On the Road Again - NYTimes.com All these years later, I still remember the feeling, as a child growing up in New Hampshire, of taking what I knew would be my last swim of the summer. Back in those days, I knew far less than I do now about endings - had yet to see my parents die, or to sign a divorce decree - but that last swim served as a kind of small rehearsal for death. After that came frost, and the garden was finished. The days got dark. Then cold. Birds left. Snow came. It was the dread of winter that caused me to leave New Hampshire 16 years ago, to live in Northern California. But every summer a yearning for New England overtakes me, as if a homing device were implanted in my brain, or possibly my heart - and all I want is to get myself to a dirt road leading to a lake and dive on in. I've gone back plenty, usually for a week or two, staying with friends, running up car rental charges. But the time always felt too short. Then a year ago September, I met Jim - long-divorced, like me, but a nearly lifelong Californian. Though he had traveled plenty, his only experience of New England came in the form of two short trips to Boston, so I cooked up a plan to spend the entire summer in New England. We'd stay with friends along the way, but knowing it gets wearing to pack up and head out to a new destination every few days, we'd seek out rentals for longer stretches. I had found Jim on the Internet, after more than 20 years of single life for both of us. Now, on the heels of our romantic success, I started up my search engine with another kind of online quest. Sometime around April, I began perusing VRBO (Vacation Rentals By Owner) and Airbnb. I had a rough itinerary: start out in Maine and then make our way to Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire. For $1,800 I found, on the Maine Craigslist, a red 1990 Chrysler LeBaron that my friend Becky checked out for me, and we left San Francisco on the summer solstice. From Boston, we took a bus to Portsmouth, N.H., where Becky picked us up in our new convertible. That night, at her cottage in Maine on Mousam Lake, I celebrated summer's arrival, and ours, with my first swim, followed by lobster and fresh strawberry shortcake with friends. Next morning, we set out for the first rental - a small house in the town of Rockport, Me. Cost: $950 a week. Two hours from our destination, ominous noises started emanating from the LeBaron. We had already determined, the day before, the reason for the amazingly low mileage on the odometer: broken odometer. Now it turned out the muffler was also shot. But the Rockport house was everything we'd hoped for - a sweet cape tucked away at the end of a dirt road, a five-minute walk to the photography school Jim was attending, and to Rockport Harbor. The owner of the house is a gardener, who urged us to take advantage of the garlic scapes, greens and herbs for our salads. Wild blueberries were coming into season by now, so (having located a wood-handled pastry blender at a junk shop) I made the first of the summer's pies. We stayed in Rockport for just over a month - long enough to nearly get tired of lobster rolls, though never of the hot tub under the stars, or the fireflies, unknown to a Californian. We made side trips to a lobster pound in Georgetown, a barn concert in Wiscasset, a Fourth of July parade in Thomaston and to the Maine State Prison Showroom, staffed by inmates (and a couple of guards) and selling items produced in the woodworking shop. An hour's drive south, we discovered the best Maine beach I'd ever visited: Popham, with an expanse of sand so vast that aside from the scent of salt water, you might mistake it for Egypt. We also took a day trip to Gulf Hagas, a gorge featuring waterfalls and pools and mossy glades along the Pleasant River, which our gazetteer billed as "the Grand Canyon of Maine." That hike left us with an acute craving for cold beer, and we raced to the town of Brownville to reach the general store before closing time. As we sat on the bench out front, enjoying our beer and taking in the scene of locals coming and going in the setting sun, a police car pulled up. Some upright citizen had spotted us with our open containers. "You two fleeing from anyplace?" the officer asked. We told him no, tossed what was left of our beer and showed him our licenses. Vowing reform, we made a hasty departure, back to the more tourist-friendly town of Rockport. For most of the month we were there, people had been talking about the imminent launch of the schooner Adventuress, under renovation for the better part of three years. On our last Rockport day, we made our way to the harbor, along with virtually every other man, woman, child and dog in town, to see the Adventuress rolled down off the blocks and into the water. Then we rolled out ourselves, bound for Acadia National Park. Most people heading to Acadia choose Bar Harbor