Holiday Headache

　　　All I wanted was a cozy log cabin in the state of Maine, somewhere deep in the woods, to hang out under the stars. It was to be my first vacation with my boyfriend, and I wanted it to be perfect.

　　　So rather than waste money on a guidebook that was bound to be outdated before it appeared on the shelves of my local bookstore, I decided to search online. Little did I know that when I typed the words "Maine log cabin rental"at altavista.com, I was stepping into 48 hours of Internet hell. Forget dinner, forget work, forget sleep. I was glued to my computer for hours clicking from one listing to another to find the perfect hideaway.

　　　I was wrong. The first site that I tried, cyberrentals.com, grouped rentals by region but had no map to tell me where such romantic-sounding, places as Seal Cove or Owl's Head were. So I had to log on to mapblast.com to locate each one, then return to slogging through listings.Another site, vacationspot.com, let me find 50 cabins and cottages right off, but most of the rentals turned out to be closed for the winter.

　　　I learned only after reading a lot of fine print. One day and hundreds of listings later, I was ready to throw my computer out the window. For every 10 vacation spots I looked into, I found maybe one that sounded good and more often than not, it was booked, too far away, or outrageously priced. Searching on line was really giving me a headache.I finally decided to put our log-cabin Web dreams on hold and search the old-fashioned way at a bookstore. I bought a paperback book called America's Favorite Inns, B&Bs, and Small Hotels. I was relieved to see that each city was neatly pinpointed on a detailed map, and most had good descriptions to help me figure out where in Maine we should go in the first place.

　　　Then I found it: an old inn on the southern coast of Maine that rented us one of its best rooms for $100 a night. Guess what? It didn't have a Website. I took my chances based on a good review, a great location and a bargain price. It wasn't a log cabin, and it was far from the woods, but there were lace curtains, a hardwood floor and a quilt on the bed. With the ocean outside our window and a fireplace in the room, my holiday was just as cozy as I dreamed it would be.