A holiday with a group of strangers evermore unforgettable--Part II

4) Santa Fe

Travel aficionado often dismisses Santa Fe as an adobe Disneyland — a cartoon version of what the Southwest once was.

But don't let the naysayer chat you out of a visit. Sure, the faultless, adobe-built downtown is stopped up with turquoise-selling visitor shops. Canyon Road is a shopping mall of often iffy art (though there are a rising number of world-class galleries, too).

But that just scratches the outside of what this high-altitude settlement of 70,000 artists, writers and other creative-class exiles from normal America is all about.

Santa Fe, resembling California, is a state of mind. It's a place where being different is expectant, where imagination is prized more than money and where you never have to be dressed in a tie (indeed, you'll look humorous if you do).

When we primary started spend summers in Santa Fe years ago it was to see my parents, who live a short walk from the Plaza. But over the decades, we have urbanized a desire for it all my own.

We'll be there soon, headlong into the heaping breakfast burritos at Pasqual's; spend idle mornings with Leo at Leo's Art Books; strolling (and raising my eyebrows, no doubt) through the newest art installations at SITE Santa Fe; and mountaineering up a squall.


5) Ocean City, N.J.

We must be wild, right? No rational travel writer would come clean to a flirtation with New Jersey — land of oil refineries and strip malls.

Home to one of the preceding huge seashore boardwalks in America, it's a throwback to simpler times — a fun-filled summer run away where the attractions don't get much more complex than a travel on the 140-foot Ferris wheel.

Families cruise changeable the walkway, lined with traditional laughter rides, small golf courses, waterslides and arcades where you'll still come across a game of Skee-Ball for 10 cents. At Gillian's Wonderland Pier, smiling children arrive at for the brass ring on a wood-carved Merry-go-round — just as they did a century ago.

There are no bars; alcohol is barred. The strongest drink you'll find here is fresh-squeezed Bob's lemonade A few years before Disney unveiled a fake boardwalk near Orlando, total with arcade games and rent-by-the-hour surrey carts. At the time, we quizzed the designers about their motivation. They took a meadow journey, they told us — to Ocean City.

6) Southwestern Utah

More than four million people a year head to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and it's hard to responsibility them. It is, indeed, one of the grandest formations on Earth.

Marvelous a landscape as the dazzling red-orange spires, bridges and other amazing rock formations found a hundred miles north in Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park, which draws smaller amount than half as many visitors.

Add the bottomless canyons and soaring cliffs of Zion National Park, just 85 miles to the west, plus the area between the two parks, and you have what is perhaps the West's most spectacular outdoor playground — a red-rock region ripe for hiking, biking, blundering and a half-dozen other pursuits.

Furthermore, it's all magnificently easy to get to in a way the Grand Canyon is not — mainly for young, outdoorsy children. Even Larry (our friend) youngest daughter, Mattie, 4 at the time of our last visit, could grip the prized hike up the river at Zion — where 2,000-foot cliffs become visible on both sides. At Bryce, we rambled down with no trouble edible trails through the huge orange "hoodoos." difference that with the Grand Canyon, where the typical hike to the bottom is an expedition.

Make sure into a park lodge (there's one each at Bryce and Zion) or the Best Westerns just exterior the gates. We've done it both ways at both parks (frequently paying less than $100 a night) and it's a tossup which is best. Then drag on your hiking shoes and hit the trail. Keep a little energy, though, for the night. In most country areas, a fleeting look upward reveals about 2,500 stars. But this, after all, is Utah. The whole thing is superior. At 8,000-foot-high Bryce Canyon, on a clear night, you'll see three times as many.

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Part II -----------Part I