Boating Yachting Sailing

The coastal town of Marblehead, in Essex County, Massachusetts, is a charming and historical seaside hamlet of rustic old buildings and quaint little streets that dates back to the days of the pilgrims from the Mayflower, who established a tiny fishing settlement here in 1626. Originally the land itself had long been inhabited by the Naumkeag tribe of the Pawtucket confederation. With a long tradition of fishing and the sailors of Marblehead credited with being the forerunners of the United States Navy, it had gone on in present times to be a mecca for boating, sailing, and kayaking, drawing in people from all over the world. Yet beyond its calm and peaceful coastal atmosphere and idyllic historical buildings there are strange tales of mystique and magic tied to this place, as Marblehead was once supposedly home to a very powerful wizard who held the area’s people in the grip of both awe and fear.

Back in the 18th century, the town began to gain a bit of a reputation for fortunetelling and séances, but among the seers and mediums who came through one really stood out. The man in question was a retired ship’s captain by the name of Edward Dimond, who lived in a modest reportedly made from the remnants of a beached ship at the bottom of a cemetery hill. He was undoubtedly an eccentric man, a large, imposing figure who wore around a large billowing cape and mostly kept to himself, but he was also very well-known for his alleged potent psychic abilities, which both fascinated and scared the local populous.

One of the most common powers he displayed was the ability to find lost or stolen items. He was apparently absolutely uncanny at doing this, going into a brief trance before snapping awake with the knowledge of where the item was. He was so good at it, in fact, that it is said that he was often approached by locals and even police for his help in finding lost or stolen objects. On some occasions he would even punish those who had stolen the items he found. One story has it that one cold winter an old lady came to Dimond to beg him to find the firewood that had been stolen from her. At the time, this was a big deal because having no firewood during the area’s harsh winters could be a death sentence, and so Dimond agreed to help. Yet rather than just finding the wood for her he decided to teach the thief a lesson. He went about casting a spell on the thief, which entailed magically compelling the man to walk the long distance from his home to the old lady’s cottage and back again from sunset to sunrise without stopping, in the freezing cold with a heavy log on his back.

Finding objects was not Dimond’s only power, and not even the most amazing. He was also said to be able to see the future or the past, and perhaps his most spectacular power was the ability to project his voice and even his image over vast distances. One popular tale is that during violent storms the experienced seaman Dimond would climb to the top of a place called Burial Hill, somehow remaining unaffected by the lashing winds, where he would proceed to talk to ships far out at sea, giving them instructions on how to avoid being dashed upon the rocks and advice on how to regain control of their vessels. The crews of these vessels would report either clearly hearing Dimond’s voice through the storm as if he were standing right there speaking into their ear, or of at times actually seeing a shimmering ghostly apparition of him standing on the deck. Other stories still claimed that he could predict the weather with incredible accuracy or actually control the weather itself, causing storms to become calmer, or conversely causing them to get worse or even conjuring them up. It was not uncommon for sailors to come to him before a voyage to inquire about the weather ahead or to ask for safe passage.

It was these alleged abilities that caused Dimond to be known as “The Wizard of Marblehead,” and which also cause him to be as feared as he was respected. All kinds of rumors flew around at the time, such as that he cursed those who displeased him or capsized boats that did not pay a fee, and locals whispered of him dabbling in necromancy or of digging up bodies at the cemetery at Burial Hill. It is not known if any of this was true or not, and indeed it is not known whether he ever had any powers at all, or if he was just a clever conman heavily imbued with folklore by the superstitious people of the time. Was any of this real, or is this just myth and legend? Author Patricia Goodwin, who has done much research on Dimond and written two novellas featuring him, When Two Women Die and Dreamwater, believes that the tales are true, and she says of it:

As someone who is a little bit psychic and someone who has known psychics, Edward Dimond’s gift seems quite plausible to me. I believe the legends of Marblehead are absolutely true. After writing about him, I became very curious about exactly what kind of abilities he had. I did some more research and wound up talking to a Native-American elder who told me that Dimond’s ability was very rare, what the Native-Americans call “far-seeing” and “far-speaking”; that is, Dimond spoke psychically across hundreds of miles from Marblehead’s Burial Hill to the Grand Banks in Newfoundland, speaking directly to the sailors in trouble, shouting commands to them and helping them regain control of their ship and return home safely. The elder also told me that Dimond probably had developed this skill through contact with Native-Americans. Quite possibly. I consider Edward Dimond to be one of the most powerful and fascinating persons I have ever read about. I think Marblehead is charged with powerful energy. It’s certainly one of the most naturally beautiful and vital places on earth. I think Edward Dimond tapped into this extraordinary energy with his own amazing gift. He was a force of nature.

In the end it is unknown just who The Wizard of Marblehead really was or what he was capable of. The stories have circulated around, but mostly he is a figure lost to time, caught as if an insect in amber in a time when he was considered to be a powerful sorcerer beyond mention. It is nearly impossible to disentangle fact from fiction when it comes to Edward Dimond, but it seems he will remain indelibly etched into legend as one of the most powerful wizards who has ever been.

The hotheaded boatie who rammed an oar-wielding school principal with his dinghy in a viral video is a convicted killer on life parole with ‘severe anger issues’.

John Frederick Dixon was released from prison in 1987, but his unhinged behaviour in the recent boating incident so concerned New Zealand authorities that they requested he was recalled to prison because he posed undue risk to public safety.

Mr Dixon, now 58, was 16 when he bashed Joseph Hishon to death after the man denied him a loan in Hamilton in 1978. 

Mr Hishon died from ‘extensive head injuries’ and had a broken skull. 

Dixon admitted punching and kicking the man’s head after he refused to hand over money for cigarettes and rent. 

That trial – 42 years ago – heard Dixon had severe anger issues and a personality disorder and that at 11 he was sent to a boy’s home because his parents couldn’t control him, the NZ Herald reported.

The trial also heard reports that Dixon had ‘marginally abnormal brain functions’ and suggested ‘a tendency to over-react to threats, teasing or any excitement’. 

Dixon was convicted of murder and served eight years in jail. 

The video showed an enraged Dixon recklessly ramming his inflatable dinghy into an aluminium boat after a dispute with another boatie, deputy school principal Catherine Browning.

The bizarre boat rage incident erupted on January 23 at the Tairua Harbour marina, a tourist destination on the Coromandel Peninsula famous for kayaking and sailing. 

Dixon is understood to live in a $150,000 yacht on the marina and was angry that boats passing had ignored a 5km/h speed limit, sending a wake towards his yacht and damaging his dinghy.

‘You rammed our boat and you spit at me, you piece of s**t,’ Ms Browning says as Dixon approaches the boat aggressively.

‘You’re a piece of s**t, you just caused $1000 worth of damage’, Dixon shouts, slurring his words. 

‘What are you talking about?’ Browning asks. 

‘You drive past my boat, you rock it if you’re not doing 5 knots,’ Dixon screams.

