Vermont: Stunning Landscapes, Classic New England Charm

Beth Kennett and Marty Mundy share their expert insights on Vermont, from the lakes to the mountains. We'll also introduce you to the local cuisine and the best activities -- think sightseeing, biking, hiking, skiing, shopping -- and eating.

We highlight the north, central and southern regions of Vermont, describing things to see and do on a three-day visit to each.

And we end with Beth and Marty's memories, including a lasting friendship, and a magical tale on Lake Moray, home to the longest ice-skating loop in the US.
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Beth Kennett is the owner of Liberty Hill Farm, a bed and breakfast and fully operational dairy farm in Rochester, Vermont. She and her husband Bob welcome 1,200 guests annually, and milk 110 registered Holstein cows with the help of their family.  Beth served as President of the VT Farms, the statewide agritourism association. Her farm is a Cabot Creamery co-op member.

Marty Mundy is executive director of the Vermont Cheese Council.
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Podcast host Lea Lane blogs at forbes.com, has traveled to over 100 countries, and  has written nine books, including the award-winning Places I Remember  (Kirkus Reviews star rating, and  'one of the top 100 Indie books' of  the year). She has contributed to many guidebooks and has written thousands of travel articles.

Contact Lea- she loves hearing from you!  @lealane on Twitter; PlacesIRememberLeaLane on Insta; Places I Remember with Lea Lane on Facebook; Website: placesirememberlealane.com. 

New episodes drop every other Tuesday, wherever you listen. Please consider sharing, following, rating and reviewing this award-winning travel podcast.

Transcript

Exploring Vermont's Natural Pleasures

Lea Lane 0:26

The beautiful state of Vermont in the northeastern United States is known for forested landscape, more than a hundred 19th century covered wooden bridges, and picturesque villages. In autumn, thousands of acres of mountain terrain are crossed by hiking trails and ski slopes, and Vermont is a major producer of maple syrup, cheese and beer a state of natural pleasures. Our guests are Beth Kennett, owner of Liberty Hill Farm and Bed and Breakfast in Rochester, Vermont, and Marty Mundy, executive director of the Vermont Cheese Council. Both Marty and Beth know the best things to see, do and eat in Vermont.

Lea Lane 1:03

When I was researching one of my guide books, the Unofficial Guide to Inns and Bed and Breakfast of New England, I found many of Vermont's inns and bnb's to be among the most special in the country, so we'll talk about some of the best places to stay as well. We've divided Vermont into three sections, from north to south, and we've created a sample three-day long weekend itinerary for each. The northernmost region is geographically diverse, including Lake Willoughby, the deepest in the state, mount Mansfield, the Green Mountain's highest peak, and the beauty of the Champlain Islands with their colorful seasonal communities. Tell us a bit about the lake, Beth, and what there is to do and see around there.

Beth Kennett 1:38

Lea, thank you so much for including us on your podcast. I really appreciate it.

Lea Lane 1:42

Oh, I'm delighted.

Beth Kennett 1:43

Talking about Vermont. Lake Champlain is really beautiful. When you're out on the lake you can see the Green Mountains on one side and the Adirondack Mountains of New York on the other side. It's wonderful to take one of the cruises on Lake Champlain and I love going up to the islands. I have good friends that have an apple orchard in South Arrow and it's really fun. There's great bike paths along the lake from Burlington and up through the islands. I also send my guests to the little ferry that goes across the bottom of the lake to Fort Ticonderoga and it's really special.

Lea Lane 2:19

Thank you. You can go to Ticonderoga and enter it and visit it as well.

Beth Kennett 2:24

Yes, yeah, and the beautiful gardens there.

Lea Lane 2:27

So, yes, that's New York, not Vermont but I know it's all one thing when you're in Vermont you need to get the distance.

Beth Kennett 2:34

It is. It is we love our neighbors.

Lea Lane 2:37

I heard there's something called Heroes' Welcomes, a renowned local stop to grab something to eat. Do you know about that? There are lots of these little places you can eat very well in Vermont.

Beth Kennett 2:47

No, I don't know that one. But I do know if you go to Champlain Orchards down near Shoreham that's a wonderful place to stop. They have all different kinds of fruits that they grow and produce there and make cider and pies and that's a really special place to stop that people don't think of when they're eating their way through Vermont, but going to Champlain Orchards is really lovely.

