set-perfect tropical island, Roatan, Honduras, fits the fantasy nicely.

So I learned on a brilliantly sunny day, when the color of the seawater resembled a swimming pool - except one was teaming with brilliant tropical fish - and I found myself sitting in a thatch-roofed restaurant shack supported on stilts above the water in the funky town of West End. I was plenty hot and that crystalline water looked awfully good.

I had forgotten my bathing suit at the inn where I was staying, but fully clothed, I padded down the wooden stairs and dropped into the tranquil sea. Nobody seemed to notice or care.

Spring is the perfect time for viewing New England's waterfalls, and Crawford Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire is "Waterfall Central."

There are at least 13 falls tumbling from the heights within the Notch. Two are visible from the road; the rest you can get to on hikes of anywhere from a quarter-mile to 2.4 miles.

My fiancee and I recently did an overnight escape to see some of the falls, making our base camp the Appalachian Mountain Club's Highland Center, (www.outdoors.org).

France can still be affordable despite the current unfavorable exchange rate. The trick is to rent a house or apartment. Generally known as "gites," vacation rentals are a time-honored tradition throughout France and, thanks to the Internet, easier than ever to access.

I learned the hard way about the advantages of renting. As a frequent Paris visitor, I prided myself on being an aficionado of that city's many small, special and relatively inexpensive hotels.

On a flight from Boston, I told my seatmate how skillfully I had patched together a 10-day family reunion using several Parisian hotels. He described the apartment rental he was sharing with a few other students.

The enormity of my blunder sank in a few weeks later when we exchanged e-mails, comparing notes. His apartment with its splendid roof deck cost a fraction of what we paid for the hotels.

The Currier Museum of Art in Manchester owns works by Picasso, Matisse, Monet, O'Keeffe and Warhol, among its 11,000 paintings and objects. But it lacked space to show everything off.

Fortunately, that has changed with the museum's recent re-opening, following a $21.4 million expansion. The Currier is now one-third larger, with 90,000 square feet of exhibit space.

But space is not all that is new. Visitors will be wowed before they even get inside the museum's enhanced galleries by the newly installed, 35-foot, orange-and-black painted steel sculpture, "Origins," by Mark di Suvero.

Who's a better kisser: Debbie or Freckles?

Frankly, it doesn't matter. With 25 stingrays swirling around a shallow beach off Grand Turk - playfully darting between your legs or brushing up against you like cats - there's plenty of love to go around.

"She's just a big portabella mushroom," coos tour guide Roger Cunningham to "Debbie," a 3-foot-wide Southern Atlantic stingray that he kisses with his lips and cradles in his arms.

It's moments like these that will make you thankful you ditched the beer buckets and got off your five-day cruise on the Carnival Imagination at the ports of call - Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay and Nassau, Bahamas - to go exploring.

Interstate 93 draws a line through the center of New Hampshire. The highway crosses into the state near Lawrence and follows the Merrimack River through Manchester and Concord before passing the Lakes Region and traveling through the scenic heart of the White Mountains.

Even if you're using I-93 as a fast route to a destination you've already chosen, stop to enjoy family attractions and experiences, just minutes from the highway.

On a recent visit to China, I was standing on the Great Wall, with the little voice in my head saying, "WOW, I AM STANDING ON THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA." I was so excited I text-messaged a friend to tell him where I was.

"Is it great?" he responded.

I should have quoted Richard Nixon. "I think that you would have to conclude that this is a great wall" (1972). Instead, my mind blanked and I just said, "Yeah."

I'd come to China to check out the preparations for the Beijing Olympics. Despite recent protests over China's human rights abuses, the games are very much set to get under way on Aug. 8.

My coupon-carrying mom taught me to love a good bargain. And one of the best bargains in travel happens every April 15, when prices in the Caribbean drop dramatically until high season picks up again in mid-December.

