In September 1604, the French explorer Samuel de Champlain landed off the rugged southern shore of what would one day become the state of Maine. Upon observing the bare, rocky slopes that defined the landscape of one extraordinary island, Champlain named the isle Île des Monts Déserts—the Island of Bare Mountains.
Back in 2005, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn gave us a comedic gem in Wedding Crashers, a tale of two friends’ escapades as they conned their way through nuptial celebrations in and around Washington, D.C. Besides introducing us to Chazz Reinhold, the film offered a glimpse of Maryland’s Eastern Shore—a place where madras pants, nautical-themed wedding vows, and jerks named Sack Lodge were supposedly normal parts of life. Cue to the real Eastern Shore, a collection of beautiful towns, quiet peninsulas, and vast wildlife refuges on the eastern edge of the Chesapeake Bay.
Today, it is known as The Pearl of the Adriatic. But in 1991, as the Croatian War for Independence raged through the region, life in Dubrovnik was anything but beautiful.
“Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts.” —John Muir
Before his death in 1826, Thomas Jefferson—the former president, vice president, and secretary of state—wrote a simple epitaph, soon to be inscribed on his tombstone at Monticello. “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”
The Long Weekender 