You might be tempted to skip the Nantucket leg of this trip. It adds several days, is the most expensive part, requires leaving your vehicle back on the mainland, and takes the most advance planning.

Don't. Nantucket is a special place. It would be worth a whole separate trip for a week, month or season. The least you can do, being this close, is spend a few days there.

We have a lot of islands in America. There are Carolina's Outer Banks, the Gulf Coast islands, Isle Royale and Mackinac Island in the Great Lakes, and Santa Catalina off the coast of California. But none of them compare to Nantucket.

The place drips history. Textbooks grossly neglect Nantucket's role in various aspects of America. From whaling to cranberries, architecture to ecology, Native Americans to Hydrangea, Nantucket is vital.

Any outdoorsperson belongs on Nantucket. Bicycling, walking, backpacking, kayaking, surfing, swimming, sailing, fishing, seal watching, birding, shelling, and kite flying are popular on the island.

Food is a way of life on Nantucket. Anybody who loves a good restaurant needs a visit there. The world's finest chowder and three dozen of America's very best restaurants fight for your attention.

Cobblestone streets, bike racks instead of parking lots, America's only Heath, the greatest seal colony in the contiguous U.S., and an 1800s town that is not a restoration or a museum but a real lived in place with the greatest concentration of bed and breakfast outlets on the planet. Berry picking, quahog digging, pancakes as big as manhole covers, basket weaving, candle making, whale watching cruises, and artists trying to capture the world's most beautiful sunsets. You just have to see Nantucket.