New England Fall-Homebase town?
 

I'm traveling with my three adult daughters to see the fall colors in October. We are traveling from Boston and would like to find a pretty, walkable town to have as home base for 4 days of site seeing? I have been to Woodstock before which is beautiful! Where else would you recommend that we might make our home base which in the area has history, leaf color along country roads, light hiking, local interests and shopping. It would be nice if the home base has nice restaurants to walk to at night? We plan to continue on to see coast-line beauty around Bar Harbor for 4 days. I'd appreciate your wisdom and experience to help me make this a nice trip for my daughters.

Stowe Vermont?

Concord NH. Nice Main Street shopping includes League of NH Craftsmen store. Lots of hiking and biking trails but you can also go to nearby Warner for Mt. Kearsarge. Warner is also home to the Telephone Museum and Kearsarge Indian Museum. Independent Main Street Bookends also has a gallery featuring work by local artists. From Concord you can also visit nearby Canterbury Shaker Village. Apple Hill Farm is technically in Concord but almost Canterbury has a wonderful farm stand and wide variety of apples but if you take the back road from Concord to Warner you can also visit Gould Hill Orchard which makes their own hard ciders. Check to see when they offer tastings. Nice view from their parking lot, too. If you do a circle from Canterbury to Warner you have to go past Twigg's Gallery in Boscawen and then via Water Street you can stop at Richardson's Farm for the best ice cream ever. Expect to see wild turkeys and maybe deer. You can locate covered bridges if you use a DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteer. There's also an auto road up the Wilmot side of Mt Kearsarge with nice views from the state park area. You can hike to the top. F you want an art museum there's the Currier in Manchester where you can also tour two Frank Lloyd Wright houses.

My first thought was Stowe too.

Stowe is a womderful place to visit but I avoid the very popular places during foliage season especially if you need to use the interstates to get from one state to another.

When in October?