Ms Browning grabs a wooden oar as Dixon angrily buzzes another mariner and swings it at him.

‘There are children,’ Ms Browning shouts. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘I don’t care, I want some money’ replies the man as his dinghy promptly deflates and sinks into the water. 

Ms Browning spoke to the NZ Herald on Saturday, breaking down in tears from the pressure after the video went global, escalating the incident to international news. 

She said the video only captured half of the incident with the angry man originally targeting another boat in the drama that unfolded before the video started. 

‘He came in at full speed attacking us, ramming us,’ she said.

‘He scared the s*** out of me and I had to defend myself.’ 

She was facing action from the school board over her behaviour too. 

Ms Browning was dubbed, perhaps unfairly, a ‘boat Karen’.

A ‘Karen’ is a pejorative term for an entitled middle-aged woman who complains to the manager. 

Ms Browning said that the impact of the sudden and unwelcome fame has left her unable to sleep or eat.

‘It’s made my life a nightmare.’

Efforts to have Mr recalled to prison have so far failed, but he is now required to a special Parole Board hearing for a final determination on whether he will remain a free man. 

Realtor.com® report: “Snowbirds” typically searching for sun are favoring nearby ski towns more than ever as they look to escape closer to home

– Union Dale, Penn., Choteau, Mont., and North Creek, N.Y., post the highest increases in searches from Snowbirds

– Snowbird views to top 10 ski towns were up 127% year-over-year on average during the fourth quarter

– Seven of the 10 top ski towns seeing the largest percentage increase in views are located in Northeast and Midwest

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Searches of homes in ski towns were up nearly 36% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to a new report from realtor.com^®. Much of the increased demand is coming from residents of cold weather, Northern states, often referred to as Snowbirds, as they search for homes with outdoor recreation options closer to home during pandemic.

“Historically, residents of the Midwest and Northeast have shown a preference for warmer cities, and contributed to much of the out-of-state demand in homes in sunny states, such as Florida,” said realtor.com^® Chief Economist Danielle Hale. “This year, we found that Snowbirds’ interest in ski towns increased more than interest from other areas across the country. It’s not surprising. Americans are increasingly searching for getaways that are within driving distance. Skiing is done outdoors and generally at a distance from others, making it a relatively safe sport during the pandemic. Many of these areas offer year-round outdoor activities, making them summer destinations as well.”

The analysis examined the home searches of residents from 10 “Snowbird” markets to nearly 200 resort-linked ski towns. It found residents of eight of these markets — Boston; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; New York; Philadelphia; Providence, R.I. and Minneapolis — were showing record interest in ski towns. The exceptions were Baltimore and Detroit, where searches for ski towns were still up year-over-year, but lower than the rest of the U.S. market overall.

Story continues

Views to ski towns from residents of Snowbird metros were up 44.5% in the fourth quarter year-over-year, higher than the 35.7% increase recorded nationwide.

Overall, the top 10 ski towns that showed the greatest increase in home shopper interest from Snowbirds averaged a 127% increase in searches in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to last year. Seven of the 10 top ski towns seeing the largest percentage increase in searches were located in Northeast and Midwest.

Ranked in order of percentage increase, the top 10 ski towns in the fourth quarter of 2020 were:

1. Union Dale, Pa.
Increase in searches (y/y): 225%
Median list price: $185,000

Home to Elk Mountain Ski Resort, which offers 180 skiable acres and 27 trails, Union Dale is an alternative to the more touristy Poconos. It is less than a three-hour drive from both Philadelphia and New York City and just over 30 minutes from Scranton, Pa., the setting for the popular television sitcom, The Office. Scranton is one of the largest cities in Pennsylvania, giving Union Dale residents nearby access to water activities on Lake Scranton, minor league baseball and a vibrant art and restaurant scene.

2. Choteau, Mont.
Increase in searches (y/y): 143%
Median list price: $174,500

On the path between the Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks at the foot of the Rocky Mountain Front, Choteau provides a small town feel and a wide range of recreational activities from exploring ancient paleontology sites to golfing, hiking, boating, fishing and hunting. Ear Mountain, Freezout Lake and the Teton River are just a few of the area’s scenic attractions. Teton Pass Ski Resort, about 20 miles north of Choteau, offers skiing and snowboarding. Great backcountry skiing and snowboarding are also nearby.

3. North Creek, N.Y.
Increase in searches (y/y): 132%
Median list price: $272,000

Home to the Gore Mt. Ski Center, North Creek is a mecca for outdoor activities, including downhill and backcountry skiing and snowshoeing in the winter and whitewater rafting, hiking, biking, fishing and camping in warmer months. North Creek is located near Lake George and is a four-drive from New York City. Owned by the State of New York and operated by Olympic Regional Development Authority, the Gore Mountain ski area has been expanded in recent years, which has resulted in an influx of private investment in new businesses as well as several new housing developments.

4. Eden, Utah
Increase in searches (y/y): 122%
Median list price: $1,190,000

Situated along the Ogden River at an elevation of 4,941 feet, downtown Eden is just 30 minutes from Salt Lake City and three world-class ski resorts — Snowbasin, Powder Mountain and Nordic Valley. Its small town charm includes historic 25th Street, which is lined with shops and restaurants. At the end of 25th Street is Union Station, which houses a vintage car museum, art gallery and a collection of historical trains. In addition to skiing and snowboarding in the winter, Eden offers year-round outdoor activities, including golfing, hiking and biking trails.

5. Windham, N.Y.
Increase in searches (y/y): 118%
Median list price: $692,000

Windham is located in the Catskill Mountains, just 2.5 hours north of New York City, making it a perfect weekend getaway. It’s known for Windham Mountain Resort, with ski trails, terrain parks and a mountain bike park. Area trails include the multi-use Windham Path, passing streams and a covered bridge, and the Escarpment Trail to the summit of Windham High Peak. The Five State Lookout offers far-reaching views of the Hudson River Valley and surrounding mountain ranges.

6. Boone, Iowa
Increase in searches (y/y): 113%
Median list price: $165,000

Named for the youngest son of Daniel Boone, this Central Iowa town is located about 40 miles north of Des Moines. The town grew rapidly following the arrival of the railroad in 1866, which easily connected it to Chicago to the east, Omaha to the west, St. Louis to the south and Minneapolis to the north. Today, Boone’s close proximity to the Des Moines River and abundant parks makes it a good destination for outdoor activities year-round. In addition to hiking at Ledges State Park and skiing, snowboarding and tubing at Seven Oaks, the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad’s dinner train is a great way to enjoy a meal while viewing the changing of the leaves.

7. Otis, Mass.
Increase in searches (y/y): 113%
Median list price: $402,000

Otis is located in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Known for outdoor activities like hiking and water sports, as well as cultural experiences, the Berkshires is a two-hour drive from Boston and only three hours from New York City. This picturesque town is nestled along several lakes and ponds along the slopes of the Berkshire Range. Otis is home to Otis Range, a family-friendly ski resort, several campgrounds and forest preserves, and is a great starting point for hiking with the Taconic, Appalachian and Berkshire ranges all in the vicinity.