Lea Lane 3:09

Fun. If you like another kind of water sport, you can e tube along one of Vermont's many rivers. I would think the water in the river and Champlain o cold, I mean yes, would you swim, would you swim in it?

Beth Kennett 3:22

Well, my family does, and I had guests that went in or tubing last week, it's certainly not as warm as the big Miami.

Lea Lane 3:30

Okay, so Burlington is Vermont's capital and biggest city. It's nestled right up against Lake Champlain. Can you tell us something about that, Marty?

Marty Mundy 3:37

Absolutely Burlington. It's really right there in the Champlain Valley and, as Beth said, it has this incredible view where you get to look out over Lake Champlain and you can see the adoradox from there, and it really is. I mean, it's just a stunning location to be in and so if you're someone who wants to experience that, there are a number of lake activities that you can jump on. You can go sailing on the lake. There are a number of parks right along the lake that are incredibly beautiful. It has Church Street, which is a really well-known street that folks just can visit and walk along and meander and get to see some of the city itself. There are multiple great chocolate shops that are local chocolate producers, as well as some breweries. The Vermont Brewers Association has multiple beer trails throughout the state. Burlington has one

Lea Lane 4:20

Does chocolate go with beer, very well?

Marty Mundy 4:23

I would say, I mean, is there anything that doesn't go with beer ?

Beth Kennett 4:26

Or or go with chocolate right.

Lea Lane 4:29

What about the Shelburne Museum there? I visited that and it was fascinating. Can you tell us just a little bit about it?

Marty Mundy 4:35

Absolutely. It's something that gets you a little bit of history for the area. So for folks that are really interested in history, it's a wonderful place to stop and it is something that does tend to draw a lot of folks down in that region. You can also visit Shelburne Farm. It's a working farm and it has incredible trails that you can walk on that just give absolutely beautiful views of rolling fields and the lake as well.

Lea Lane 4:56

That's what I love about Vermont you can go to a museum and walk outside and go on a trail. It's lovely, the combination of the best of life, I think. Well, from Burlington we'd head east toward Cambridge, where you can squeeze in a jaw dropping drive to Smuggler's Notch. Before reaching Stowe, I attended a tennis camp at great Inn there, known for skiing, but also all year round. There are beautiful things to do there. Tell us about downtown.

Marty Mundy 5:21

It has some great, little shops. So for folks looking to walk around you can find folks getting ice cream. There's some small hiking trails that you can access right from downtown. For me, I think of Stowe as somewhere that I love for the beautiful views and the beautiful outdoors. Mount Mansfield is right there. For those who love to hike, you can hike, but if you're a little less prone to walk yes, that's very important you can also drive. It's quite the hike. It is our highest peak in Vermont, so it is a pretty significant hike. But there's a four mile toll road that you can take up. That has just beautiful views and allows you to just walk along the very top of the mountain and then it's great.

Lea Lane 5:55

I like to imagine in the fall what you can see from there. I mean I think, for, as I mentioned, Vermont is known for fall leaves, Maybe not mud season in the spring, but all the rest of the year it's also gorgeous. Tell us a little bit about Vermont's Long Trail, which is near there. There's trails all over, but the Long Trail is the one we hear most about.

Exploring Vermont

Beth Kennett 6:13

So the Long Trail predated the Appalachian Trail and it goes from the Massachusetts border to the Canadian border. Long a Trail t and the Appalachian Trail the same trail border to within 15 minutes of our farm where at Killington - the Appalachian Trail swings east to go across New Hampshire to end in Long Trail the Long trail continues north right up through the spine of the Green Mountains to get to the a border. It's really phenomenal trail and we often have folks that hike it in one summer and here in Rochester we're kind of like the halfway point. So I can T access the Long Trail in five places within 20 minutes of my house, which sounds really crazy, but we're right there on the spine of the Green Mountains.

Lea Lane 7:00

Is it difficult, would you say most of it is difficult.

Beth Kennett 7:04

It's a lot easier than taking on the 2,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail.

Lea Lane 7:09

That's true. Okay, I like your attitude. If you were going for three days or a long weekend in this area. he last part of the north is called the Northeast Kingdom. Why is it called the Kingdom? Do either of you know that? It is very magical.

