Short Vermont Road Trip

Old Aug 24th, 2015, 04:16 AM
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Short Vermont Road Trip

Since we live in NH, Vermont can be a day trip for us but certain events require overnighting. On our last trip we had a lovely air B&B experience but the weather looked iffy so I decided we would go with a budget motel in case we decided to cancel the trip. I didn't bother to make reservations like many visitors who want to decide where to go at the last minute. This wasn't foliage season but it was a Saturday night. Surely, in the college town of Middlebury before college started, we wouldn't have a problem. Nada. There was a huge outdoor music festival planned and the budget motel we've stayed at before had a no vacancy sign.
Mistake #2: Despite having an iPad with us, I didn't look ahead to see what else was available. After driving as far as Shelburne we took the first place we came to and got the last room. If we had just driven another couple of miles on Rt 7 we would have reached chain motel/hotel heaven. Somewhat seedy motel had microwave and frig, was clean but very worn. The rooms were non-smoking but there were cheap plastic chairs and an ash tray by every door. Really bad choice.

With so many great road trip destinations in New England, an event or special reason is usually how we choose where we go. Sorry to all of you who plan a driving trip to see the foliage or whatever, I think you need some specific reasons to visit an area. Where's the best foliage? Where's the best scenery? Vermont is one beautiful state with lots of great scenery in all directions. We like Rt 7 along the western side of the state because it goes through beautiful farming country with open fields, hills and distant views. As you get further north, Lake Champlain can be glimpsed but you will get an even better view of the lake if you take one of the side roads. Burlington however is right on the lake. Many fodorites recommend Rt 100 which is the north/south route along the eastern side of the state. We traveled north on Rt 7 on Saturday. Then around the Waitsfield/Warren Rt 100 area on Sunday.

Reason for the trip: Mad River Valley Barns and Bridges Tour (self guided and free)

But, if we wanted time to enjoy the tour, we needed to go over on Saturday and the best thing to do on a summer Saturday in Vermont is visit the farmers market. Norwich is my usual choice but Brattleboro and Montpelier also have wonderful markets and I hear others are very good, too. My local farmers markets are decent but with only a handful of vendors. Norwich has vendors of all types including arts and crafts and prepared food. There's a small central area with a couple of picnic tables and musicians. To elaborate on the food experience, the nearby Killdeer Farm Stand has a nice selection including a good variety of unusual dried beans. If you are coming into Norwich via I91, you will also go past King Arthur Flour where you can take classes, shop for terrific baking ingredients and utensils, and/or have lunch in the café. Great place to stay, enjoyed on previous trips is the Norwich Inn. Next door is Dan and Whit's, one of the surviving country stores where you can buy a soda or a spool of thread.

From Norwich we head to Brandon to do an errand. Brandon is an artsy small town which has a terrific 4th of July parade. A search for best maple cremees in VT identified Cattails on Rt 7 heading north out of town. We were going to be there in time for lunch. Café Provence is the usual Brandon recommendation but we just wanted a quick lunch. There is nothing on the outside that might beckon the average tourist since even the ice cream window is small and non-descript. But inside was clean and spacious and obviously popular with the locals. DH chose fish and chips but opted to pay 50 cents extra for onion rings instead of fries. I opted for Crispy chicken in a Thai peanut sauce with noodles and shreds of fresh vegetables. I have no idea why a chef in Brandon VT has a few Thai dishes on the menu as well as Cajun (Shrimp Poor Boy was one of my considerations) but the bulk of the menu is New England favorites. We did the errand and return for a maple cremee before continuing our route north.

Dinner was at a lovely Asian Restaurant Chef Leu's House which is #13 on trip advisor for best restaurants in Shelburne. The fried rice is done in the same manner as our favorite local Thai restaurant so dh was pleased. I would have preferred eating at the Bearded Frog or Barkeaters, both higher on Trip Advisor, but dh has reviewed the menus and decided there wasn't anything he liked. Mistake #3: letting dh see menus on the iPad. He prefers eating at familiar places with boring menus. The motel owner had suggested Barkeaters. IF we had stayed closer to Vergennes as originally planned, I wanted to eat at the Black Sheep Bistro. If you are in the area on the right night and want a dining adventure, Pizza on Earth on a Charlotte farm is good and a lot of fun.

