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But those who prefer a more primitive experience or on a tighter budget can stay at the club's network of backcountry camping areas equipped with three-sided lean-to shelters, tent platforms or both. The campsites, most located along the Appalachian Trail near a spring, stream or pond, concentrate overnight use in designated areas, helping to protect the backcountry environment.

The club manages the campsites under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Forest Service and the Maine and New Hampshire state park agencies. Most of the huts are owned by the AMC on land leased from the Forest Service.

Another vacation option is the AMC's full-service camps, most of which are located along a lake or river, with rustic accommodations well-suited for families planning a weeklong stay. One popular site, Cold River Camp in Evans Notch along the Maine-New Hampshire border, offers cabins with fireplaces and kerosene lamps, indoor bathroom facilities with hot showers, and a central lodge with living and dining rooms.

The club also has nine cabin sites, including one on New York's Fire Island that can be reached by public transportation from Manhattan. Ponkapoag Camp, minutes from downtown Boston by bus or train, has 20 cabins along the banks of a pond in the 7,000-acre park known as the Blue Hills Reservation.

Other rustic options include the four AMC campgrounds, including one on a coastal island off Georgetown, Maine, that is reachable by canoe. Campers are advised to bring their own drinking water. Another Maine campground, at Swan's Falls, is a popular launch site for canoeists along the Saco River.

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While many AMC lodgings are roughhewn structures with limited staff, volunteer caretakers or no one at all on site, Highland Lodge looks more like a high-end hotel set in the heart of the White Mountains.

Built at the site of the Crawford House, a 19th-century grand hotel that burned down in the early 1960s, the lodge offers some guest rooms with private baths, four-course meals and a list of 11 wines, and a common room with thick rugs, soft leather sofas and a huge granite fireplace.

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Guests range from seniors looking to enjoy a guided nature hike along a nearby trail to hikers tackling the entire Appalachian Trail taking a day off to wallow in unaccustomed luxury. To those hardy folks who've been logging 20 miles a day, it's known as "taking a zero."

With the AMC's growing emphasis on education, the lodge was designed with classroom space that provides a venue for training in areas such as wilderness first-aid, leadership skills and natural history.

Other lodges include the Joe Dodge Center at Pinkham Notch, N.H., at the base of Mount Washington; Cardigan in New Hampshire; the Little Lyford and Medawisla sporting camps in the Maine woods and the Mohican Outdoor Center in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in New Jersey.

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