8. Lakeside, Mont.
Increase in searches (y/y): 105%
Median list price: $972,500

The cozy town of Lakeside lines the northwest shores of Flathead Lake at the base of Blacktail Mountain. It is just south of Kalispell and about two hours north of Missoula and is known for entertaining tourists who come to visit the Flathead area and Glacier National Park. Lakeside offers four seasons and something for everyone, including skiing the slopes of Blacktail Mountain and sailing and boating on Flathead Lake as well as biking, camping and horseback riding and a lively cultural and restaurant scene.

9. Paoli, Ind.
Increase in searches (y/y): 103%
Median list price: $135,000

Home to Paoli Peaks Mountain Resort, the town of Paoli is about 100 miles south of Indianapolis. Paoli was first settled in the early 1800s and holds the distinction of playing a role in the Underground Railroad. Today, Paoli is a close knit community that offers residents a suburban rural mix. In addition to skiing, snowboarding and tubing, Paoli is close to French Lick, which is known for its historic mineral springs.

10. Boyne Falls, Mich.
Increase in searches (y/y): 100%
Median list price: $321,700

Named for the falls on the nearby Boyne River, this small northern Michigan community is nestled along Lake Charlevoix, which has been named by USA Today as one of the Best Lakes in America. Surrounded by a rolling countryside, Boyne Falls is home to several ski resorts and recreation areas that offer four seasons of outdoor recreation from downhill and cross country skiing, snow biking, snowshoeing and ice skating at Boyne Mountain to golf, ziplining and biking. Nearby Deer Lake offers canoeing, swimming and boating.

Methodology: Realtor.com^® analyzed search activity to 180 towns with populations of at least 1,000 people and at least one ski resort. Towns are defined by ZIP code and will not match municipal boundaries. The analysis also was narrowed to explore searches from residents of 10 Snowbird metros, which are defined as Northeast and Midwest markets with the highest search traffic to warmer-climate vacation or second home markets.

About realtor.com^®

Realtor.com^® makes buying, selling, renting and living in homes easier and more rewarding for everyone. Realtor.com^® pioneered the world of digital real estate more than 20 years ago, and today through its website and mobile apps is a trusted source for the information, tools and professional expertise that help people move confidently through every step of their home journey. Using proprietary data science and machine learning technology, realtor.com® pairs buyers and sellers with local agents in their market, helping take the guesswork out of buying and selling a home. For professionals, realtor.com^® is a trusted provider of consumer connections and branding solutions that help them succeed in today’s on-demand world. Realtor.com^® is operated by News Corp [Nasdaq: NWS, NWSA] [ASX: NWS, NWSLV] subsidiary Move, Inc. under a perpetual license from the National Association of REALTORS®. For more information, visit realtor.com^®.

Media Contact

Janice McDill, janice.mcdill@move.com

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/is-the-beach-so-last-year-301209131.html

SOURCE realtor.com

Originally published January 15, 2021, 3:00 AM

TipRanks

3 ‘Strong Buy’ Stocks With 8% Dividend Yield

Let’s talk portfolio defense. After last week’s social flash mob market manipulation, that’s a topic that should not be ignored. Now, this is not to say that the markets are collapsing. After 2% losses to close out last week’s Friday session, this week’s trading kicked off with a positive tone, as the S&P 500 rose 1.5% and the Nasdaq climbed 2.5%. The underlying bullish factors – a more stable political scene, steadily progressing COVID vaccination programs – are still in play, even if they are not quite as strong as investors had hoped. While increased volatility could stay with us for a while, it’s time to consider defensive stocks. And that will bring us to dividends. By providing a steady income stream, no matter what the market conditions, a reliable dividend stock provides a pad for your investment portfolio when the share stop appreciating. With this in mind, we’ve used the TipRanks database to pull up three dividend stocks yielding 8%. That’s not all they offer, however. Each of these stocks has scored enough praise from the Street to earn a “Strong Buy” consensus rating. New Residential Investment (NRZ) We’ll start by looking into the REIT sector, real estate investment trusts. These companies have long been known for dividends that are both high-yield and reliable – as a result of company compliance with tax rules, that require REITs to return a certain percentage of profits directly to shareholders. NRZ, a mid-size company with a market cap of $3.9 billion, holds a diverse portfolio of residential mortgages, original loans, and mortgage loan servicing rights. The company is based in New York City. NRZ holds a $20 billion investment portfolio, which has yielded $3.4 billion in dividends since the company’s inception. The portfolio has proven resilient in the face of the corona crisis, and after a difficult first quarter last year, NRZ saw rising gains in Q2 and Q3. The third quarter, the last reported, showed GAAP income of $77 million, or 19 cents per share. While down year-over-year, this EPS was a strong turnaround from the 21-cent loss reported in the prior quarter. The rising income has put NRZ in a position to increase the dividend. The Q3 payment was 15 cents per common share; the Q4 dividend was bumped up to 20 cents per common share. At this rate, the dividend annualizes to 80 cents and yields an impressive 8.5%. In another move to return profits to investors, the company announced in November that it had approved $100 million in stock repurchases. BTIG analyst Eric Hagen is impressed with New Residential – especially by the company’s sound balance sheet and liquidity. “[We] like the opportunity to potentially build some capital through retained earnings while maintaining a competitive payout. We think the dividend increase highlights the strengthening liquidity position the company sees itself having right now… we expect NRZ has been able to release capital as it’s sourced roughly $1 billion of securitized debt for its MSR portfolio through two separate deals since September,” Hagen opined. In line with his comments, Hagen rates NRZ a Buy, and his $11 price target implies an upside of 17% for the year ahead. (To watch Hagen’s track record, click here) It’s not often that the analysts all agree on a stock, so when it does happen, take note. NRZ’s Strong Buy consensus rating is based on a unanimous 7 Buys. The stock’s $11.25 average price target suggests ~20% upside from the current share price of $9.44. (See NRZ stock analysis on TipRanks) Saratoga Investment Corporation (SAR) With the next stock, we move to the investment management sector. Saratoga specializes in mid-market debt, appreciation, and equity investments, and holds over $546 million in assets under management. Saratoga’s portfolio is wide ranging, and includes industrials, software, waste disposal, and home security, among others. Saratoga saw a slow – but steady – rebound from the corona crisis. The company’s revenues fell in 1Q20, and have been slowly increasing since. The fiscal Q3 report, released early in January, showed $14.3 million at the top line. In pre-tax adjusted terms, Saratoga’s net investment income of 50 cents per share beat the 47-cent forecast by 6%. They say that slow and steady wins the race, and Saratoga has shown investors a generally steady hand over the past year. The stock has rebounded 163% from its post-corona crash low last March. And the dividend, which the company cut back in CYQ2, has been raised twice since then. The current dividend, at 42 cents per common share, was declared last month for payment on February 10. The annualized payment of $1.68 gives a yield of 8.1%. Analyst Mickey Schleien, of Ladenburg Thalmann, takes a bullish view of Saratoga, writing, “We believe SAR’s portfolio is relatively defensive with a focus on software, IT services, education services, and the CLO… SAR’s CLO continues to be current and performing, and the company is seeking to refinance/upsize it which we believe could provide upside to our forecast.” The analyst continued, “Our model anticipates SAR employing cash and SBA debentures to fund net portfolio growth. We believe the Board will continue to increase the dividend considering the portfolio’s performance, the existence of undistributed taxable income, and the economic benefit of the Covid-19 vaccination program.” To this end, Schleien rates SAR a Buy along with a $25 price target. This figure implies a 20% upside from current levels. (To watch Schleien’s track record, click here) Wall Street’s analysts agree with Schleien on this stock – the 3 other reviews on record are Buys, and the analyst consensus rating is a Strong Buy. Saratoga’s shares are trading for $20.87, and carry an average price target of $25.50, suggesting an upside of 22% for the next 12 months. (See SAR stock analysis on TipRanks) Hercules Capital (HTGC) Last but not least is Hercules Capital, a venture capital company. Hercules offers financing support to small, early-stage client companies with scientific bent; Hercules’ clients are in life sciences, technology, and financial SaaS. Since getting started in 2003, Hercules has invested over $11 billion in more than 500 companies. The quality of Hercules’ portfolio is clear from the company’s recent performance. The stock has bounced back fully from the corona crisis of last winter, rebounding 140% from its low point reached last April. Earnings have also recovered; for the first nine months of 2020, HTGC posted net investment income of $115 million, or 11% higher than the same period of 2019. For dividend investors, the key point here is that the net investment income covered the distribution – in fact, it totaled 106% of the base distribution payout. The company was confident enough to boost the distribution with a 2-cent supplemental payment. The combined payout gives a $1.28 annualized payment per common share, and a yield of 8.7%. In another sign of confidence, Hercules completed a $100 million investment grade bond offering in November, raising capital for debt pay-downs, new investments, and corporate purposes. The bonds were offered in two tranches, each of $50 million, and the notes are due in March of 2026. Covering the stock for Piper Sandler, analyst Crispin Love sees plenty to love in HTGC. “We continue to believe that HTGC’s focus on fast growing technology and life sciences companies sets the company up well in the current environment. In addition, Hercules is not dependent on a COVID recovery as it does not have investments in “at-risk” sectors. Hercules also has a strong liquidity position, which should allow the company to act quickly when it finds attractive investment opportunities,” Love commented. All of the above convinced Love to rate HTGC an Outperform (i.e. Buy). In addition to the call, he set a $16 price target, suggesting 9% upside potential. (To watch Love’s track record, click here) Recent share appreciation has pushed Hercules’ stock right up to the average price target of $15.21, leaving just ~4% upside from the trading price of $14.67. Wall Street doesn’t seem to mind, however, as the analyst consensus rating is a unanimous Strong Buy, based on 6 recent Buy-side reviews. (See HTGC stock analysis on TipRanks) To find good ideas for dividend stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks’ Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks’ equity insights. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