We cannot use a GPS. DH has to see a map. He will drive anywhere but he needs to see the options. He had original planned to go south on Rt 7 to Bristol and take the Lincoln Gap road over the mountain. On a previous trip we had discovered a wonderful picnic place in the trees overlooking a popular river swimming hole that has a small waterfall. At the last minute, dh decided on a new route to Warren via Rt 116 to Rt 17 which was a different road with switchbacks over the mountain. We would have saved two minutes taking I89 and missed the fun switchbacks and wonderful views. The Bristol route would have taken a minute longer. According to googlemaps, anyway.

The Warren Store is a surprising gourmet treat with a small amount of general store merchandise and a large amount of food and beverages. I ordered a breakfast sandwich while dh explored the outdoor deck. It would have made a great stop just for the tour map and food but the deck overlooks a mini gorge. If you walk further outback you can see where the brook connects with the Mad River. There's incredible rock formations and potholes carved by the river. Although very shallow where we stood looking down, upstream people were swimming in a narrow pool. I think the local swimming holes are part of what makes Vermont so fascinating. We saw many more places where people were enjoying the water or simply sitting on a beach.

The tour took us on roads we had never been on before to see some barns and covered bridges. This was not the best tour we have been on since I liked the National Garden Conservancy Open Garden Days tour of Vermont Gardens last year better. If you take tours like these, you get out on back roads and properties you would not otherwise get to see. The art show at Lareau Farm was interesting, the Round Barn was a gorgeous wedding venue, and the Bragg Farm had incredible views and gave me new respect for farmers who farm on steep side hills. There were not a lot of lunch options on a sunday so we returned to the Warren Store for a wonderful lunch.

We made a short jaunt to I89 for the quickest way home. For an interstate, it's actually very pretty but does not have the same beauty as less traveled roads. Living in the middle of a popular tourist area, we know to avoid travel on the interstate at certain times. Highly recommend good maps and alternate routes. There is already a hint of color in the hills. Good color is still weeks away.
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Old Aug 24th, 2015, 06:17 AM
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sorry, forgot to mark this as a trip report
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Old Aug 25th, 2015, 04:10 AM
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My sister and I had exactly the same problem last September waaaay before leaf peeping season.

We couldn't find a room anywhere on a Saturday night in Mid-Vermont.
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Old Aug 26th, 2015, 02:23 AM
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Thanks, Ackislander. I didn't realize how popular VT is on the weekend even in August.
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Old Aug 26th, 2015, 04:15 AM
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I didn't say the nice things about your report that I should have said.

Where did you find out about the Mad River driving tour? Do you know of other self-guided tours of NH and VT? I love those states, and it is hard to go wrong in either, but sometimes it is nice to have direction if not directions so you don't miss the wonder over the hill or around the bend!

My sister and I drove up the NH side of the Connecticut River on the roads that were closest to the river, all numbered but sometimes not paved. We stopped for the night in Littleton. Next day, we went all the way past Connecticut Lakes and into Quebec. When we returned to the US, we were planning to drive all the way to MA on Vt 100, but when we got to Stowe, there was no room in the inn, any inn. Nor was there room in Montpelier or anywhere else mid state. Everything was full around White River Junction and thereabouts as well. Dartmouth was playing at home and someone else was having homecoming, so it was a long drive back to Boston.
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Old Aug 26th, 2015, 09:08 AM
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Vermont is also a very popular wedding destination so places get booked for summer and fall weekends. Always a good idea to make reservations!
dfrostnh you were in my neck of the woods. You must have come to Middlebury during Ciderstock. There is always something going on in Middlebury...not really a sleepy college town!
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Old Aug 28th, 2015, 02:48 AM
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bm we had planned to stay in Middlebury but I hadn't bothered to make reservations and because of Ciderstock, there were no vacancies. It was sleepy back around 1996 when we did a weekend tour of places in VT ds wanted to see (and ate at the Dog Team Tavern). We visited the Round Barn this year which was on the tour from 9-11 where they were prepping for a wedding.

