Best Northeastern summer vacation spots to visit after Labor Day

If there's a silver lining to the fact that Northeastern summers are now hotter than they used to be, it's that the six weeks between Labor Day and Columbus Day are often the most pleasant time, weather-wise, to take your summer vacation. Gone, too, are the maddening crowds that routinely turn otherwise charming resort towns and spectacular beaches into aggravating obstacle courses. Rooms suddenly become available (often at significantly reduced prices), as do tables at popular restaurants and seats on tours and at entertainment venues.

Throw in those traditional end-of-the-season sales, and it's no surprise that for many flexible-schedule travelers, Labor Day is no longer the unofficial end of summer but its practical beginning.

Here are three quintessential coastal destinations: one featuring sandy ocean beaches, the second rugged ocean coastlines and the third a regal mountain lake.

Upper Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Cape Cod is still plenty busy after Labor Day, but the mass exodus of summer residents creates a significantly less frenetic environment.  The biggest beneficiaries being beachgoers who will finally find parking lots with vacancies and few sticker requirements. Even Route 6, Cape Cod’s notoriously sclerotic main artery, becomes manageable. One of the best places for Long Islanders to park themselves is right over the Bourne Bridge in amenity-laden Falmouth.

Sites: Nobska Point Lighthouse (tours on Tuesdays and Thursdays; $10); 10 perfectly serviceable town beaches or expansive Craigville Beach in Centerville and Sandy Neck Beach Park in Barnstable (both free after Labor Day.)

Activities: Bike the Shining Sea Path to deep-water Woods Hole (day rentals $25-30) and dive into the Woods Hole Science Aquarium (free).

Excursions: Just to the north is low-key and still historic Sandwich with its tidal marshes abutting kinder and gentle Cape Cod Bay, while to the east lies always trendy Hyannis; for a full day of it, take the quick ferry service to nearby Martha’s Vineyard, still reeling in the tourists from this year’s 50th anniversary of "Jaws," or make the longer drive out to Cape Cod National Seashore ($25 per car).

MORE INFO falmouthvisitor.com

MidCoast Maine

If your idea of an idyllic vacation stars rocky coastlines punctuated by picturesque lighthouses, aesthetic coastal harbor towns replete with art galleries, craft shops, gift stores and calendar-worthy fishing villages and lobster shacks, you’re not alone. And you certainly won’t be from June through August along Maine’s well-traveled MidCoast, the best place to experience all these and more in a relatively compact geographical area. Come September, you still won’t be lonely, but everything will now be functioning at an eminently more enjoyable two-thirds capacity — including the traffic along Route 1.

Sites: Anywhere in MidCoast offers abundant access to the sights, sounds and smells that are most travelers’ Maine interests. Exactly which ones you experience will depend primarily upon which of the three tourist centers, Boothbay Harbor, Rockland and Camden/Rockport, you base yourself in or near.

Activities: Get out on the open water with a one-hour harbor/lighthouse ($26) or 3.5-hour whale watching ($91) cruise out of Boothbay Harbor. Visitors can book a two-hour schooner sail out of Rockland or Camden ($65); climb (free) or drive ($6 per person) to the top of Mount Battie in Camden.

Excursions: Make the full-day trip to Acadia National Park ($35 per car entrance); or get started on (or even finish off) your holiday shopping in Freeport, home to dozens of smaller national retail outlets and one extra LLarge local one.

MORE INFO mainesmidcoast.com

Lake George, New York

What you won’t see — or miss — in Lake George village starting Sept.  2 are the hordes of giddy children fresh off of — or in eager anticipation of — a day at nearby Six Flags Great Escape amusement park, most of whose 1 million plus annual visitors naturally gravitate to its touristy lakefront. What you will both see, and now be able to more fully enjoy, is the natural beauty of the 32-mile-long lake and its southern Adirondack Mountain environs, still resplendent in their late summer glory.

Sites: Explore Fort William Henry Museum (through October) $22.50, $13.50 ages 5-14); 2,030-foot Prospect Mountain (accessible by car $10) or foot.

Activities: Take a ride on one to four-hour lake cruises onboard one of the Lake George Steamboat Company’s three vintage vessels, through late October, ($24-64); weekend Octoberfests at Six Flags Great Escape, through Sept. 21; and Jazz at the Lake at Shepard Park , Sept. 12-14 (free).

Excursions: Commemorate the 250th anniversary of the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, near the northern end of the lake, through Oct. 26 ($30, $14 ages 5-15); take in the annual Adirondack Balloon Festival in Queensbury, Sept. 18-21 (free admission); forage for forsaken treasure at the World’s Largest Garage Sale along Warrensburg’s Main Street, Oct. 3-5

MORE INFO visitlakegeorge.com