We all have different feelings about traveling right now. When you’re ready, we hope you feel safe, inspired, and excited to join us on The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel.

On The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel, vacations have always offered seclusion in the outdoors. Sometimes that means kayaking alongside manatees, other times finding your own private stretch of beach. But in this particular instance, we’re talking food. Yep, here in Southwest Florida, dining can be a secluded outdoor pursuit, too.

And it can be done in style. Swap the beach towel for a picnic blanket. Grab some fresh-squeezed juices from a local farmers market. Turn up the dial to 11, and dress your family in all-white garb to get those sunset photographs on your ‘gram-grid. You decide how far you want to take it: Will you bring real silverware, coordinating dishes set on placemats, a flower-filled vase, and large cushions to sit upon? Or will you opt for cornhole, card games, and a frisbee?

However you do it, outdoor dining in Southwest Florida is virtually effortless. Here’s how and where to find your vacation picnic perfection.

1. Feast on the beach…

On Captiva Island, the outdoors is your playground and the options are limitless. But first things first: feasting at South Seas Island Resort.

Dine right on the resort’s 2.5-mile beach, the staff choosing a secluded spot to set up your luxury private picnic. This is one for the books — a multicourse dinner with three tiers of possibilities to choose from. Gulf grouper? Check. Filet mignon? Check. Key lime pie? Without a doubt. There could even be champagne, chocolate truffles, and artisanal marshmallows at your reserved firepit to celebrate your arrival. Be sure to clink-clink that stemware.

Tip: South Seas will also deliver gourmet groceries to your door, should you feel like playing chef.

2. …alongside your own lagoon…

Lovers Key State Park was once so remote — or so the story goes — starry-eyed lovers were the only ones who sought out its unending solitude, its deep mangrove forests, lagoons, and pristine beaches.

Nowadays it’s much easier to get to — it’s right off Estero Boulevard — but it remains quiet and serene. Spend a moment searching for shells on the 2.5-mile beach, then head for the trails, peeking into the park’s world of wildlife. Ospreys, roseate spoonbills, snowy egrets, tortoises, alligators, and dozens of other creatures will be keeping you company, whether you know it or not. Bring a hammock with you (permitted in designated areas), and enjoy that picnic while you watch the trees. Who will spot an American kestrel first?

3. …or on your very own sailboat.

In a world where everything is automated, works with the push of a button, or lives in the cloud, there’s something romantic about learning a new skill from the ground up. Enter: sailing. Sailing is meditative, it requires knowledge and patience, and it’s an authentic way to appreciate the outdoors. You’ll learn about weather patterns, wind strength and direction, and the animals and organisms that make the ocean their home.

On Captiva Island — at the aforementioned South Seas Island Resort — you can join forces with Offshore Sailing School and enroll in live-aboard courses. Their multi-day experiences will have you practicing the sailor life on a monohull cruising yacht. Most meals (including snacks) are covered, and there’s nothing like a taste of living at sea. Especially when you’re the one at the helm.

Tip: There are two-day intensive courses (with classes in the morning and afternoon), more expansive five through ten-day courses, and even half-day sessions.

4. Be inspired by the water.

Pine Island is the largest island in Florida and sits just 20 miles from downtown Fort Myers. You’ll want to get on the water, of course, and fishing and boating activities abound. Go kayaking amid mangroves in the Pine Island Sound Aquatic Preserve or along the Great Calusa Blueway, where you’ll get a manatee’s-eye view of quintessential Southwest Florida landscapes.

Pack that picnic, find your spot, and point your nose due west at sunset. The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel is known for its multi-hued twilight, so if you time it right, you can dine with a technicolor view.

