WASHINGTON — It was a quiet week on Martha's Vineyard, where they were battening down the beaches for Hurricane Bill's pass, where all the coves are good-looking and all the presidential vacations are above average.

Yet beginning today, the pace of the isolated island resort off Cape Cod should pick up a little, if only for the media circus in search of an elusive story.

President Obama and his family planned to land aboard Air Force One at Cape Cod Coast Guard Air Station this morning and then take a helicopter to the Vineyard, where they'll spend a week.

Hurricane Bill was expected to pass far offshore. But this island is long-accustomed to the fuss stirred by another Bill — Clinton visited the island during all but one year of his presidency. Crowds greeted his arrival. Obama's will be more discreet.

"In sharp contrast to previous presidential visits, the public will be shut out when Barack Obama and his family arrive on the Vineyard somewhere in a five-hour window on Sunday afternoon," the Vineyard Gazette reported Friday of planning at Martha's Vineyard Airport.

The Obamas have scheduled no official appearances, the Gazette's Mike Seccombe wrote.

So it should be another quiet week on Martha's Vineyard.