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Vermont Vermont
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 About New England’s Foliage
Every autumn throughout New England, diminishing length of daylight and falling temperatures induce trees to shed billions of tons of leaves. Preceding this preparation for winter the trees present a spectacular color show. Leaves that have been green all summer turn to brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and red.
These color changes are caused by transformations in leaf pigments, primarily the green pigment chlorophyll. During summer, the leaves of trees are producing sugar from carbon dioxide and water by the workings of light and chlorophyll. Chlorophyll causes the leaves to appear green.
The shorter days and cool nights of autumn set off changes in the tree. One is the growth of a corky membrane at the base of the leaf stem, which interrupts the flow of nutrients into the leaf. This stops the production of chlorophyll in the leaf, and the green color of the leaf fades, allowing the reds, oranges and yellows to burst forth. The best autumn colors are produced when dry, sunny days are followed by cool, dry nights.
Color may begin to appear in isolated spots in far northern New England the first week in September. Typically, the color change begins at the higher elevations and in the northern part of the region mid-September and moves southward through mid-to-late October, ending in southern New England coastal areas at the end of October.
Visitors who travel to see our spectacular foliage are known as, “Leaf-Peepers.” While on your excursion do stop at country stores, orchards, local restaurants and shops. We have suggested some routes for you to drive. We also suggest that you try some backroads. Get a local map, and don’t worry about getting lost. You’ll always bump into a main road sooner or, hopefully, later.
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Ephraim Holland Newton House
364 South Road
Marlboro, VT 05344 
Phone: 802-254-2172
House built in 1814 offers exhibits of historical material, a one-room schoolhouse, and a Colonial herb garden. Recent activities have included schoolhouse reunions, archaeological digs, stone wall maintenance, old games and crafts, interpretive local history, sing-alongs, square dances, a summer band concert, and thematic exhibits.
Hours: July and August, Saturdays, 2 p.m.–5 p.m. or by appointment. No charge.
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 New England Vacation Tours
Phone: 802-464-2076
Toll-Free: 800-742-7669
Fax: 802-464-2629
Email: nevt@sover.net
New England Vacation Tours are your group tour experts. We are specialists for all-inclusive tours throughout New England offering Romantic Getaways, air travel and car rental programs, and arrangements for sea cruises along the coast. We have customized chauffeur-driven & self-drive tours, corporate meeting and private party planning & transportation, as well as hotel & country inns accommodations, resort travel and vacation packages. We have escorted fly & motor coach tours to Boston, Cape Cod, Newport, ski resorts in Vermont and New Hampshire including Mount Snow and Attitash, and other destinations in Eastern Canada and along the East Coast.
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Park-McCullough Historic Estate
1 Park St. / P.O. Box 388
North Bennington, VT 05257
Phone: 802-442-5441
Home to two Vermont governors, this Victorian mansion is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Visitors will see displays of the three families who have occupied the home, including furniture, children’s items and horse-drawn carriages. There is a formal garden adjacent to the house.
Hours: Daily, Mid-May to mid-October, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. for personal guided tours, with special events throughout the year. Fee charged.
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Scenic Drives
Despite its nickname as the Green Mountain State, Vermont could just as easily be known as the foliage state. Simply get off of the Interstate and travel the state roads, back roads and mountain roads. Don’t be afraid to get lost -- it’s a small state -- keep your map handy, and your eyes peeled. You are going to encounter genuinely breathtaking vistas and panoramas. Mountain top views of reds, oranges and yellows virtually vibrate among the forests of evergreens. Vermont boasts 5.5 million acres of forested land. Enjoy them all.
It may be hard to believe, but mountainous Vermont has north-south and east west highways that provide a grid-like pattern. North and south, along Vermont’s eastern border formed by the Connecticut River are Interstate 91 paralleled by state Route 5. Through the center of the state, running though the higher elevations of Vermont is Route 100. This rises and falls, and twists and turns through numerous small towns and hamlets. And on the western side of the state Route 7 can take you from Massachusetts to Canada. This favorite road passes through Bennington, Manchester, Rutland, Middlebury and Burlington.
