No doubt you've noticed there's no line to get the oil changed on your Bentley, there's no need to sweet-talk Jean-Pierre to get a billionaire table at Café Pacific, and the lights are out at some of the grander estates.Why?

It's August, baby. And everyone with a black American Express and a fractional jet share has flown the coop to flock with birds of a feather in more temperate hamlets favored by Town & Country photographers.

To be caught in one's own hometown between the Fourth of July and Labor Day is prima facie evidence that, in financial terms at least, you are mortal. Even a leased Maserati and a leased Rolex can't erase the shame of not having a summer home in the Hamptons.

For affluent Dallasites, Colorado has always been the default destination for summer hedonism. The late Dallas tycoon John Murchison was one of the founders of Vail and it still has its adherents. But for those looking for flash, Aspen is the spot.

Like the Hamptons, Aspen is favored precisely because it's nigh-on impossible to get there without a private jet – and even then it can be hairy. The mountain runway leaves no room for error.

In the Eagles' 1976 anthem "The Last Resort," Dallasite and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Don Henley declared Aspen bespoiled by infidels when he sang, "Somebody laid the mountains low, while the town got high." A few years later, the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport took its revenge when Mr. Henley arrived on a Learjet that overshot the runway and crashed in a cow pasture.

"When the plane came to a stop on some boulders, I immediately began the process of opening the emergency hatch," Mr. Henley says. "I looked to my left and through the cockpit window I could see the co-pilot literally sprinting away from the plane. When I drove past the airport the next day, the plane had been hoisted by its tail on a huge crane and it was just hanging there like a shark."

Unbowed, the charter company went ahead and billed him for the flight. The Eagles' famously pugnacious manager Irving Azoff returned the invoice with a note that read simply, "We don't pay for crashes."

The runway has since been lengthened and Dallas billionaires Dee and Charles Wyly are able to shoehorn their Gulfstream V into the valley to get to their own Rocky Mountain San Simeon. The Wylys have a stunning mansion in Woody Creek filled with contemporary art and set on a compound that includes separate homes for their daughters.

Next-door neighbor and frequent dinner guest Don Johnson has nicknamed it the Taj Ma'Wyly.

The streets of downtown Aspen are an odd hybrid of Highland Park Village and Rodeo Drive. Summertime regulars such as Park Place dealerships owner Ken Schnitzer and his wife, Lisa; book agent Jan Miller and her husband, Jeff Rich; superlawyer Alan Feld, of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld; and cosmetics king Richard Rogers (son of Mary Kay) and his wife, Nancy, are regulars at the same stores and bistros as Kevin Costner, Michael Douglas and real-life femme fatale Claudine Longet. (In 1976, she shot and killed her boyfriend, Olympic skier Spider Sabich, after he stepped from the shower at his Aspen home.)

Former Dallas cable TV entrepreneur and Aspen habitué Jeff Marcus was married last week in the mountain town to his longtime girlfriend, Nicola Zahn. The couple shares his house on Aspen's Riverside Drive.

In 1985, Ross Perot bought his home set on several acres in Bermuda's exclusive gated enclave, Tucker's Town. Over the years, he has acquired adjacent property and he and his wife, Margot, now have room to house all five of their children as well as their more than a dozen grandchildren. The main house is dramatically situated high on a rock cliff.

When not entertaining guests such as Margaret Thatcher, Mr. Perot is at his most relaxed in Bermuda, dashing about in his armada of boats and Jet Skis. Four years ago, he had a little too much fun and was ticketed for running his 38-foot boat Rough Rider at 30 knots through a 5-knot zone.

The Perots' Bermuda neighbors include Michael Bloomberg and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The sight of the couple's Gulfstream at the Bermuda airport is the signal to locals that the big kahuna is in residence.

The annual migration of Dallasites to La Jolla, Calif., began in 1951 when Clint Murchison Sr., father of Vail's John Murchison, built the Hotel Del Charro in the seaside town. Three years later, he and his best friend, Fort Worth oilman Sid Richardson (great-uncle of the billionaire Bass brothers), bought control of the nearby Del Mar Race Track.

