Weirs Beach Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire

With a public beach, boardwalk, restaurants, bars, and arcades, Weirs Beach is one of the most popular locations on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee, by far the largest lake in New Hampshire, that has been a busy summer recreation center for more than a century. The Weirs is also the epicenter of the annual Laconia Motorcycle Week, which takes over much of the region over a week in early summer, and is said to be the second largest annual motorcycle gathering in the country (after Sturgis, South Dakota). Motorcycle Week started around 1923, with the first Loudon Classic, now called the longest-running motorcycle race in the US, which occurs over the week at the nearby Laconia Speedway. Other towns accessible from the shore of the lake include Meredith, Center Harbor, and Wolfboro (where Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has a large family compound). Lake Winnipesaukee is 21 miles long, and nine miles wide, with 264 islands, but its convoluted shape makes 288 miles of shoreline. In New England, only Maine’s Moosehead Lake and Lake Champlain are larger.