Vermont - The Green Mountain State
About Vermont:
A historian once reckoned that Vermont was ‘every
American’s second state’. Quite simply, the cows, red barns, hills, white-steepled churches, village greens and twisting country roads represent ‘traditional America’. No wonder British visitors also love this state, named after its hilly spine: the Green
Mountains (verts monts in French). It’s the sort of natural countryside that townies enjoy as much as country folk. There are friendly B&Bs, serving local
maple syrup for your pancakes; there are trout in the streams and snowy hillsides for skiing.
Central Vermont:
While central Vermont’s eastern edge is made up mainly of residences and small
farms, the rest is a region of great diversity, home to a refined college town, Middlebury, picturesque small burgs like cultured but unstuffy Woodstock and sleepy White River Junction and the tiny
but appealing state capital Montpelier. Two notable ski resorts are also here: Killington, the state’s most popular, and Stowe, a highly regarded vacation spot with a long history both as a
centre of cross-country skiing and as the home of the Von Trapp family familiar from The Sound of Music. Central Vermont also holds the most visited attraction in the state: the Ben and
Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory.
Killington:
Killington Resort has grown out of nothing since 1958 to become the most popular
ski resort in the state. Killington’s permanent population is roughly one thousand, but it’s estimated that in season there are enough beds within twenty miles to accommodation some ten thousand
people each and every night.
Skiing & other outdoor recreation: Sometimes called the “Best of the East”, on account of its size – its two hundred trails sprawl over seven mountains – and its nightlife, Killington Resort sports a freewheeling and
wild attitude that can be fun. Indeed, Killington is often considered to be the eastern equivalent of Vail in the west, and the resort does provide the longest ski and snowboarding season in the
eastern US.
Stowe:
There is still a beautiful nineteenth-century village at the heart of Stowe,
with a white-spired meeting house and a green to stroll around. Though Stowe was actually a popular summer destination even before the Civil War, what really put the town on the map as a ski
resort was the arrival of the Von Trapp family, of The Sound of Music fame. After felling Austria during World War 11, they settled here and established a lodge – since burned
down – where Maria Von Trapp held her singing camps. A complex composed of a newly rebuilt lodge, restaurant and mini-theme park devoted to the celebration of alpine culture has taken its
place.
Sugarbush and the Mad RiverValley:
An intriguingly named valley and a sweet-sounding mountain might lure you from
I-89 to the route a bit less travelled: Hwy 100 south. Twelve miles off the interstate is Waitsfield, bisected by the MadRiver
and a good base for the two popular ski resorts just west of it. The Sugarbush resort actually closer to the town
of Warren, is about five miles south of Waitsfield on Hwy-100. The larger and more commercialised of the two area resorts, it consists of two hills,
LincolnPeak and Mount Ellen, with 115
trails.
Lake Champlain:
Forming the boundary between Vermont and
New York, the
150-mile-long Lake Champlain just nudges its way into Canada in the north and never exceeds twelve miles across at its widest
point. Its area of about 490 square miles makes it the sixth largest body of freshwater in the US. Across the water from the flatlands of the
ChamplainValley, the impassive Adirondack Mountains are always visible, looming
up in the west. The life and soul of the valley is the French Canadian-influenced city of Burlington, whose longstanding trade links with
Montreal have filled it with
elegant nineteenth-century architecture. Within just a few miles of the center, US-2 leads north onto the supremely rural ChamplainIslands, covered in meadows and farmlands.
Burlington:
With a population of just around forty thousand, Lakeside Burlington is the
closest Vermont gets to a city. It’s also notable as one of New England’s most purely enjoyable destinations – a hip, relaxed fusion of Montreal, eighty miles to the north, and Boston, over two
hundred miles southeast.
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