as their base, but to avoid the crowds, we decided to explore the northernmost portion of the park and booked a couple of nights at the Main Stay Cottages in Winter Harbor. Our second morning there found us sitting outside a coffee shop across the street from a genuine 5 and 10 cent store. By now, Jim was talking about taking the Maine bar exam and opening up a practice, and I was pretending that I might get back into sewing. We were still immersed in that fantasy as we set out on our morning's hike along the water. "Look out for wet rocks," I called out, not soon enough. Jim was down, hard. The doctor at the clinic in Gouldsboro confirmed what he'd already figured out: broken rib. Teeth gritting from the pain, Jim drove the LeBaron on to our next stop, Acton, Mass., for a visit with my daughter and her 11-year-old brother (her father's son, by his current partner) - on a road trip of their own. The apple does not fall far from the tree. For $150, we stayed in a mansion I found on Airbnb, filled with sculptures and interesting furniture, a place so vast that when Jim woke me in the middle of the night to say he needed to get to the emergency room, it took us a good 10 minutes just to find our way to the door. Three hours later - Jim heavily medicated but ready for our next adventure - we were back on the road. One of the many things I'd missed about the East Coast were the biking trails, and none more than the 22-mile-long Cape Cod Rail Trail that stretches from Dennis to Wellfleet. Hurting though he was, Jim swore he could handle this, so we made our way to West Harwich, where my friends Cindy and Harry rent out a little house just off the trail. The rate for Cindy and Harry's farmhouse in high season is $3,775 a week, but we got the friend discount. Cost: one excellent pie. Apple this time. From West Harwich, Jim and I drove to Hyannis, to catch the ferry to Martha's Vineyard, where I'd found a place on the far end of the island, in Aquinnah. This house - an architect-designed compound set at the end of a long driveway - costs $10,000 a week. But because of a last-minute cancellation, we got a steeply discounted rate. What we got for our money was proximity to the bluffs and beaches and one of the more spectacular places for a person to sip her gin and tonic at day's end: a deck looking out over the trees to the ocean. Because the Aquinnah side of the island is dry - and we ran out of gin - we made the long trip to Oak Bluffs on our third day, for supplies, but we couldn't get back fast enough. The first of our two New Hampshire rentals was on one of the state's loveliest large lakes, Newfound, in the town of Hebron. I'd chosen this property ($1,400 a week) because the ad for it mentioned that the place had been in the owner's family for 50 years, but what sealed the deal was her nearly apologetic statement to me: "It's nothing fancy. We haven't spent a lot of money with a bunch of improvements. What I seek in a perfect summer cottage bears little resemblance, if any, to what I look for in my home the rest of the year. I don't need beautiful furnishings, or challenging art, or any type of possession that would only have me worrying if I spilled the guacamole or tracked in sand. Our Newfound Lake cottage, with its mismatched furniture, stacks of old National Geographics in the bedroom and an ancient Scrabble game with tiles missing, filled the bill perfectly. Because I had no ambitious cooking plans, I didn't mind the tiny kitchen, which had a muffin recipe permanently posted on the wall. On a trip like this, I'm not that interested in restaurant meals. I'd rather grill a piece of fish over the fire or throw corn in the pot (we'd reached corn season by now) or whip up salsa and flip open a beer. We also climbed two small mountains (Cardigan and Rattlesnake), jumped into a swimming hole called Sculptured Rocks and hosted my daughter and her boyfriend for a meal and a bonfire. Other summers, when my New England time was measured in days, I'd mourned a single afternoon of rain, but now we loved it when a thunderstorm hit, allowing an afternoon of reading and playing rummy. When the sun came out, we watched the boats go by, filled with kids from the nearby summer camp rumored to be hosting the Obama girls. Every time a canoe went past, I waved. But our favorite residents of Newfound Lake were the loons. Sitting by the shore, we could hear them calling, and occasionally, in the daytime, I'd watch one dive under the surface and come up at a whole other spot. I swam multiple times a day myself. Nighttimes and in the minutes just after sunrise were the best, because nobody needs a swimsuit then. It would have been hard leaving that cabin, except that I knew we were headed to more great destinations - Jim's first glimpse of the Green Monster at Fenway Park, a free outdoor Cowboy Junkies concert in Portsmouth, fried clams at Petey's in Rye. The