Beth Kennett 7:22

It is the Kingdom, it is its own. It's the Kingdom, the cool northeast corner of Vermont is a very, very special place.

Lea Lane 7:29

Well, tell us about St Johnsbury

Beth Kennett 7:32

St. Johnsbury probably is the major city there in the Kingdom. It has a wonderful museum, also the weather station there.

Lea Lane 7:41

Well, it has a planetarium. I know that, right, the planetarium, yeah.

Beth Kennett 7:45

My association with the Northeast Kingdom is that it was timber, the logging industry and farming, and economic development has really occurred through Burke Mountain, skiing and mountain biking. There's just a lot of new, different things to do up in the Kingdom nowadays. Cabot Creamery Cooperatives started up in the Kingdom with a group of farmers that in 1919, knew that they needed to do something different with their milk and rather than go down to St Johnsbury and put it on the railroad, they decided to start making butter and then eventually cheese.

Lea Lane 8:21

Interesting. I went to someplace in Glover, which is up in the Kingdom. It was a very interesting place. It was called the Museum of Everyday Life, and it exhibited items like scissors, clothing -- and even dust. I have never been to a museum that featured dust. So if you like those kinds of things, you like dust bunnies.

Lea Lane 8:41

Yeah, maybe that's why it's called the Kingdom. It has all sorts of interesting things. All right, let's move down to Central Vermont, which is filled with all kinds of heritage, stops and great access to the outdoors. Tell us about Montpelier, one of the country's smallest state capitals. But it is very historic downtown. Tell us about that.

Marty Mundy 9:00

It is. It's a great little downtown and, like all of Vermont, it's one of those nuggets where you can get a little bit of history, a little bit of food and some outdoor experiences, also rolled into one Nice parks that you can visit with some great views.

Lea Lane 9:13

Hubbard Park. Is that one of them?

Marty Mundy 9:14

Yeah, Hubbard Park has a fantastic little set of trails through it. You can visit a place like Bar Hill is there? They're a gin producer and they have a location on the eastern side of Montpellier. And you can visit the Capitol. It's a beautiful Capitol and I would encourage folks to just spend some time in downtown.

Lea Lane 9:32

Yes, it has a Greek style gold dome. It's very pretty.

Beth Kennett 9:36

With Ceres, the goddess of agriculture.

Lea Lane 9:38

Yes, the bar dome. Yes, it's open for tours. You can go in there.

Beth Kennett 9:42

Foyer is our marble from the Isle-Lamont, which is the northernmost island in Lake Champlain, and it's a very interesting marble with the prehistoric fossils in the marble Interesting.

Lea Lane 9:55

Vermont is known for its granite and marble. It's many of the great buildings of our country were made from Vermont stone, so that's very interesting. You can go to the Vermont Granite Museum in Barrie. How about another gorgeous area of central Vermont, Woodstock and Quichee?

Beth Kennett 10:11

Woodstock and Quichee is very close to our farm. Th Woodstock has the Billings Farm Museum and the Woodstock Inn, which is a Rock resort. The Billings Farm Museum was started by Lawrence and Mary Rockefeller because it was her grandpa's farm.

Lea Lane 10:27

Nice.

Beth Kennett 10:27

And they really do a wonderful job with the museum, showcasing life in the 1890s and talking about agriculture. It's still a working farm and they also are part of our Cabot Co-op, so it's interesting. They have in the last couple of years been making ice cream and some cheese that they sell not only at the museum but then also have it available at the Woodstock Inn. Quichee is wonderful. You've got the Quichee Gorge and one of the places that my guests love to go is the Vermont Institute of Natural Science there in Quichee. It has a rehabilitation center for birds of prey, hawks, eagle, osprey, falcon, owls, and they have built a forest canopy walk.

Lea Lane 11:12

Yes, that's wonderful.

Beth Kennett 11:13

It's like a boardwalk up in the trees. It's really phenomenal. Also, people like to visit the Simon Pierce glass blowing Yep.

Lea Lane 11:21

Yeah, and it has pottery too. It's a very artsy town. Yes, I stayed in that area at a place called Twin Farms. It's one of the world's great lodgings and I'm saying the world's. It's about 10 miles away from Woodstock. It was so upscale that when you took a bike ride you didn't have to ride uphill. You started and you went downhill and they picked you up and drove you back uphill. So let's talk about the Mad River Valley, because that's very interesting as well. Beth, what about that?

