For the winter months, there were two "sun" locations that weren't too far away: Bermuda and Florida.
As the author described, new flying options and generally cheaper fares have upended the old vacation order. People are also more open-minded to going places that were never considered as vacation destinations in the past, such as Iceland (only 4 hours from Logan).
But a few strange geographical outlooks remain. For road/train vacations, for as long as I remember, the dominant perspective has been focused on New England, New York City, and maybe Washington DC as a stretch (7-8 hour drive). Montreal is less than 5 hours away but I never knew anyone from my generation that went there until we were in our 20s. Other parts of Quebec and the Southern Maritimes and Northern New York are still basically terra incognito to 90% of the population of Boston. It seems further away even though these locations are closer than Washington DC.
We moved to the area in a very middle class neighborhood when I was young, around the same time as the author of TFA. Like you said, what I saw was a lot of families had family summer homes on the Cape or one of the NH lakes. Everyone but the Dad would pick up for the summer, and then he'd work during the week & then go to the summer home on the weekend. But these weren't luxury homes by any stretch. These were small, often rustic, closer to shack than nice summer home. A place to sleep at night and not much more.
In the intervening decades, that's all changed. Today's summer homes are so much more different. I've seen a lot of those families I knew back then sell their homes over time. Developers scoop up several properties in a row and build some huge McMansion. So now these areas are the sort of wealthy person summer home people picture when the term is used.
Exactly. Lake Winnipesaukee is a playground for the rich now. No one is selling seasonal properties on Cape Cod anymore, they've all been converted to condo developments or year-round homes starting at $500-$600k and often well over $1m.
The call is coming from inside the house!
The developer would love to build four new half mil cottages instead of one new 1mil McMansion. But they can't they have to bundle four old lots or whatever to be able to do something that's legal because of the laws and rules championed by the EXACT. SAME. PEOPLE. who complain about all the new McMansions on the lake. And then they complain about the jet skis and the boat stereos and whatnot. Did you think that the people rich enough to buy this stuff would not have toys? And the whole time they vote to raise taxes too so that hastens the whole turnover process because the people who would hold onto the seasonal properties have to either bend over and take the carrying cost or renovate into a high end rental (if that's even possible to do economically with the grandfathered in cabin they've got) to make it worth it (or just sell out, which is what their kids almost always choose to do because screw all that work).
You literally can't have a shitty old trailer type "hunting camp" or seasonal cabin in most of Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine because once again, the people that got there first pulled up the ladder via the government.
Source: Have some of these assholes (lake variety) in the family
I miss it dearly and there is nothing like it any more.
- New Brunswick is very economically depressed and only has a few things of interest to your average tourist (primarily along/near the Bay of Fundy). It's about a 8hr drive just to get to Moncton from Boston.
- Nova Scotia - Also struggling economically in many areas outside of Halifax. Halifax is 11hrs out of Boston and what's arguably the most interesting scenery in the province (up in Cape Breton) is more like 13hrs.
It's also cold much of the year so the optimal tourism season is short and even in the warm months it's often not that warm (and the ocean water certainly never is).
Quebec:
- Quebec City is decently known and about 7hrs. The rest of the province besides that and MTL I agree are basically a mystery to most.
- That Maine is basically a remote wilderness along the Quebec border and has almost no land connections (and no good ones) makes exploring up beyond Quebec City less common than it seems like it should be. (Also no bridges over the St. Lawrence beyond Quebec City).
The sweet spot would have been 18-21 years old for a first trip imo
Were faster aircraft operating on this route at some point? Nowadays Icelandair says 5hr15min BOS->KEF and 5hr50min on the way back.
The airline would rather the trip take zero hours because crew costs hourly and they want to turn that seat around and sell it again but they have to balance that against fuel costs.
I agree with you about the Maritimes. The bridge has made a difference but it's still a long drive and as you noted there are few famous destination cities or attractions.
Regarding Quebec: It seems that far more Quebeckers are aware of New England attractions in Boston and points north than the other way around. You see them or hear them at ski slopes, beaches, concerts in Boston, etc. Yet few New Englanders have been to Montreal, and even fewer have even heard of Quebec City, the walled European city and heritage site just a few hours downriver.
By the time I was in my 20s (in the early 2000s), the situation was totally different. The most ridiculous: sometime in 2009, JetBlue had a deal, announced on radio, that you could purchase unlimited flights for 3 months for only $500. As my fiancee had moved to the western US for her medical school residency program, this was a godsend. I visited her every weekend... I don't remember if I took a full 12 trips, but it was more than 10. I would leave Boston immediately after work on Friday and then take a redeye and arrive back in Boston at 7am on a Monday. I haven't seen a deal like that in a long time, and flying has increasingly gotten worse since that experience, but it still is relatively affordable compared to my high school years.
I work with that tiny startup! Bermuda Air has been a fantastic partner for us developing automated routing/alerting for pilots, dispatchers, and ops.
We even got to do some work during the big hurricane season last year. Pretty special to see your code operating in that real of a real-world application.
It has a personal memoir style that I like