car was sounding iffy again, and it gave out just as we reached Hillsborough, N.H. , where I lived for all the years of my marriage (and where my daughter lives still). Nearly 25 years had passed since I lived in Hillsborough, but as we pulled in to the garage still run by the same man, Gene Livingston, who serviced every beater car of my younger days (the Willys Jeep, the '66 Valiant, the '78 Country Squire wood-paneled wagon), Gene greeted me with no apparent surprise. "I got Audrey's car out front here," he said, gesturing to my daughter's Honda. Yours'll be next. Another mechanic had given us an estimate of $1,500 to get the LeBaron back on the road. Gene's bill came to a hundred bucks. With the car running smoothly again, we were off to Vermont, where in the town of Fairlee, top down on the LeBaron in a field behind the Fairlee Motel & Drive-in Theater, we caught a show at the drive-in. Next morning we headed toward Rutland, to check out the 12-acre Hathaway family corn maze. We immediately got so confused that I began to worry if we'd ever find our way out, until Irene Hathaway arrived to help us. Do you ever worry about young children getting lost in here? "You know one great thing about a corn maze?" she said. It muffles the sound of crying kids. This was a joke, I think. In Goshen, I had reserved two nights at a place near the Green Mountain National Forest. After a challenging search - no cell phone service or G.P.S. - we finally pulled up to our cabin, and were met (assaulted is a better term) by the smell of room deodorizer. Then Jim spotted the true culprit: jars of anti-mold chemicals. The room deodorizer had been only a cover-up. We turned around and closed the door. I had paid $320 for the cabin, plus a hefty damage and cleaning deposit. But there was no way we'd be sleeping in this place. Jim called the owners. Maybe our case was assisted by his quietly identifying himself as an environmental lawyer. I'd like to think the system simply worked, and that fear of a bad review motivates owners to do the right thing. Whichever the reason: our money was refunded in three days. (For those uneasy about handing over payment to unknown individuals, for unseen accommodations, a further experience: at an Airbnb stop in Providence, I opened a drawer in search of a corkscrew and found, instead, several hundred dollars. The experience of trust in these transactions goes both ways.) Mid-August now. The lupine of June had given way to goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace, and the tables at the farmers' markets were filled with beans, zucchini, tomatoes and corn. I had saved, for last, the stop I'd most been looking forward to since I reserved it in the spring: two weeks at a cottage in Nelson, N.H., just down the road from the best general store I ever visited, in Harrisville, and not far from where I used to live, on the shore of Silver Lake, one of my favorite swimming spots. If I had designed my perfect summer cottage, this one would be it: a hemlock-sheathed cabin surrounded by blueberry bushes with a fieldstone fireplace and old leather chairs. Every detail, down to the binoculars on a peg by the door, suggested that the people who made these choices had spent a few decades figuring it all out. Down from the house, beyond the outdoor shower, a wooden platform held chairs and a hammock angled to catch the morning sun. For afternoons, you'd choose the dock outside the boathouse, which housed fishing poles, kayaks and a canoe. Monday nights, in Nelson, there's a contra dance with live fiddle, piano and caller, that's been an institution for a couple of decades. The night we dropped in, I saw faces from my youth, including the piano player, who'd played at my wedding 35 years before. Jim and I climbed Mt. Monadnock, a five-hour round-trip that can yield views all the way to Boston on a good day. But mostly we stayed at the cabin - canoeing and kayaking, studying the fishermen, inviting old friends for dinner on the porch. It was now peach-pie season. The astonishing part was looking out at this perfect lake, from the dock, and seeing no more than a scattering of lights. Most remarkable, though, were those moments, in the middle of the night, when I'd lie there and realize we were hearing and seeing something that many people, in places like New York City, and even Marin County, may go a whole lifetime without experiencing: Total darkness. Total silence, pierced now and then by the haunting cry of loons. In September we headed back to California. We left the LeBaron in the same place we'd started out, at Becky's house. We'd sell it as a fixer-upper, mileage unknown, to some other dreamer, or a pair of them. It seemed fitting that on that last day, pulling the car into Becky's yard, the rearview mirror dropped off in my lap. No need to look behind any more. Fall lay ahead, and winter. But so did next summer.