Atlantic Ocean

Ridge -- The old Woodrow Wilson Bridge sleeps with the fishes. Chunk by chunk, the bridge that linked Maryland to Virginia and was the bane of commuters in the Interstate 95 corridor, is being hauled to the waters off this St. Mary's County community to create a home for striped bass, bluefish and oysters. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said Bill Curry, president of the Coastal Conservation Association's Maryland chapter, as a massive backhoe shoved a slab of concrete off a barge and into the water yesterday.

IT IS A FREQUENTLY REPORTED statistic in the study of how Americans spend their leisure time. (Yes, people actually have jobs where they study people who are not working.) That is, American workers have fewer vacation days -- only about 14 -- than their counterparts in other industrialized nations, but they don't use them all. According to a recent report in Time magazine, the average American will fail to use about four vacation days. That adds up to about 574 million days a year, Time reported.

One hurricane hitting where you live is enough to make it a bad season." MAX MAYFIELD, director of the National Hurricane Center, on the severity of this year's hurricane season; the center predicts four to six major hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico

A narrow chain of barrier islands, North Carolina's Outer Banks offers panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean on one side and serene bays and waterways on the other, as well as wildlife refuges and maritime woodlands. The area also includes Kitty Hawk, the birthplace of flight, and Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The Outer Banks has 15 towns along the length of the islands. Dining, recreation and shopping opportunities are growing, thanks to a recent building boom. Where to stay Most Outer Banks visitors stay in one of the abundant vacation homes, many of which are worth more than $1 million and feature five, six or seven bedrooms, in-ground pools, hot tubs and modern kitchens.

The Chesapeake Bay became the center of the sailing world as a pack of Volvo Open 70 yachts sailed up from Rio de Janeiro to Baltimore in Leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race. After stopovers in Baltimore and Annapolis, which included maintenance, racing and a festival, the boats started the next leg of the race Sunday, heading off to New York. Thousands watched the departure from boats lining the race route and from the Bay Bridge, where the Bay Bridge Walk coincided with the restart. After New York, the racers are scheduled to head across the Atlantic Ocean to Portsmouth, England, in Leg 7 of the race.

Greenland's vast glaciers are dumping ice into the ocean three times faster than they did 10 years ago because of higher temperatures, suggesting that sea level could rise even more quickly than current projections. The study, published today in the journal Science, found that the glaciers contributed 53 cubic miles of water to the Atlantic Ocean in 2005, resulting in about a 0.02-inch rise in sea level. "The models we had were not terribly alarming about Greenland," said Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State University who was not involved in the research.

TAMPA, Fla. - With the onset of the 2005 hurricane season little more than two weeks away, meteorologists warned yesterday that conditions in the Atlantic were again ripe for spawning tropical storms that could slam into Florida or other parts of the Eastern United States or Gulf Coast with potentially devastating and deadly consequences. Last season, Florida was hit by four hurricanes in six weeks, an unprecedented succession of natural disasters that was blamed for 123 deaths and more than $42 billion in property damage in the state.

Could it happen here? The deadly tsunamis that crushed coastlines across Southeast Asia and Africa over the weekend might seem a world away. But researchers cautioned yesterday that the Atlantic Ocean is capable of spawning similarly deadly walls of water. "It's just a matter of time," says Harry Woodworth, a meteorologist in the Philadelphia office of the National Weather Service who studies Atlantic tsunamis. Although tsunamis are of more concern in Asia and the Pacific Rim, Woodworth says the deadly waves can occur anywhere that water is disturbed by an earthquake or other major geological event.

"Why come here?" The waiter surprised us with the question, especially coming as it did just after he served us a tray of huge, lobster-like grilled prawns. He must have been so accustomed to tourists blowing by the quiet seaside town of Faro for trendier spots on the Algarve beach scene that he assumed all but the locals were immune to its charms. But as we look back over 10 days of one lovely Portuguese adventure after another, it's that evening in Faro we recall most fondly - dining with a handful of others on the deck of a small restaurant overlooking the neat little harbor.

Has the high price of gas given you second thoughts about taking that long driving trip this summer? Not to worry. There are plenty of places worth seeing closer to home. We sent four writers north, south, east and west from Baltimore to find out where they would end up on a single tank of gas. Read their reports below, and get pumped for a summer road trip. If you're heading east, you'll run out of land before you run out of gas. And if you've seen and done it all in Ocean City, Md., try the other Ocean City -- in New Jersey.