5. Add some pedal to your picnic.

Here’s an adventure you’ll have to sweat a little for: Snag a beach cruiser from GullWing Beach Resort, and load up your basket with snacks. Pedal about four miles north up the coast along Estero Boulevard, building up an appetite. You’ll soon reach the northern end of Fort Myers Beach, the pier, and Lynn Hall Memorial Park.

Take your sandals off and snack here, outside, with your little piggies squished in the sand, or order food to-go from one of the many stops along Old San Carlos Boulevard. When you head back to GullWing, you’ll have earned your breather at their beautiful beachfront swimming pool.

Tip: Of course, GullWing is right on the beach, too, and offers fully equipped kitchens — if you want to skip the pedaling and just eat here, we won’t judge!

6. Dine by candlelight.

Pink Shell Beach Resort & Marina, located on Fort Myers Beach, has humble roots. Beginning with one cottage built in 1950, it’s flowered into a 12-acre full-service resort with the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Seal of Commitment. Everything you need is here — no worries if you choose not to mosey too far from your beach chair.

Except to your other beach chair — the one next to that white-linen tablecloth. With Pink Shell’s Dinner On The Beach service, you’ll choose your wine, settle down to four chef-designed courses, and let the candlelight be all that lights up the sand. The only person sharing the beach with you? Your personal butler.

7. Picnic under the palms.

Why limit yourself? Many of The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel’s incredible restaurants offer takeout, meaning you’re never far from a potential picnic no matter where you happen to be. And if you’ve arranged lodging through Sanibel Captiva Beach Resorts, that really could be anywhere. They run ‘Tween Waters Island Resort & Spa, West Wind Inn, Beachview Cottages, Castaways Beach & Bay Cottages, and Sanibel Captiva Island Vacation Rentals, so pick your spot and post up.

Once you’re settled, all you have to do is find a picturesque nearby spot to bust out that picnic blanket. Here are a few ideas:

• Sanibel Island’s Lighthouse Beach Park has designated picnic areas, shaded pavilions, and barbeque grills.
• Bowman’s Beach, with its network of trails, scenic views, and constantly replenished cache of incredible seashells, encompasses a whopping 50 acres.
• No visit to the area is complete without a stop at J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge, home to a massive population of migratory birds as well as alligators, bobcats, otters, turtles, tortoises, and raccoons. Bring your beach chairs and enjoy a picnic after exploring the four-mile Wildlife Drive via bike, foot, or car.

A lot’s possible with just a blanket (and some sunscreen). Well, and maybe your camera too — you’re going to want to remember these carefree moments.

Every day, the ProgrammableWeb team is busy, updating its three primary directories for APIs, clients (language-specific libraries or SDKs for consuming or providing APIs), and source code samples. If you have new APIs, clients, or source code examples to add to ProgrammableWeb’s directories, we offer forms (APIs, Clients, Source Code) for submitting them to our API research team. If there’s a listing in one of our directories that you’d like to claim as the owner, please contact us at editor@programmableweb.com.

Eight APIs have been added to the ProgrammableWeb directory in categories including Social, Boating, and Financial. Highlights include the most recent version of the Facebook Graph API and an API for sentiment analysis in text. Here’s a rundown of the latest additions.

APIs

Facebook Graph APITrack this API provides searchable data about content objects on Facebook and the connections between them. This includes people, their friend relationships, shared content, comments, places, events, photos, groups pages, milestones, videos, live video, WhatsApp connections, and others. Public information can be accessed without a developer key/application key, but is required for private data access. The most recent version of the API is v9.0 which was introduced during November, 2020.

Great Circle-Squid is a provider of marine weather services, both for race management and sailors. The Great Circle Forecast APITrack this API provides weather forecasts primarily for sailing races. Data returned includes wind, pressure, temperature, precipitations, sea currents, etc. for a specified location. These forecasts can be computed for every location on the planet, with time interval varying from 1 minute to 3 hours and up to a horizon of 7 days into the future. The Great Circle Routing APITrack this API provides routes for sailing and motor boat vessels. The API returns ideal isochronic forecast route from a user’s own polar data and wind, sea state weather information for a specified route with potentially several waypoints. Both APIs are listed in the Boating category.

Nmap provides an open source security scanner, port scanner, & network exploration tool. The Nmap APITrack this API enables users to create Nmap scans programmatically, also get scan information, check scan status, and get scan reports. This API is listed in the Security category.

Text Sentiment Analysis Method APITrack this API is useful for analysing text sentiment by passing text or paragraphs, in single line or multiple lines, and getting back a sentiment analysis report, including how many of lines be analyzed, how many positive, negative, or middle sentiment for the lines of text. It is listed in the Sentiment category.

Tradologics is a cloud platform for programmatic financial trading. The Tradologics APITrack this API offers methods to integrate with the platform and manage accounts, orders, assets, market data, operations, strategies, brokers, tools, tradehooks and more. The API features functions for multi-broker trading, multi-language support, private data storage, built-in version control and more. It is listed in the Financial category.

Game DB is a website that ranks games and players from the Steam games library. The Global Steam APITrack this API provides data from the website with methods for managing games, players, articles, packages and groups. Game DB is not officially affiliated with Steam. This API is listed in the Games category.

Currency Exchange REST APITrack this API enables applications to retrieve live currency and foreign exchange rates when users specify source and destination quotes and optional amount to calculate. It supports vast amount of quotes around the world. It is filed under Currency.

Snowflake’s Frank Slootman doesn’t start companies. But no CEO has a better track record for turning the ideas of others into jackpots. Now the 3x IPO veteran is exclusively sharing his playbook.

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^By Labor Day, it had become clear that Frank Slootman’s third initial public offering would not be like the other two.

After a slight summer lull, Covid-19 was resurgent, which meant that rather than a global tour of get-to-know-you lunches and PowerPoints in hotel meeting rooms, his roadshow for data warehousing company Snowflake was going virtual.

Slootman, 62, took over a nondescript conference room on the second floor of Snowflake’s Dublin, California, office, embarking on a series of meetings that now rank with Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm coding sessions in terms of value per hour. For seven days in mid-September, packing in everything from a series of one-on-one meetings to large presentations, the naturally gruff Slootman met over Zoom with more than 1,000 people, including fund managers and investment bankers, who were on hand to win a piece of his IPO.

Rather than the usual grilling, Slootman was toasted instead. “The issue was not ‘Do I like the company?’ The issue was ‘How many shares do I get?’” he recalls in his Dutch accent. Of the virtual IPO he says, “I absolutely loved it.”

Slootman, who took over Snowflake in April 2019, had been as ruthlessly efficient with the rest of the process. Just six months in, he had lined up his anchor investors, including Dragoneer Investment Group and Marc Benioff’s Salesforce. Around the same time, he began meeting with research analysts who would wind up setting bullish prices for the IPO. And when Slootman and his team virtually rang the bell of the New York Stock Exchange, a process that looked as awkward as it sounds, raising some $3.4 billion in the process, Salesforce and others were there to support the floor. “These are people we knew from previous rodeos,” Slootman says with a shrug.

