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What is There to See In New England?

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(page 2 of 10)

The state is more than mountain trails, covered bridges, and rolling cow pastures. Two of its lakes -- Champlain and Memphremagog -- are so big they each have a legendary sea serpent, and the long, deep finger of Lake Willoughby resembles nothing so much as a landlocked fjord.

Though Vermont is one of the least populated states, its cities and towns are lively places. Burlington bustles with international flavor (Montreal's only an hour away), while old time bohemians and the new millennium avant-garde blend in St. Johnsbury in the Northeast Kingdom and Brattleboro on the Connecticut River. Look for the country gentry in Woodstock -- it used to be almost the private preserve of the Rockefellers.

Samuel Champlain no doubt named the countryside in summer (Vermont means "green mountain" in French). If he'd come in early October, he would have called it Rougemont. That's when the hills light up with the scarlets and oranges of the maples, the somber bronzes of the oaks, and the acid yellows of birches and beeches. The north-south Route 100 cuts right through the heart of brightness. We'll look for you at the scenic turnout.

New Hampshire: The Granite State

By David Lyon and Patricia Harris

New Hampshire is Yankee country, and our woodsy home town of Dublin is right in the middle of it. To the east lies Peterborough, with its famed MacDowell Colony of painters, poets and thinkers. To the west, the handsome college town of Keene boasts one of the widest Main Streets in America -- and glows with lit jack o'lanterns for the Pumpkin Festival in October. To our south stands Mount Monadnock, the second-most climbed peak in the world and the perfect tune-up for tackling the great heaps of stone that give New Hampshire its nickname, the Granite State.

Those rocks are hard to ignore. Forty-eight peaks of the White Mountains poke through the clouds at 4,000 feet or more (with Mount Washington towering above the rest at 6,288 feet), and they're irresistible to climbers and hikers following the Appalachian Trail.

If riding seems more appealing than walking, the Mount Washington Cog Railway chugs up the incline as it blows great puffs of steam, and the Mount Washington Auto Road winds an asphalt ribbon to the roof of New England. The laws of physics are in the traveler's favor. What goes up must also come down, which means a state full of long and daring ski trails in winter and thunderous waterfalls in spring. In autumn, cross-mountain highways like the Kancamagus become virtual kaleidoscopes of bright foliage.

Rusticating in the Whites has been a time-honored tradition since the Gilded Age. The clock seems to slip back a century at the genteel resorts of Bretton Woods, Mountain View Grand, and The Balsams (where the voters of Dixville Notch always have the first word in national elections).