Their guests not only included the Dallas aristocracy, but also summer regular J. Edgar Hoover and movie stars such as Jimmy Durante, William Powell, Betty Grable and Joan Crawford. (Ms. Crawford once spent an unfruitful evening pursuing the never-married Mr. Richardson, who had been the subject of a Look magazine article titled "The Case of the Billionaire Bachelor.")

Today, Dallas beer distributor Barry Andrews and his wife, Lana, welcome intimates to their La Jolla mansion, which was featured in the movie Traffic as the home of Catherine Zeta-Jones and her drug kingpin husband.

Whether you call the aged La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club charming or moldering is a case of "you say po-tat-o, I say po-tot-o." One wealthy Texan was recently heard to ask, "Why do we pay all this money to stay at this Ramada Inn?"

Simple, LJB&T has what virtually no hotel in Southern California has: its own private beach. The hotel sets up tables and barbecues for guests on the sand and will either let you grill it yourself or provide a full-service meal. Consequently, even folks with mansions in town prize their LJB&T membership for its ocean access.

An August walk down the promenade will have you mingling with Texas blue-blood names such as Woodall, Bass, Pollock and Levy.

And racing is still a premier attraction. At age 89, Dallas-Washington lawyer and Democratic powerhouse Bob Strauss reigns over the track as chairman of the Del Mar Turf Club.

But for those compelled to use summer as a verb, the ultimate playground will always be the South Fork of Long Island, N.Y., in the villages east of the Shinnecock Canal. (Towns west of the canal such as Westhampton, Quogue and Remsenburg are lovely, but lack cachet.)

Dallas banking billionaire Gerald "Jerry" Ford brings guests aboard his Gulfstream IV to his beachfront estate in the holiest of holy Hamptons: Southampton. He and his bride, Kelli, hosted their wedding on the tented tennis court at the home. Architect Peter Pennoyer is responsible for the shingle-style house, which is elegant but comfortable inside. (Mr. Pennoyer also did the couple's New Mexico ranch house and their Manhattan townhouse.)

In nearby Sag Harbor, the Fords keep a high-speed luxury yacht. At just under 100 feet, it's known in the boating world as a "pocket superyacht," capable of quick dashes to Nantucket, Newport or Martha's Vineyard.

For those who prefer to rent, a summer season at a home comparable to the Fords would go for $350,000 to $400,000 per month.

Back in the 1980s, Dallas civic leader Ruth Altshuler, daughter of Fidelity Union Life Insurance tycoon Carr Collins, paid top dollar to rent East Hampton's most famous mansion, Grey Gardens, from Washington Post lion Ben Bradlee and his wife, Sally Quinn.

The long-time home of Jackie Kennedy's Aunt Edith "Big Edie" Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie, the house as well as its staggering decay and retinue of cats were immortalized in the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens and later the Broadway musical of the same name.

Mr. Bradlee and Ms. Quinn purchased the 14-room mansion and returned it to its Gilded Age splendor. For two summers, Ms. Altshuler paid $50,000 to rent the house for six weeks.

"It's a lot of money now, but it was really a lot of money then," Ms. Altshuler says. "Between those two summers, I was at a dinner and I was seated next to Ted Koppel. When I told him I was renting Ben Bradlee's house, he pushed his chair back from the table and slapped his knee laughing."

Mr. Koppel told her that he had just had lunch with Mr. Bradlee, who had bragged, "You'll never believe what I'm getting for my house in East Hampton."

Mrs. Kennedy's sister, Lee Radziwill, had not returned to the house since the spooky days when her aunt and cousin lived there in squalor. When Ms. Altshuler had her over for dinner, Ms. Radziwill pointed at the dining room ceiling and said, "The last time I was here, there was a big hole up there with a raccoon peering down."