 Maine Mount Desert Island, off the coast of Maine, is widely known as the home of Acadia National Park and the town of Bar Harbor. If we viewed the island from the air (a look at the Acadia map will do), we would notice north and south aligned gouges scooped out of the land as if by a very large hand. Indeed, in this case, the hand was that of a huge, slow moving, continental glacier over a mile high,... 2 miles thick in some places. When this giant glacier finally melted and retreated, it left rounded mountain tops, long lakes, many boulders, and the 7 mile long Somes Sound - the only fjord on the ...
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 Coasta Rica Manuel Antonio National Park
The three sweeping strands of pristine white beach that flow into the Pacific Ocean are only part of what makes this place paradise. Manuel Antonio National Park is where the jungle meets the sea. The beaches are long, wide and covered with beautiful soft sand, bordered by tall evergreen jungle on one side, and blue Pacific Ocean on the other. Cliffs overgrown by dense jungle vegetation surround the beaches and in spots the forest sweeps down to the edge of the water sheltering swimmers from the sun. In order to protect the parks eco-system, entrance to the park...
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 Sailing Capital of The Bahamas The Exumas were settled in 1783 by American Loyalists who wanted to remain true to the British king after the United States won the American Revolutionary War. They reassembled their former way of life in these islands, complete with cotton plantations and African slaves. Remnants of these plantations still remain. Lord John Rolle was a major landowner and one of the most powerful Loyalists. When he freed his slaves in 1835, he bequeathed his land to them for life. In gratitude, several towns are named after him and many of the people in The Exumas wear the name of "Rolle" with pride.
They...
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 Islands of the Bahamas Look around at the elegant resort hotels, golf courses, casino, marinas, and shopping malls of Freeport/Lucaya – and you may find it hard to believe that none of this existed when JFK was president. Faster-paced than Nassau, this cosmopolitan "second city" of the Bahamas is really only four decades old, a monument to modern tourism. But what makes Grand Bahama special is the fact that while you can play, shop, gamble, and boogie the night away to your heart's content in American-style comfort, much of the island remains as it was before the resort revolution.
That includes miles of uncr...
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 Lying just off the Queensland coast and sheltered by the Great Barrier Reef, the Whitsundays are Australia's answer to the cruising grounds of the Caribbean, and home to the island continent's largest fleet of charter yachts. The 74 islands – most of them in pristine national parks – offer a lifetime's worth of quiet anchorages and empty white-sand beaches fanned by steady breezes virtually every day of the year.
Whether you're out for a daysail, on a crewed yacht, or bareboating on your own, traveling by boat also opens the way to the great snorkeling and fishing found in ...
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