United States

CAREFREE, Ariz. - It's almost too cute -- as if some real estate developer designed it overnight to lure retiring baby boomers to the desert.

At least, that's the impression you get when you see Carefree, Ariz., on the map. With streets named Ho Hum Road and Easy Street, it seems just too planned.

Eric Noland/Great Escapes

HALIBUT COVE -- Mornings are the best in Halibut Cove. Here at the tip of Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, sunrise casts a pink hue, and the spruce-topped ridge of Ismailof Island across the way is reflected in the cove as if by a mirror. A resident gray-headed seal makes a lazy pass in the waters below. And, best of all, the only sounds are of a few gulls and a lone loon -- no internal-combustion engines, no freeway hum, no beep-beep of your neighbor's car alarm being deactivated and no infernal leaf blowers.

HOMER, Alaska -- The standard explanation for California's offbeat nature is that all the free spirits drifted west until they could go no farther. Well, much the same rationale could apply to the Alaska town of Homer, only here the syndrome concentrated in a single community.