Beth Kennett 11:48

Yeah, the Mad River Valley is the Warren-Waitsfield Sugarbush ski area and there's a lot of things to do and in fact Marty can probably talk to you about the Taste of Place which is in Waitsfield, which is a wonderful place to stop. That showcases our Vermont cheeses and a lot of our different Vermont agricultural food products that we make. So Taste of Place is really fun and not necessarily on everyone's map but it's really a wonderful collaboration of our Vermont food producers having a place for people to come and taste and see what we have and experience that. I send people to Warren Village because there's a beautiful little covered bridge behind the Warren Village store and a mill pond and a place to picnic. It's really pretty right under 100. So it's just north of us. There's also Warren Falls. It's a gorgeous waterfall.

Lea Lane 12:43

I remember going right off the road and there it was. Yes, yes, you don't hike far, no, well, there's also Warren's Sugarbush Resort where you can hike and bike and zipline, bungee, trampoline and all kinds of things. Again, great resorts all around there because it is so beautiful. Let me ask about the southern region. That's the last of our three Vermont regions that we're going to talk about. You have Green Mountain Views, the Taconic Range, arts, culture and History, and the Shires. Beth, tell us what the Shires are.

Beth Kennett 13:13

Shire. A lot of people don't realize what the Shire town means and it's simply the county seat, so it's where the county government is housed. So you have Manchester and Bennington, the shires Manchester. The he that I send my guest to is Hildeen, which was the home of Robert Todd Lincoln. Beautiful, beautiful estate with gorgeous gardens. Especially go there in June when the P&E's P all in bloom, but the organ inside the house is phenomenal and it's really very, very special for people to see the Lincoln estate and really get a sense of the history of Abraham Lincoln's son who lived there and that time period. Manchester, from for lot of people are known for the outlets and shopping.

Lea Lane 14:00

Yes, I was going to say you have to mention it's one of the great shopping areas in the Northeast.

Beth Kennett 14:06

But also it has one of the best independent bookstores in Vermont as well. The Northshire bookstore is a mecca for many of my guests who love the independent bookstores throughout all of Vermont.

Lea Lane 14:18

It also has the best date night restaurant in America, the Silver Fork, according to TripAdvisor. So you can do all kinds of things in Manchester and have a great time. Now what about Bennington? And I know it has the great Bennington College. There's the Bennington Museum.

Beth Kennett 14:34

The Bennington Monument, yep.

Lea Lane 14:36

And the downtown has the historic district with the Old First Church which started in 1762. It's a nice, historic New England town.

Marty Mundy 14:44

They have the Southern Vermont Arts Center too. I think yes, yes.

Lea Lane 14:49

Yes, and of course Robert Frost, the great poet, lived there. So there's the Robert Frost Stonehouse Museum. So, and

Beth Kennett 14:58

ere, near where I live, we have the Robert Frost Trail because he was professor of English at Middlebury College. So when you go up on Middlebury Gap, I send guests every week to hike the Robert Frost Trail, where you can walk through the National Forest and see placards of his poetry along the way.

Lea Lane 15:17

Two roads diverged in a wood right right right.

Beth Kennett 15:19

Yes, They've done a wonderful job with that trail to put the birches and the stone walls and the two roads throughout the trail.

Lea Lane 15:30

That sounds delicious. How about Mount Snow Ski Resort? That was where I learned to ski. It was very icy and if you can snow that, you can snow the powder of the west. It was funny. I remember my son sent a postcard to his grandmother. He wrote basically we skied today for the first time. My brother and I were great. Mom was okay, dad sucks. He learned how to ski there anyway. You know, mount Snow is a Mount lovely resort area and has mountain biking in other seasons. But of course skiing is the thing with snowboarding. Now, brattleboro, that's nearby. Brattleboro Tell us, marty.