Traversing Vermont on the east-west axis is, in the south, Route 9 from Brattleboro to Bennington. Mid-state is Route 4, that takes you from White River Junction on the Connecticut River, up the mountains to Killington, then to Rutland, and Fair Haven on the New York border. Route 2 is the farthest north main east-west road. From St. Johnsbury in the east it will take you to Vermont’s capital, Montpelier. From there the road parallels I-89 to Burlington.
Central
Route 7 North, from Rutland to Middlebury is a 37-mile stretch of color and tranquility. The next 35 miles, from Middlebury to Burlington, are equally stunning. Route 100 from Shelburne Center to Middlesex covers 65 miles of pure Vermont scenery.
Rutland - Middlebury
Northern
The ride from Burlington to the Canadian border is about 45 miles. All of it is worth seeing.
Vermont isn’t usually associated with islands but the northwest corner of the state features South Hero and North Hero islands beautifully situated in Lake Champlain. Take either I-89 or Route 2 north out of Burlington. (If on I-89 take Exit 17 to get onto Route 2). Traveling north and west you’ll cross the lake onto South Hero Island. Time to explore without fear of getting lost. Route 2 continues on to North Hero and Allsburg. After Allsburg Center turn right onto Route 78 this will bring you back south to Swanton where you can pick up either Route 7 or I-89 that will take you south back to Burlington.
Vermont Route 100 is full of pleasing vistas from south to north. Also especially enjoyable are the 80-mile jaunt between Montpelier and Newport, and Route 114 between St. Johnsbury and Norton, about 60 miles.
Burlington - Montpelier - St. Johnsbury
Southern
Ride along the west side of Green Mountain National Forest. Start on Route 7 in Bennington. Traveling north, pick up route 7A (or stay on 7) to Manchester Center, a drive of about 25 miles. Route 9 is also a pleasant drive that traverses the southern part of the Green Mountain state from Brattleboro in the east, through Wilmington, to Bennington on the western border, where Vermont meets New York. The drive is approximately 40 tranquil miles across the southern section of Green Mountain National forest.
Bennington - Brattleboro - Manchester
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 Shelburne Museum
U.S. Route 7 / P.O. Box 10
Shelburne, VT 05482
Phone: 802-985-3346
Email: info@shelburnemuseum.org
Open May - October
Shelburne Museum is one of the nation’s most eclectic museums of art, Americana, and design, displaying over 150,000 objects on 45 acres in Vermont's beautiful Lake Champlain Valley. Collections of folk art, decorative arts, tools, toys, and textiles, are exhibited as are American paintings and Impressionist masterpieces by Monet, Manet, Degas, and others. The museum's 25 historic New England buildings include period houses, a lighthouse, and a 220-foot paddlewheel steamboat. New exhibits in 2006 include paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, the art of Tasha Tudor, contemporary Knoll design, and kaleidoscope quilts.
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Vermont Literature
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Rudyard Kipling, the storyteller of British colonial India of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, carved a place for himself as poet of the British Empire and herald of the common British soldier, whom he glorified in many of his works. Kipling was born in 1865, the son of English parents living in Bombay, India. As a child, he was educated in England, but he returned in his late teens to India, where he worked for newspapers and published his first literary work, Departmental Ditties, in 1886. Returning to England in 1889, Kipling won instant success with Barrack-Room Ballads. In 1892 he married Carrie Balestier, the sister of his American friend and literary collaborator Wolcott Balestier. That year, he and his wife moved to America and sought peace and privacy near Mrs. Kipling’s family in Vermont. Working with New York architect Henry Marshall, Kipling had a new house constructed in the popular Shingle style and named it Naulakha, which means “precious jewel.” Kipling often referred to the view of the Wantastiquet mountain range and Mount Monadnock as rising “like a giant thumbnail pointing heavenward.” At Naulakha Kipling wrote The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous. The Jungle Book became a children’s classic all over the world. Other works include The Second Jungle Book, The Seven Seas, Captains Courageous, and many more.
Naulakha (Kipling House)
Kipling Road
Dummerston, VT 05301 
Strange as it seems, Mowgli, the jungle boy, Shere Khan, the ruthless tiger, and Bagheera, the fearsome panther — all inhabitants of The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling — were brought to life in the very un-tropical mountains of Vermont, where Kipling lived and wrote from 1892 to 1896. Although the jungle characters and images were conceived during Kipling’s childhood in India, they came to life on paper within the walls of Naulakha, the house Kipling built in Dummerston, near Brattleboro. Naulakha has been restored by the Landmark Trust, a British nonprofit foundation devoted to preserving historic homes. Landmark Trust rents out the property as a summer home and winter ski chalet. It is not open to the public but is visible from public roads.
