about to book a 2 week trip to New England, to happen in May. All we're paying for at this end though is return flight to Boston, 2 nights there, and a hire car to take us to totally unspecified places. The general plan is to head north from Boston, up the coast, eat as much wacky seafood as is thrown at us, turn inland at some point (towards White Mountains), hopefully swerve to avoid some hairy wildlife on a dangerous road, and head back to the plane.

Can anyone give any tips on what not to miss/what places to avoid as part of an extended pull-in-find-room-see-stuff-find-food-get-bladdered-sleep-drive-off-next-day vacation? Don't mind the occasional tourist trap, cos we've never done the area before and know very little about it, but don't want to do too much of that sort of thing (i live in York, and am sick to death of tourists).

And, especially, are we missing much by not heading south from Boston?

ta muchly

I suspect you can get extravagent mansion tours in the .. uh ... UKay, so by not going south to Newport, R.I., you won't miss much. You could stop in Nashua, N.H. and think thoughts that here is where video games all began (Ralph Baer invented the patent that all video game consoles are based on right there). I lived in Hartford, CT for 6+ years and never found too much reason to leave town and visit the New England sights. We could get hills and trees within a 40 minute drive of the town.

cheers paul - though i have to say that i'm sure my girlfriend would be all of a giddy buzz to find we stopped off somewhere to pay homage to video games ("What? We flew thousands of miles to escape work, only to think about more fucking GAMES??").

i live between the Yorkshire Dales and Moors, so "sights" of landscape aren't really gonna impress me much ... in fact i'm full to the back teeth of scenery, dammit i want some FUN. And before anyone starts going on about nightlife or the lack of it, "fun" to me is a plate with a lobster on it. Preferably in some sort of hut. On a jetty.

I live in Maine, about 20 minutes away from the Moxie capitol of the world. Thats sort of exciting. If lobster = fun, you're in for a treat. Even the McDonalds here sell lobster sandwiches.

If you are coming this far, Freeport and Bar Harbor are the 'tourist traps' of Maine. Cool little cobbled towns to run around in, and in Freeport there's the L. L. Bean store, which people seem to love.

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Even the McDonalds here sell lobster sandwiches

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i just cum

I belive you mean "Came" or "Cummed" or even "Cumnt"

theres always salem, though ive heard that's only good around halloween to go visit. Walden pond is around here, as is a lot of historical stuff. by may the weather should finally be nice again too.

definitely go up on mount washington in new hampshire. and hike a trail down to the "lake in the clouds". It's absolutely gorgeous up there and the view is just mindblowing. check this out:

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I live in Maine, about 20 minutes away from the Moxie capitol of the world.

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I miss Moxie. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Frank the Avenger

NH is full of trees

danr: For lobsters, then you just want to hang around the Maine coast and look for little mom & pop places the little alien monsters.

CheapAlert: I miss trees (Texas has trees only as an afterthought).