Marty Mundy 16:04

Brattleboro is one of the most southeast points that you can visit in Vermont in terms of smaller cities. It's got a lot of easy access for folks that are visiting either from the New York or Boston area, so it's sort of an entry point going into the state. from. From there. I would say there's a couple of different options. If you head north out of Brattleboro there's up in Vermont, vermont. I love to visit the Windsor area. There's a garden there called the Path of Life Sculpture Garden and it's a great sculpture garden to get to visit. If you head inland a little bit, you can go on some very small roads that take you through rural Vermont. You've passed quite a bit of small farmland, small farms that are back in that area, and if you take that route up sort of towards the Woodstock-ish area, you can visit some of our more historic cheese producers that are in the central part of the state and you can visit Crowley cheese as well as Plymouth cheese, which has some great history tied to President Calvin Coolidge and so they're both great to visit.

Lea Lane 16:59

Isn't he the only president that was from Vermont, (Chester Arthur?) Oh, I missed that one. I missed that one. Okay, yeah, that's good you took two presidents. Let's talk a little bit more about food in Vermont. Tell me about a Creamee creamy. What is that?

Beth Kennett 17:13

Yeah, so Creamee is soft serve ice cream and here in Vermont we make it with maple syrup. So when you come to Vermont you have to get on the maple Creamee trail.

Lea Lane 17:24

Wow.

Beth Kennett 17:24

And it's the maple Cream ee, it's the rule.

Lea Lane 17:27

That's my trail. Yes, I have to mention Ben and Jerry's factory experiences is back in Waterbury because at the end of this wonderful factory tour you get ice cream. Everybody loves that tour. All the kids want to go on the Ben and Jerry's tour. You mentioned maple syrup. When is it tapped? How does that work?

Beth Kennett 17:45

The maple syrup is made in the late winter, early spring, when the sap is rising from the trees, so that's usually around March and we have maple open house weekends and come see the maple trees when they're in full leaf and in color in the fall, and I always like to joke with my guests that the prettiest trees in the fall are the ones that make the sweetest syrup in the spring.

Lea Lane 18:11

Nice. It's a very good tree. I love trees, though I love Vermont. Well, the name of the podcast is Places I Remember. So, Marty and Beth, please give us a personal memory of your beautiful state. Beth, we'll start with you.

Beth Kennett 18:23

For me, what is wonderful to remember is the memories made with all my guests. And I had a gentleman who called me a couple of weeks ago from California that had been out here 24 years ago and he called because he'd heard about the flood damage in Vermont and he wanted to make sure that our farm was okay, which fortunately we are very blessed. And he called and wanted to know that we were okay. And I remembered him and I relayed to him the memory that he made with his young son at the time. It was late August and the kids had gone out to play after dinner at my farm table and we couldn't find them and wondering where they were. And they had climbed up in the top of a hay wagon and were lying on top of the bales of hay watching for shooting stars.

Ice Skating in Beautiful Vermont

Beth Kennett 19:16

And these kids were from th e city in California and they were watching shooting stars. And this man who called me two weeks ago to make sure that our farm was okay, he's like that's why I came to Vermont, to create memories. And he said thank you for reminding me of the memories that I created with my son when he was a child, coming to visit your farm.

Lea Lane 19:43

Beautiful, memorable. Yeah, okay, Marty, how about you?

Marty Mundy 19:47

All right, I lived in a couple of different places in Vermont and one of the places that I lived was in Fairleigh, Vermont, on the north side of a lake called Lake Moray, And one of the things that few know about Lake Moray is that they plow a large ice skating loop on Lake Moray in the winter.

Marty Mundy 20:03

It's the longest plowed ice skating outdoor loop in the US and it's about four and a half miles total. I loved skating on it when I lived there and I lived less than a quarter mile, maybe a tenth of a mile, off of the actual edge of the lake At night. I love that you could hear the lake crack that ice that builds up. Years ago, they used to cut large blocks of ice out of the lake and use it for cooling, and they would call them ice houses. That's where the term ice house came from. But you also could be skating and hear cracking on the ice under you, which, for anyone who's never had that experience, it's definitely an exciting experience on top of ice, actively sliding across it and hearing it shifting below you.

Lea Lane 20:42

That's beautiful. We have shooting stars and cracking ice. Wow, I love it. All right. Thank you, Beth, Kennett and Marty Mundy, for helping us showcase a few of the special delights of Vermont, which is obviously one of the most beautiful states in the country. Thank you.

Beth Kennett 20:58

Thank you, Lea, for having us.

Lea Lane 21:00

Yes, thank you.

Marty Mundy 21:01

It's great to be here.