Spring is a great time to visit the region. Unlike Central America, where the rainy season rears its ugly head in the spring, the Caribbean gets very little rain this time of year. Temperatures hover in the mid-80s. So the islands continue to tease us with their bright sunshine while many of us are still dealing with a cold and often damp April and May. And without the winter crowds you may have the beach practically to yourself.

But what about summer and those dreaded hurricanes, you ask? Summer happens to be a great time to visit too.

"Moose gawking" is a popular pastime throughout northern New Hampshire and inland Maine. Moose are impressively large critters. Although they can run as fast a horse, they usually prefer to stand beside the road or on the edge of a pond - often looking like they are posing for photos.

Spring is prime time to spot moose. In the winter they move as little as possible. When warmer weather comes, they seek water and salt - a favorite spot to gather is roadside puddles, so use caution when driving in moose country.

I had a little trepidation when the small airplane pulled us - my instructor and me - way above the ground. But then I found soaring like a bird was the greatest thrill and wondered why I had never tried hang gliding before.

The rides at Disney World and Universal Studios aren't the only places to feel a rush of adrenaline in Orlando. The city and its surrounds offer a wealth of experiences for those who like their adventures extreme, from flying in the air to swimming with sharks.

Provincetown in summer gets up to 50,000 tourists a day. Venturing there for a spring getaway will deliver a more low-key scene and architectural, outdoor and cultural surprises you might overlook on beach days.
Home to approximately 3,000 year-round residents, this sand dune - surrounded on all four sides by the National Seashore - looks much as it did a century ago. Get a good perspective on the town's shape and scale walking the town beach along the harbor.

In a climate of cultural and economic shift, a guided bike tour allowed Boxford Selectmen Steve Davis to experience the unchanged natural beauty of Vietnam and Cambodia during his recent trip to the Southeast Asian countries.

When families go on a vacation, the kids want to have fun. You as a parent want your kids happily entertained - to like the experience and maybe learn something. And you want to enjoy yourself, too, and hopefully find a little time to relax.

Birders love to buy accoutrements related to their hobby. But in most cases, this is a multi-store task - bird watching gadgets relegated to a corner of a sporting goods store, birdseed to a garden shop, feeders to a nursery.

That's why, upon entering the 3,000-square-foot Bird Watcher's General Store in Orleans, Mass., people who love birds are at first dumbfounded. Everything is here under one roof in this birder's Mecca.

Looking up at the gleaming skyscrapers of today’s Beijing, I began to wonder where the history was in this imperial city turned modern metropolis.

On highways packed with highly prized new Audis and other cars in the city center, you may glimpse the peak of an old temple, but you have to look hard.

Beijing hides its history behind a bustling concrete jungle.

Consequently, most visitors to the China capital these days have the same reaction: “It’s not what I expected.” As it prepares to host the world at the Beijing Olympics in August, the city feels as much like a clean version of New York as a place with a 5,000-year-old legacy. You start to wonder how a foreign place can look so not.

Located on 1,300 acres between the Green and Taconic mountains in Manchester Village in southern Vermont, The Equinox resort casts itself as the gateway to all that is New England.

The main hotel proudly traces its roots to 1769, when its tavern served as a pre-American Revolution meeting place for the Green Mountain Boys.

Aspects of the historic ambience remain in the large porches, grand public rooms and historic tavern.

Food is an essential part of my school-age daughter's day. When Melanie blurts, "I'm hungry" on vacation, that's my cue to find sustenance immediately or face her wrath, replete with tears and a tantrum.

Yielding to her hunger pangs at SeaWorld San Diego, I had a plate of chicken fingers in front of her in almost record time.

But then, as San Diego's famous son, Dr. Seuss, might say, something strange and truly amazing happened. Melanie was not stuffing her face. In fact, her eyes were the size of doughnuts as she stared in awe at an orca whale doing a back flip, not more than 10 feet from where we were sitting.

The "Dine with Shamu" experience at SeaWorld was just one of the many adventures that mesmerized our family of four on a road trip along the California coast.