Acadia National Park, home to Cadillac Mountain and John D. Rockefeller Jr.-funded carriage routes, covers most of Mt. Desert Island in Maine. However, lovely Bar Harbor in the island's northeast corner is a destination.
North Shore communities in Greater Boston are culturally significant. Seafood, beaches, and historic sites are popular in the coastal area. Famous films including Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island and Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester-by-the-Sea were shot here.
Daily ferries bring day trippers to Oak Bluffs, a Martha's Vineyard village with fairytale gingerbread mansions. Visitors get off their boats into Ocean Park, a circular green with cottages and a frothy, fragile pavilion overlooking the water.
This Massachusetts peninsula is a favorite vacation area for good reason. It's lovely year-round and full of history (visit Plymouth to see where the Mayflower docked), but summers are hot.
Newport is a coastal town with distinct residences than Oak Bluffs. The famed cliff walk has ten massive, historic houses that were formerly the vacation residences of the Vanderbilts, Nevada silver heiresses, and other wealthy Westerners.
Montauk, Long Island's easternmost point, is the End. Strong winds, high sea, and plenty of conserved land make this place seem like the edge of the planet. (Some inhabitants of Long Island's furthest out community say it's the Beginning.
Cape May, with its pink triple-decker Victorian mansions and busy, celebratory promenade, is America's idyllic beach town ideal, complete with melting ice cream on the sidewalk and Fourth of July picnics.