Planning a New England (VT, ME, NH) trip

[AnneJ]

What are the best areas to go to? We want to go during the fall colors next year and so we need to start thinking about where we want to stay. Most likely we will stay in a vacation home but I'm not really sure what areas we should be concentrating in (ugh, bad sentence structure--sorry).

[Linda in NM]

My favorites for fall colors are the Mohawk Trail (do they still call it that?) in western Massachusetts and the Kankamangus <sp?> Highway between VT and New Hampshire...

[Marie in Oh]

the White Mountain area. That is where we always took vistors when they came when we lived there.

[Carol in Cal.]

It's easy to miss the colors there, though. The altitude is higher than most of the NE mountains, so the colors come earlier in the season. I think you would have to plan to go during early to mid September to find them.

If you decide to go to Vermont, I just love the Stowe area. Peak times there are usually around the first full weekend in October.

Maine does not prohibit billboards, so it was very noticeable to me that the scenery became much more commercial in Maine than Vermont or New Hampshire (loved Maine, but for other reasons.) I don't know whether Vermont and NH still mandate those tasteful little signs only, but when I lived there the fact that they did made the whole landscape much more unspoiled and appealing.

If you go to Stowe, you can also see the Trapp Family Lodge, where the original Sound of Music family settled after they emigrated to the US. Ben and Jerry's factory and the Cabot Cheese factories are an easy drive away as well. Bennington, the site of the Battle of Bennington, is a pretty far drive--maybe 3-4 hours south.