(FORTUNE Small Business) – Don't be a fashion victim. Following the in crowd to the usual summer watering holes (the Hamptons, Santa Fe) means wasting precious vacation days sitting in traffic or standing in line for ice cream. If you go even slightly off the beaten path, you'll pay less and breathe deeper. Here are a few of our picks--low on snooty, high on natural beauty.

Copper Harbor, Mich., sits at the tip of Keweenaw Peninsula, offering travelers a 360-degree eyeful of dazzling Lake Superior. Hikers can ferry to Isle Royale National Park, while aquaphiles can charter a fishing boat or strap on scuba gear and prowl around one of 18 shipwrecks (still in their watery graves). Blue Hill, Me., on the rocky coast of Penobscot Bay, is a fine alternative to Martha's Vineyard, even if the ocean water is a forbidding fiftysomething degrees. A bit farther south and west, head to the Great Smoky Mountains. Natural attraction: whitewater rafting down the Little Pidgeon River. Quality tourist traps: Guinness Book of World Records Museum or Christus Gardens, with its life-sized dioramas about the life of Christ. Wildlife watchers: Take your binoculars to the pristine San Juan Islands, just off the coast of Washington State (trumpeter swans) or the Point Reyes peninsula (blue whales), just north of San Francisco. Sure, the Vanity Fair crowd has arrived here too. But it hasn't taken over yet.

--Anne Ashby Gilbert