If you could take just one photo: The Chelsea

Atlantic City is often maligned as a poor man's Vegas, and staying at the less-inspired, but more well-known casino properties could completely reinforce this (unfortunate) notion. Sure, AC is smaller and less glitzy, but properties like The Chelsea Hotel are a world away from drab, standard gaming hotel fare. A glowing purple beacon that beams from the Boardwalk with chutzpah, this unique and luxe hotel is impressively executed throughout. Rooms have more character than hotel chains, with Art Deco furniture and leopard-print furniture. The Chelsea is channeling the past, but which era? The fancy Chelsea Prime steakhouse has an unmistakable thirties Hollywood glamour vibe, and Teplitzky's is a bit more WWII casual. Guest accommodations almost feel like a sixties' starlet's dressing room, with a spacious, mod shower and Kiehl's and C.O. Bigelow toiletries. The mini-bar is all modern- Grey Goose and Hendrick's Gin among a bevy of snacks. The rub is, it works, coming together in a delightful cacophony that feels both idealized and authentic.

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If you could take just one photo: The Chelsea

Finally in a city saturated with neon signs and stiff casino air, there is the Chelsea Hotel. Breathing in a new direction Atlantic City's Chelsea Hotel offers up dynamic cuisine, exclusive clubs and lounges within a setting cool enough for Don Draper. The martini's are cold, the pool overlooking the coast is warm and the lounges are as swanky as the Dj tunes. At the Chelsea, Atlantic City is cool again. Whether you want to soak up the rays or hide out in one of the gorgeous cabanas of the outdoor pool with a sangria in hand, or relax in a game room expertly built around a billiards table, The Chelsea is the place to see and be seen at, all weekend long.

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New York is all about the here and now—of-the-moment (and fleeting) fashions, here-today-gone-tomorrow celebrity and the shifting currents of money and power. But just 25 miles due east, you can escape all that and settle into a laidback lifestyle that, in many ways, hasn’t changed in a hundred years. Perched upon a 125-foot bluff overlooking Long Island’s Hempstead Harbor and packed into a single square mile, Sea Cliff is a 19th-century idyll, complete with more than 100 elegant Victorian homes set on narrow streets sans traffic lights. Walk the main drag of Sea Cliff Avenue, where you can have a meal at Roots, stop to chat at Bart’s Barber Shop, peruse books at the village library and take a deep breath of the ancient, salty air.

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Saving the environment may be closer to home than you think. Such is the case if you live in South Brooklyn, or if you simply wish to experience one of New York City’s most historical waterways from a unique DIY perspective. From March to October, the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club offers free canoe rental for self-guided tours of the Gowanus Canal, which was once an oyster-rich hub of Brooklyn’s maritime and commercial activity in the 19th century. Travel back in time as you paddle toward the open bay along the canal’s notoriously murky waters, passing landmark bridges, ancient cargo containers, native wetland birds and plants. Every time you sign up to rent a canoe, the Dredgers are one signature closer to funding a major project to clean up the estuary and restore the waterway to its original splendor.

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250 years ago, at the height of the Revolutionary War, British soldiers were sitting where you are now. 150 years ago, it was a prime place for mingling with whalers on shore leave in Sag Harbor. Today it’s just you and a glass of local merlot on The American Hotel’s iconic trellised porch. Built in 1846 (replacing an earlier inn that billeted the Redcoats), the famous American Hotel now features lavish, antique-filled rooms and one of the best restaurants on the East End. Extensive restoration and preservation efforts have resulted in an enduring reputation as a weekend getaway gem. And from this spot—with a view of Sag Harbor’s lively Main Street flowing by and, say, a bison filet mignon coming—you see why.

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No Ralph Lauren-designed rooms. No lavish breakfasts. Make no mistake—this place has little interest in outdoing the wave of restored Gatsby-esque classics or centuries-old B&Bs vying for attention up along Long Island. But what The Capris Hotel does provide are (relatively) budget-friendly crashpads in a region with few such places. And it does it strikingly well—the 32 retro-decorated rooms are modern, if simple. The pool area is intimate, if modest. The restaurant and lounge vibe is young and surprisingly hip, stoking the summer social scene into robust parties most weekends. And it’s all just a blink away from the beaches, galleries, and wine regions you really came out here to explore.

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Amagansett’s Reform Club is a hip, stylish, and entirely welcome addition to the menu of Hamptons getaways—not that this hideaway has any interest in letting passersby know. From the outside, at the end of a quiet, leafy lane, the inn is pleasant and entirely uninteresting (the lavish English estate-like grounds and abundance of private patios notwithstanding). But inside, each of the seven suites and three cottages offer a fresh, colonial-minimalist-antique-zen approach to the perfect weekend escape from the city. In other words, giant tubs, dark wood floors and soaring white ceilings, white-tile fireplaces, and an impressive collection of in-room paintings all combine to create an unlikely haven of high design.

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For William K. Vanderbilt II (great grandson of family patriarch Cornelius), having that last name meant a lot of things—sprawling mansions, extensive world travels and scientific expeditions and, perhaps most interesting, the cash to haul scads of loot from those trips back to Eagle’s Nest, his opulent country estate on Long Island. The end result is the Vanderbilt Museum, a 43-acre museum complex that is part personal monument and part natural history museum. In addition to thousands of works of art and hundreds of historical artifacts (including a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy), the museum collection consists of 15,698 marine science and natural history specimens, including polar bears, tropical birds, a Tyrannosaurus rex, and, most impressive, a whale shark (the largest mounted fish in the world).

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The thick, dark woods near the far eastern tip of Long Island hide a decommissioned military installation that some say holds deep government secrets. Camp Hero was a radar station built during World War II to defend Long Island against a possible Nazi invasion that never came. Decades later, conspiracy theorists say (spurred on by a book, The Montauk Project, Experiments in Time), the military conducted top secret experiments there—codenamed the Montauk Project—involving teleportation, psychological warfare, and time travel. The base is still there, alleged tunnels and underground labs allegedly intact, in a scarcely-used section of 415-acre Camp Hero State Park, which is a haven for surfers, hikers, and surf fishermen after bluefish and striped bass. Walk the trails past batteries of 16-inch naval guns, marvel at the huge radar antenna, and make up your own mind about this old fort.

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