Ackislander, last year we did a VT weekend at an airb&b so we could visit gardens that were open as part of the Open Garden Days by the National Garden Conservancy. Although dh was not thrilled to look at gardens, this turned out to be stellar since once was an incredibly wealthy summer place where he was fascinated by construction details and stonework. We could go inside the barn where he noticed a sold oak door being constructed on a work table. Turned out it was going to go on the chicken coop. Most of the gardens were pretty isolated. Another was a huge log home on a hill top. Somehow I noticed a barns and bridges tour of Jericho the same weekend but we didn't have time so I kept my mouth shut ... until afterward and promised we would do barns and bridges tour this year. Except Jericho didn't have one and I finally found one for the Mad River Valley. The tour map is probably still on the VermontArtFest website. It was free. This year Open Garden Days in Vermont were cancelled. In the future, if you check their schedule, there are Open Garden Days all over the country. I would have liked to have gone to the one in York ME but there was a date conflict.

The other way I find pretty good drives is going to perennial nurseries. We found the one in Charlotte VT accidentally when we were trying to find Pizza On Earth which is on a farm in the middle of nowhere (I hadn't gotten good directions so we were driving around.) Cady Falls in northern VT is pretty nice. Until you walk thru their display gardens area, you don't realize how pretty it is. It's on the end of a dirt road at a trail head. We have also been to antique tractor shows which you have to find by googling. Sometimes they are held on a small farm.

The barns and bridges tour this year was very hard to find. I had help from fodorite VTtraveler. My husband also looks at a DeLorme atlas and decides to try a different road. We had originally planned to go Shelburne to Warren via the Lincoln Gap where a few years ago we discovered the great local swimming hole near Bristol. (We picnic sometimes.) You can google swimming holes in VT for some ideas but we haven't been to others except there were quite a few people enjoying the Mad River, very shallow, last weekend, and if you haven't been to the Warren Store, go there for breakfast or lunch. dh is getting used to using googlemaps instead of the DeLorme. He seems to have an instinct for interesting roads. At the last minute he changed our route to the one further north. We have also just driven aimlessly down roads that might be interesting.

I haven't done the cheese trail but that's another thought of getting off the well traveled routes. The DeLorme gives the location of covered bridges and waterfalls so that's another design your own road trip.
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Old Aug 28th, 2015, 03:56 AM
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It's hard to beat DeLorme.

GPS and online maps are fine for the "last mile" or two, but planning a trip requires a good map, and DeLorme atlases are great. I want to know about unpaved (but maintained) roads that get you into town the back way.

There are problems with DeLorme's gazetteers, both arrangement and coverage, but you can't beat the maps.
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Old Aug 28th, 2015, 04:16 AM
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We LOVE LOVE LOVE Pizza on Earth. Such a great place. I'm trying to figure out what plant nursery you came across...Horsfords?
Middlebury is a fanastic little town and should be on everyone's list! Ciderstock, Festival on the Green, Midd Summer Fest, Middlebury Filmmakers Festival, Vermont Chili Fest, Middlebury College athletics and performing arts, Town Hall Theater-there is always something going on. dfrostnh if you make it back to town let me know and I can show you around!
The swimming hole dfrostnh is referring to is called Bartlett Falls (New Haven River). It is located on the Lincoln Road just up from Route 116 in Bristol. Fantastic place-glad you found it dfrost!
Also LOVE Delorme atlases. Northern Cartographic (which no longer exists as far as I know) also used to put out great Vermont road atlases...if you ever come across one at a used book store/sale grab one!
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Old Aug 28th, 2015, 05:36 AM
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bm, yes, Horsfords but couldn't remember how to spell it. Thanks for the offer, bm.

Ackislander, I think someone said the barns tour was only every other year in Jericho. I know some of the local fundraising garden tours are only every other year. Usually you have to pay $15-$20 for a ticket and map and usually there is one stunning location on the map. The garden tours are hard to track down, too, since they usually only do local advertising.

dh over modified his jeep so it's no longer able to pass inspection and drive on a road. There's some jeep groups that do class 6 trail rides in the New England area. Do own a jeep or 4x4?
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Old Sep 27th, 2015, 12:37 PM
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I think the barn tours in Jericho are not regular. I have never been on one. This is an article that talks a little about the 2012 tour and mentions some of the roads it goes on
http://archive.burlingtonfreepress.c...-barns-Jericho

A really beautiful barn that is now used for events is in Richmond, on a road parallel to I-89. I don't think you can get inside unless it is open for an event.
http://monitorbarn.org/
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