Snowflake, valued at $4 billion when Slootman took over, more than doubled that first day and is up significantly since. It currently boasts a market capitalization of $81 billion on trailing sales of roughly $580 million. His personal net worth, an estimated $2.2 billion, is an extraordinary figure for someone who has never been part of a company in its earliest days.

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Outsize Offerings

Software’s largest-ever IPO, Snowflake, stands as the fifth largest of all U.S.-based tech listings. 

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Slootman likes to say that he doesn’t have a formula, even after having pulled off similar magic at both Data Domain and ServiceNow. Talk to him at length, though, and watch the patterns, and you can see that’s not true. The former sailor runs pre-IPO companies like a tightly rigged high-performance watercraft, a captain with extreme confidence who will throw overboard anyone who shows the mildest mutinous inclination.

“When I was a younger man, I was more tolerant; I always thought I could coach people to a place where they would be great,” Slootman says. “And 99 times out of 100, you’re wrong on that, which is the reason I [now] pull triggers much faster. I still don’t think I’ve ever taken anybody out of a job too soon. It’s [always] been too late.

“I exercise executive prerogative,” he adds. “I don’t have to justify it, I don’t have to convince you. I just have to know that this is what I want to do. And the reason is, CEOs are only there for one reason, and that is they need to win. When you win, nobody can hurt you. And when you lose, nobody can help you.”

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^Frank Slootman’s path to the American Dream, via IPO billions, started with his making Naugahyde seats for the automotive and boating industries. Born in the Netherlands to a military veteran and a portrait artist, Slootman had a childhood regimented by high academic achievement and racing sailing dinghies. A standout economics student at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Slootman finished school a year early to pursue internships in the United States. His dream employer: IBM. In 1982, after a number of rejections from Big Blue, he “crawled ashore with $100 in my pocket” (a phrase he repeats so often his employees know it by heart) in South Bend, Indiana, with a job as an intern in the seemingly dead-end fake-leather industry.

“I learned from that experience that I don’t want to be in an elevator that’s going down,” he says. “It doesn’t matter how good you are or how bad you are—in the wrong elevator, you’re going to get hosed.” Eventually, he was able to shift to the up elevator—computers—first in Detroit, then in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he moved customers off mainframes to more modern server products. When executives at a later company, Compuware, realized in 1995 that an acquisition in Amsterdam was going sideways, its young staffer, a native Dutch speaker, was given a chance to clean up the mess.

By 1998 Slootman was running Compuware’s California office amid the dot-com boom. The assignment itself was another challenge: Compuware was bleeding employees to Silicon Valley’s emerging powers. “My whole career was doing jobs that other people didn’t want to take,” he says. “So after a while I’m, like, ‘Instead of bitching about it, I’ll just stick to these train wrecks and show you what I can do with them.’”

Prioritizing the development of raw talent with high upside, Slootman was able to stabilize Compuware. Rather than return to Michigan, he jumped to Borland Software, a database darling of the 1980s by then in dire straits. After successfully building out its Java development and testing business, Slootman received his first CEO job offer in 2003, when investors in a data-storage startup tapped him for another rescue. Data Domain was running out of money; its technology, while theoretically more powerful than the existing alternatives, ran prohibitively slowly.

Slootman began to hone his skills: He put more energy into short-term sales, worked to improve the product and raised cash to keep the business afloat. Data Domain’s revenue more than doubled each year for the next four years. The day he took the company public on Nasdaq in 2007, shares jumped 66%; two years later, EMC outbid rival NetApp to acquire the business for $2.4 billion.

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IPO Mania

It took nearly a quarter century, but companies are cashing in on public offerings and a new twist, the SPAC, at a rate approaching the dot-com bubble’s highs.

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With an exit in his back pocket, Slootman had his pick of companies for his next act, in 2011. He settled on a fast-growing but under-the-radar software startup based in Santa Clara called ServiceNow. Founded by billionaire Fred Luddy, ServiceNow was cash-flow-positive and doubling revenue, but understaffed—“anemic,” as Slootman now says. Investor Sequoia wanted an executive with more experience building a sales team to target the world’s biggest corporations. The board, including Doug Leone—an investor on Forbes’ Midas List and Sequoia’s coleader at the time—tasked Slootman with doing for ServiceNow what he had just done for Data Domain. “Frank took us from a very large startup and made us into a very large, well-oiled machine,” Luddy told Forbes in 2018.

Slootman once again led with sales as a bridge to a better product. To win over large customers like Johnson & Johnson, he repositioned ServiceNow from a help-desk IT solution—not exactly something to excite a fellow CEO in a meeting—to an all-you-can-eat buffet of tools that could help a needy CIO solve any challenge. About a year after he came aboard, Slootman took ServiceNow public on the New York Stock Exchange. Along the way, investors witnessed his brusque leadership style firsthand when Leone made the mistake of interrupting Slootman with unprompted advice in a board meeting. “Doug, thank you for that comment,” Slootman replied. “Have I told you my point of view on boards? The job of the board is to hire and fire the CEO. If I’m doing a bad job, you should go ahead and fire me. Otherwise, I’m going to go ahead and run the company.”

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^Slootman’s my-way-or-the-highway attitude caused a stir when he arrived at Snowflake on April 26, 2019, hours after cofounders Benoit Dageville and Thierry Cruanes informed well-liked CEO Bob Muglia, a Microsoft veteran, that his services were no longer required. One major cause for the shock: By all appearances, Snowflake wasn’t struggling—and it already had a high-profile CEO.

Snowflake was founded in August 2012 by Dageville and Cruanes, two French-born database experts from Oracle, and was backed by Sutter Hill, whose venture capitalist Mike Speiser served as its first CEO. The company promised to do for data warehouses, which then lived on customers’ own servers, what Amazon Web Services had done for data storage. Harnessing the cloud’s flexible computing output as if it were one giant supercomputer, Snowflake’s software could locate and organize customers’ increasingly large amounts of data—consumer information, product sales, employee overhead—then help make sense of it all quickly and cheaply enough to make it truly useful.

In 2014, after two years under the radar focusing on shipping the software, Speiser tapped Muglia to replace him as CEO. Muglia was no slouch: an engineer who was one of Microsoft’s four presidents before Steve Ballmer replaced him with Satya Nadella. At Snowflake, Muglia moved fast to get the company into the market, pricing it to match Amazon Web Services’ by-the-second consumption model, which offered a pay-as-you-go alternative to a subscription, then targeting customers of Amazon’s own rival product, Redshift. Billboard ads with corny messages like “Happy Holi-data” soon lined Silicon Valley’s main highway, U.S. Route 101. In early 2018, just over a year before his dismissal, Muglia met Forbes for breakfast at a New York hotel. A Gartner analyst on vacation spotted the executive and crashed the meeting to go full fanboy.

