Dwindling days

The last weeks of summer are a happy-sad time, to paraphrase the great Tim Buckley, with carefree days dwindling to a precious few. The kids count the days until school starts, the lawnmower makes fewer appearances and Labor Day looms, but there’s still time to get in one last road trip.

And so it was that the family and I set the global positioning on the Jaguar S-Type "R" model to Bethel, Maine, with a side trip to Amherst, Mass.

You’ll remember the Jaguar from last week’s column. This is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a family sedan with 400 horsepower that can hit 60 mph in 5.3 seconds and reach 155 on the top end.

The performance is overwhelming. My wife got all excited when we passed a slowpoke on a two-lane road. "It’s like a rocket ship!" she exclaimed, and indeed it is. You pay for the fast times with a combined 19 mpg fuel economy (on premium gas) and a fairly poor greenhouse gas-emissions score (see www.fueleconomy.gov).

Our first stop was Amherst, for a night’s stay at the Delta Organic Farm B&B; (352 E. Hadley Road, Amherst, Mass. 01002, 413-253-1893, www.deltaorganicfarm.com). Jim and Penny Pitts offer a good night’s sleep on one of those Tempur-Pedic Swedish mattresses, and a breakfast made from their own organic produce. In the morning, Jim Pitts took us out to see his chemical-free 40 acres, which are right near the heart of Amherst. The kids got to sit on his tractor.

The Pittses’ land is protected by one of those invaluable conservation easements, which is often the only thing stopping the developers from swooping in. Jim Pitts, a corporate refugee, is today political by necessity; his voice is frequently heard in a thoughtful column in the local paper.

From Amherst, we set the Jag’s GPS on a northern route up through Vermont, down some lovely New Hampshire back roads and into the genteel town center of Bethel, which is lined with stately colonials. The Bethel Inn (On the Common, 207-824-2175, www.bethelinn.com) was established in 1913 and still offers shuffleboard and croquet along with the golf. "Think Bing Crosby and Holiday Inn," says Down East magazine.

We eschewed the glories of the 18-hole championship course and instead my daughter, Maya, and I took a canoe from the inn’s lakehouse on the fantastically underdeveloped Songo Pond. Well, they call it a pond, but it’s deep, very clean and more than a mile long.

Our visit to Bethel was enhanced by a day trip down a dirt road to the Telemark Inn (591 Kings Highway, Bethel, Maine 04217, 207-836-2703, www.telemarkinn.com). Yes, it’s a very nice B&B;, but it’s also a great stop to visit a herd of friendly llamas, try some seasonal "skijoring" (skiing pulled by sled dogs!), ride horses and, believe it or not, feed a flock of hummingbirds out of your mouth. There’s all this, plus the guy who runs it, Steve Crone, is a real character and a great talker.

Through all this, the Jaguar proved you actually can combine family practicality with the kind of roaring performance usually found in two-seaters with no luggage space. Nice week, great car.

On the vacation, I curled up with The Gold-Plated Porsche by Stephan Wilkinson. It’s the amusing tale of spending $60,000 restoring an ’83 911 that will never be worth more than $20,000. Wilkinson, a veteran auto journalist, flavors his amusing story with just the right mixture of wry self-analysis. As a certified car nut myself, I’ve walked a mile in his shoes.