Recently, I wrote an article for Destinations Travel Magazine called No Passport Required: 10 US Islands Perfect For Family Vacations. I had a wonderful time revisiting several islands where I had vacationed at over the years with my family, as well as discovering others where I have never been.

As we begin to think about the arrival of summer (YES!) and places for upcoming family vacations, I thought it would be fun to share a little more about each of these islands with you.  There was quite a lot I would have liked to have written about each island, particularly the ones where I have spent time in the past, that just wasn’t possible to include in my article.

SO, this week, I am going to feature two of the islands each day.

When selecting the “top ten” for the article, I was tasked with making sure that the islands were all in different geographic locations (hence, I couldn’t choose Martha’s Vineyard AND Nantucket), each island needed to be somewhat unique from the others, each needed to appeal to a wide readership (no private islands for millionaires only)  and they needed to be from all around the United States.

Using those parameters, these are the islands I chose (in no particular order):

MountDesert Island, Maine

Chincoteague, Virginia

Kiawah, South Carolina

Catalina Island, California

I will share the first two, Mount Desert Island and Nantucket, in separate posts later today. If anyone has some information on either you would like to share please leave me a comment and I will update the post to reflect it.

For any of the other islands, please feel free to comment or e-mail me any information you might like to share and I will include it in my posts as the week goes on.  It will be fun to make this a collaborative effort and share any ideas you may have, in addition to my own.

Finally, I know there are many wonderful islands not on this list…if you have a place you love, please let me know and I will share a list of readers’ favorites on Friday.

View Top 10 Island Getaways in US in a larger map