But behind the scenes, months before WeWork’s epic IPO-attempt flameout helped make profitability cool again, Snowflake was shaping up to become the tech industry’s next great cautionary tale. Buying up cloud storage credits from Amazon and its rivals and reselling them, all while keeping Snowflake’s own software running, was costly, especially as Snowflake expanded to new markets such as Australia. Its technology—quicker to offer cloud data warehousing than Oracle, Teradata and other database companies but challenged at every turn by Redshift, Google’s Big Query and Microsoft’s Azure Synapse products—required a large and continuous amount of R&D spending. After needing just over $5 million in investment in its first two low-profile years, by early 2018, when Snowflake reached a valuation of $1.8 billion, it had raised almost a half-billion. It took on another $450 million, this time at a $4 billion valuation, about nine months later.

Concerned about Snowflake’s appetite for capital, Speiser approached Slootman, whom he knew through the board of another investment, Pure Storage, to see if he could tempt him to join the company’s board. Having built ServiceNow to a market cap of $14 billion by 2017 (it’s valued at seven times that today), Slootman was focused on bringing back professional yacht racing to California and running a conservation and animal welfare foundation from his Montana ranch. In other words, he was bored. “I have empathy with a lot of quarterbacks who don’t know to retire,” he says.

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“The job of the board is to hire and fire the CEO. If I’m doing a bad job, you should go ahead and fire me. Otherwise, I’m going to go ahead and run the company.”

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When Slootman expressed interest in the Snowflake CEO job, Sequoia and Sutter Hill jumped. In a rare interview, the press-shy Speiser discussed the difficult decision to fire Muglia: “When you have the potential [to build] one of the game-changing companies of all time, you should take the chance.”

Just one problem: No one told Muglia until the day the company announced the coup. Speaking publicly about his departure for the first time, Muglia tells Forbes that it took him months to get over the shock. “The board was the one telling me to spend money, the board was just as strongly behind this. But certainly I did it,” says Muglia, noting that overall spending at Snowflake increased after he left. “I used to call it ‘drunken sailors’ spending. I would say, ‘We’re spending like drunken sailors,’ and they would say, ‘Yes, keep doing it.’ And it was the right thing to do.”

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^In the weeks after the Slootman era kicked off at Snowflake, executives filed into Slootman’s unadorned office one by one to meet the boss, while Speiser, the one who had reached out to Slootman, filled in for him in meetings. Soon Slootman resumed his old tricks. His first action: reorganizing the sales arm of the business to separate large customers from small, focusing more intently on converting the bigger fish. His second: parting ways with anyone who seemed fond of palace intrigue or who didn’t deliver precisely on their word. In came two of his top lieutenants from Data Domain and ServiceNow: Mike Scarpelli to oversee finances and Shelly Begun to run HR. Out went executives and sales reps who didn’t fit Slootman’s mold or didn’t want to work for new supervisors who did.

Just a month later, Snowflake under Slootman had shifted to become a performance-based business. Chief revenue officer Chris Degnan figured his lack of experience in such a structured sales organization would be enough for Slootman to show him the door. To his relief, Begun told him a few weeks later that the new CEO valued his hustle and loyalty to the product. “He’s, like, ‘I’m getting [to be an] old man, I don’t have time to wait.’ That’s just how he operates,” Degnan says.

Scarpelli got to work on Snowflake’s books. Under the company’s Amazon-style pricing, customers could easily expand their usage over time. The flip side: sticker shock, as companies’ bills rapidly grew, and unpredictability, as Snowflake struggled to deliver accurate revenue projections. To make the company more Wall Street ready, Snowflake started working with its bigger customers to show them where they were wasting money running needless reports. Better modeling and the focus shift to larger accounts also made it easier to guess how users might expand or contract.

When Covid-19 hit, Snowflake was prepared, having just raised $479 million from investors, including Salesforce, in early February. Because struggling sectors like the travel industry could simply reduce their usage without renegotiating contracts—and others, such as those in e-commerce or food delivery, saw demand quintuple—Snowflake’s sales barely hiccuped. Slootman hit the austerity button all the same, refocusing resources toward the “drive train”—product, engineering, sales and legal—and away from less urgent areas like marketing. “It’s like being on the America’s Cup boats: Every day is about sailing faster,” says Denise Persson, Snowflake’s CMO. “It’s about getting this entire organization to go in one direction.”

So far, Snowflake is outrunning its competition. Analysts say it continues to beat Amazon and the tech giants’ products head-to-head; as Snowflake gets bigger, it can negotiate better rates, too, driving down its operating costs.

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“They’ve clearly shown they can execute, but I can’t justify this valuation by any means. This stock is being completely driven by the Robinhood crowd.”

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Perhaps Slootman’s greatest triumph so far: selling both outside experts and those within the company on the possibilities of “Snowflake 2.0,” its shift from being a data warehouse to more of a data hub on which businesses can securely (and temporarily) share information with each other, develop apps and feed their data into artificial intelligence tools. That push, which Snowflake says would increase its addressable market from $14 billion to a recent $81 billion, is very much a work in progress. Inside Snowflake, Slootman reengaged cofounder Dageville, now a billionaire himself, to spearhead the project; outside, analysts trust Slootman to figure it out. “Very large enterprises are choosing a vendor to go to bed with for five years, minimum,” says Patrick Colville, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. “So it’s showing them a really nice path forward. It’s much easier to select [Snowflake].”

One unanticipated challenge, however: Snowflake’s current stock price, which has exceeded even Slootman’s expectations ,and which, as of mid-January, was trading at a revenue multiple of 140 times its estimated fiscal 2021 revenue, ahead of cloud darlings Crowdstrike, Okta and Zoom. Should Snowflake stumble on its numbers, or if exuberance fades, employees who made their money in the IPO might not want to stick around. “These are multiples, frankly, that the world hasn’t seen since the internet bubble in 1999,” says Brad Zelnick, an analyst at Credit Suisse. Adds Srini Nandury of Summit Insights Group, who has a rare sell rating on Snowflake: “They’ve clearly shown they can execute, but I can’t justify this valuation by any means. This stock is being completely driven by the Robinhood crowd.”

The ever-cocky Slootman relishes the idea of proving the doubters wrong. “You can look at my private companies and see how that turned out,” he says. The CEO has plenty of reason to stick around, too, with billions tied up in unvested Snowflake shares.

After fighting so hard to become a CEO, Slootman doesn’t know how to do anything else. So, the day after Snowflake’s public offering, he was back to business as usual, demanding that executives present their plans for the next quarter and beyond. “I don’t get that excited,” he explains. “My eyes are on the horizon.” 

Is the beach so last year? Searches of homes in ski towns were up nearly 36% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to a new report from realtor.com. Much of the increased demand is coming from residents of cold-weather Northern states, often referred to as snowbirds, as they search for homes with outdoor recreation options closer to home during the pandemic. 

