Outdoors on the east coast
 

Hi,
I'm starting to plan an outdoors trip in the Eastern US for two in early summer and was looking for any recommendations. I'm interested in fishing, hiking, biking, white water rafting, and open to other ideas. Thanks for any feedback.

Welcome to Fodors, wegs28,

You'll have to give us a bit more in order to get any useful advice:

Length of trip,
flying or driving,
camping or hotels,
Can you narrow it down to something less than the entire Eastern seaboard?

And, just so you know, this is your first post, but you can always find ALL toyr posts by clicking on your name.

Good Luck!
~Liz

I guess I'd start by recommending the Adirondacks. It's a really big place though, and you'd have to figure out where you want to be. Here are some helpful links of places I'm familiar with or have used before:

Rafting:
http://www.hudsonriverrafting.com/

Fishing (Most fishing is lake fishing, but there is some fly fishing. It's tough, acid rain has really hurt the Adirondacks fishing.):
http://www.beaverbrook.net/

Biking:
http://bikeadirondacks.org/index.html
http://bikeadk.adirondackcraft.com/data/SE13/trail.html

Hiking:
Where to begin??? There's so much hiking its ridiculous.
http://www.adk.org/home-flash.aspx
http://www.adirondacks.com/hiking.html

You can also look into staying in West Virginia. It has everything you are looking for. A great outdoors web site is:
www.wildernet.com

Thanks for all of the help so far. In response to Liz, the trip will likely be about 2 weeks, driving, likely to stay in hotels but not averse to camping, and can be anywhere between Georgia and Maine. Once again, thank you for all of the feedback.

Well if you are looking for "Outdoors" anywhere from Georgia to Maine, just start in Georgia find the white blaze of the Appalachian Trail (AT) and continue on to Maine!

You are following, in my humble opinion, one of the great hiking trails in the United States. Find any book on the AT and it will lead you to great small towns along the trail and great places to visit. Also check out the official AT website for additional information.

http://www.appalachiantrail.org

As far as favorites:

The Great Smoky Mountain National Park has some wonderful trails to wander.

A little farther North, Harper's Ferry is a great place to spend an afternoon. It has Civil War history and if you take the hike above the town, you will get a great view of Harpers Ferry and the two great rivers coming together. There's also an abundance of canoeing/rafting in this area.

Once you hit Pennslyvania, how about Ohioplye. Really fun Whitewater rafting and you must visit Falling Water - the Frank Lloyd Wright house.

Maine is beautiful, especially Acadia.

Northeast--I take it you mean New England. There are so many places to go, especially if you want to include the seashore. How about a trip that combines the coast of Maine with some of Arcadia National Park?

We love Cape Cod. No whitewater rafing, but lots of different swimming choices (rougher ocean or calm bay). There is a great rail trail great for biking that goes for about 20 miles one way (I think - I know it's really long).

Some of our favorite hikes are the Atlantic Cedar Swamp Trail and the Beech Forest Trail. There's also short trails at the CC Nature Center (may not be the right name) and the National Park Visitor Center.

There's also lots of small towns to explore.