School Vacation Week Without a Lift Ticket
Most of New England goes north in February. Some of us go east. Here is how to spend a week on the coast with kids.
By Dotti Maguire
New England school vacation week is the Tuesday through Sunday after Presidents' Day, and every parent in Massachusetts is making the same decision: drive north to Vermont and ski, fly south somewhere warm, or figure out something else.
If you pick something else, Cape Ann is a strong contender. We have been doing it with our own kids for years.
What Actually Works Here in February
The beach. Bring boots. Good Harbor and Wingaersheek are empty, the flats come out at low tide, and kids can run for miles. Bring gloves for the inevitable tide-pool inspection. Pack a thermos of hot chocolate.
The Cape Ann Museum. Kid-friendly for anyone seven and up, especially the fisheries galleries and the scale models of working boats. Budget an hour. The main museum is currently in a renovation phase and the new wing reopens June 30, but the Captain Elias Davis House and the permanent collection are accessible now.
Maritime Gloucester. The working waterfront museum on Harbor Loop, open weekends in winter. Touch tanks, model-boat shop, historic schooners. Under $15 per adult.
Halibut Point State Park. The short out-and-back to the quarry is doable for kids five and up. The granite and the abandoned industrial equipment are better than any playground.
Dogtown. If your kids are older (ten and up) and enjoy a hike with a weird story, Dogtown is a former 18th-century village now grown over with woods and marked with stone inscriptions from a Depression-era patron. The trails are flat, there are no crowds, and the stories tell themselves as you walk.
Rainy-Day Backups
The Bookstore of Gloucester. Long-running Main Street independent, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Good kids' section, a reading chair, helpful staff. Lone Gull Coffeehouse a short walk away for after.
Candlepin bowling in Beverly. Candlepin is a New England specialty the rest of the country does not have. A twenty-minute drive, plus an arcade. Perfect for a rainy Wednesday.
Ipswich Museum and the Old Burying Ground. Not obvious with young kids, but the museum's 17th-century house tours are well-run and the adjacent burying ground has headstones from the 1650s that kids find genuinely fascinating.
Cape Ann Museum. The fisheries galleries, the scale models, and the Fitz Henry Lane paintings are all kid-friendly. Worth an hour on any gray afternoon.
Where To Eat
Kids do well at Destino's Sub Shop (a proper Italian sub delivered to the house counts as a win), Virgilio's Italian Bakery for a picnic-style lunch, and Pleasant Street Tea Co. if your kids are old enough to sit still for a tea service. Grownups get a better experience at Short and Main (they tolerate kids happily), The Rhumb Line for a clam roll and a beer, and Lone Gull Coffeehouse for lunch with a harbor view.
Reply to your confirmation email the day before you arrive and we will send you the current picks, filtered for kids.
The Case for the Week
You will spend less than a ski week. Your kids will spend more time outside than they would in a condo in Stowe. You will not spend an entire Saturday morning loading a car and then unloading it again. And in the evenings they will sleep the kind of sleep that only comes after a day in the cold salt air.
It is a different kind of vacation. In our experience, it is the one they remember.