“Historically, residents of the Midwest and Northeast have shown a preference for warmer cities, and contributed to much of the out-of-state demand in homes in sunny states, such as Florida,” said realtor.com chief economist Danielle Hale. “This year, we found that snowbirds’ interest in ski towns increased more than interest from other areas across the country.”

Hale said she is not surprised by the study’s findings. “Americans are increasingly searching for getaways that are within driving distance,” she explained. “Skiing is done outdoors and generally at a distance from others, making it a relatively safe sport during the pandemic. Many of these areas offer year-round outdoor activities, making them summer destinations as well.”

The analysis examined the home searches of residents from 10 snowbird markets to nearly 200 resort-linked ski towns. It found residents of eight of these markets — Boston; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; New York; Philadelphia; Providence, Rhode Island and Minneapolis — were showing record interest in ski towns. The exceptions were Baltimore and Detroit, where searches for ski towns were still up year-over-year, but lower than the rest of the U.S. market overall.

Views to ski towns from residents of snowbird metros were up 44.5% in the fourth quarter year-over-year, higher than the 35.7% increase recorded nationwide. 

Overall, the top 10 ski towns that showed the greatest increase in home shopper interest from snowbirds averaged a 127% increase in searches in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared with last year. Seven of the 10 top ski towns seeing the largest percentage increase in searches were in the Northeast and Midwest.

Ranked in order of percentage increase, the top 10 ski towns in the fourth quarter of 2020 were: 

Union Dale, Pennsylvania

Increase in searches (year over year): 225%

Median list price: $185,000

Home to Elk Mountain Ski Resort, which offers 180 skiable acres and 27 trails, Union Dale is an alternative to the more touristy Poconos. It is less than a three-hour drive from Philadelphia and New York City and just over 30 minutes from Scranton, Pennsylvania, the setting for the popular television sitcom, The Office. Scranton is one of the largest cities in Pennsylvania, giving Union Dale residents nearby access to water activities on Lake Scranton, minor league baseball and a vibrant art and restaurant scene.

Choteau, Montana 

Increase in searches: 143%

Median list price: $174,500

On the path between the Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks at the foot of the Rocky Mountain Front, Choteau provides a small-town feel and a wide range of recreational activities from exploring ancient paleontology sites to golfing, hiking, boating, fishing and hunting. Ear Mountain, Freezout Lake and the Teton River are just a few of the area’s scenic attractions. Teton Pass Ski Resort, about 20 miles north of Choteau, offers skiing and snowboarding. Great backcountry skiing and snowboarding are also nearby.

North Creek, New York 

Increase in searches: 132%

Median list price: $272,000

Home to the Gore Mountain Ski Center, North Creek is a mecca for outdoor activities, including downhill and backcountry skiing and snowshoeing in the winter and whitewater rafting, hiking, biking, fishing and camping in warmer months. North Creek is near Lake George and a four-hour drive from New York City. Owned by the State of New York and operated by Olympic Regional Development Authority, the Gore Mountain ski area has been expanded in recent years, which has resulted in an influx of private investment in new businesses as well as several new housing developments.

Eden, Utah  

Increase in searches: 122%

Median list price: $1,190,000

Situated along the Ogden River at an elevation of 4,941 feet, downtown Eden is just 30 minutes from Salt Lake City and three world-class ski resorts, Snowbasin, Powder Mountain and Nordic Valley. Its small town charm includes historic 25th Street, which is lined with shops and restaurants. At the end of 25th Street is Union Station, which houses a vintage car museum, art gallery and a collection of historic trains. In addition to skiing and snowboarding in the winter, Eden offers year-round outdoor activities, including golfing, hiking and biking trails.

Windham, New York

Increase in searches: 118%

Median list price: $692,000

Windham is in the Catskill Mountains, just two and a half hours north of New York City, making it a perfect weekend getaway. It’s known for Windham Mountain Resort, with ski trails, terrain parks and a mountain bike park. Area trails include the multi-use Windham Path, passing streams and a covered bridge, and the Escarpment Trail to the summit of Windham High Peak. The Five State Lookout offers far-reaching views of the Hudson River Valley and surrounding mountain ranges. 

Boone, Iowa 

Increase in searches: 113%

Median list price: $165,000

Named for the youngest son of Daniel Boone, this Central Iowa town is about 40 miles north of Des Moines. The town grew rapidly following the arrival of the railroad in 1866, which easily connected it to Chicago to the east, Omaha to the west, St. Louis to the south and Minneapolis to the north. Today, Boone’s close proximity to the Des Moines River and abundant parks makes it a good destination for outdoor activities year-round. In addition to hiking at Ledges State Park and skiing, snowboarding and tubing at Seven Oaks, the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad’s dinner train is a great way to enjoy a meal while viewing the changing of the leaves.

Otis, Massachusetts

Increase in searches: 113%

Median list price: $402,000

Otis is in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Known for outdoor activities like hiking and water sports, as well as cultural experiences, the Berkshires is a two-hour drive from Boston and only three hours from New York City. This picturesque town is nestled along several lakes and ponds along the slopes of the Berkshire Range. Otis is home to Otis Range, a family-friendly ski resort, several campgrounds and forest preserves, and is a great starting point for hiking with the Taconic, Appalachian and Berkshire ranges all in the vicinity.

Lakeside, Montana

Increase in searches: 105%

Median list price: $972,500

The cozy town of Lakeside lines the northwest shores of Flathead Lake at the base of Blacktail Mountain. It is just south of Kalispell and about two hours north of Missoula and is known for entertaining tourists who come to visit the Flathead area and Glacier National Park. Lakeside offers four seasons and something for everyone, including skiing the slopes of Blacktail Mountain and sailing and boating on Flathead Lake as well as biking, camping and horseback riding and a lively cultural and restaurant scene. 

Paoli, Indiana

Increase in searches: 103%

Median list price: $135,000

Home to Paoli Peaks Mountain Resort, the town of Paoli is about 100 miles south of Indianapolis. Paoli was first settled in the early 1800s and holds the distinction of playing a role in the Underground Railroad. Today, Paoli is a close-knit community that offers residents a suburban-rural mix. In addition to skiing, snowboarding and tubing, Paoli is close to French Lick, which is known for its historic mineral springs. 

Boyne Falls, Michigan

Increase in searches: 100%

Median list price: $321,700

Named for the falls on the nearby Boyne River, this small northern Michigan community is nestled along Lake Charlevoix, which has been named by USA Today as one of the Best Lakes in America. Surrounded by a rolling countryside, Boyne Falls is home to several ski resorts and recreation areas that offer four seasons of outdoor recreation from downhill and cross country skiing, snow biking, snowshoeing and ice skating at Boyne Mountain to golf, ziplining and biking. Nearby Deer Lake offers canoeing, swimming and boating.