Many of the original Kipling furnishings remained after the house was sold by the Kipling family in 1903. The Kiplings left plaster statues presented by William Chandler Harris, the author of the Uncle Remus stories; the desk at which Kipling wrote The Jungle Book series; and a teakwood sideboard from India. Naulakha is one of the best-preserved estates in Vermont from this period.
Marlboro College Rice-Aron Library
64 Dalrymple Road
Marlboro, Vermont 05344
Phone: 802-258-9221
E-mail: library@marlboro.edu
Rice-Aron Library at Marlboro College houses an intriguing Rudyard Kipling collection focusing on the writer’s stay in Vermont.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Robert Frost, whose writings are often considered to capture the heart and soul of New England, was born in 1874 in San Francisco. When he was 11 his family moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts. He began writing poetry in high school. Frost entered Dartmouth University, stayed for one semester, and then returned to Massachusetts to briefly teach school. In 1894, he sold one of his poems, “My Butterfly: An Elegy” to a national magazine, the Independent. He married in 1895 and attended Harvard College. In 1900, Frost’s paternal grandfather, worried by the young Robert’s apparent lack of ambition, bought a farm in Derry, New Hampshire for Robert’s use. The farm was completely isolated. For Frost, who especially enjoyed the seclusion, the farm was an ideal setting to raise his family and continue to write poetry in private. In 1906, Frost secured a position to teach English at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy.
The Frost family moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed. During his time abroad, Frost met and was influenced by several accomplished British poets. By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections and his reputation was established. In 1917, he began teaching at Amherst College. He was co-founder of the Bread Loaf School of English in Ripton, Vermont. By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, eventually winning four Pulitzer Prizes. After Frost’s wife Elinor died in 1938, he purchased the Homer Noble farm in Ripton, Vermont. The farm became for him a place of refuge and restoration, and was his final permanent residence. On Frost’s 89th birthday in 1962, he received a special Congressional Medal of Honor. The same day, his last book of new poems was published. He died in Boston.
Robert Frost Stone House Museum
121 Historic Route 7A
Shaftsbury, Vermont 05262
Phone: 802-447-6200
Hours: Open May 1 to December 29, Tuesday through Sunday (closed Mondays) 10
a.m. to 5 p.m. December hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., weather permitting.
Cost: Fee charged
Frost’s Stone House Museum features galleries in the house where Robert Frost lived and wrote some of his best poetry. His fourth book, titled New Hampshire, was published during this period and it won him his first Pulitzer Prize. One of his most beloved poems, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” was composed on a hot June morning in 1922 at the dining room table. The grounds of the property are complete with many images that evoke Frost’s poetry including stone walls, birch trees, fields and woods, and even some of Frost’s original apple trees.
Robert Frost Memorial Drive
East Middlebury, Vermont 05766
A 14-mile route through woods, farmlands, and mountains starting at the junction of U.S. Route 7 and Vermont Route 125 in East Middlebury, Vermont. Two miles east of Ripton is the Robert Frost Wayside Area, where the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail begins.
Robert Frost Interpretive Trail
Route 125
Middlebury, Vermont 05753
This three-quarter-mile trail in the Green Mountain National Forest is about one mile west of the Bread Loaf campus of Middlebury College. It winds through woodland, and plaques along the trail contain quotations from Frost poems. Picnic space is available near the trailhead.
Old Bennington Cemetery
Route 9
Bennington, Vermont 05201
Robert Frost purchased a plot in the cemetery of the Old Bennington Congregational Church after the deaths of his wife Elinor and his son Carol. Robert Frost died on January 28, 1963 in Boston. A private memorial service was held in Appleton Chapel of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard. A few weeks later a public memorial service was held in Johnson Chapel of Amherst College. On June 16, 1963, Frost’s ashes were buried in the plot at the Old Bennington Cemetery. The epitaph that he chose was, “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”
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