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What is There to See In New England?

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From Vermont's Green Mountains to Rhode Island's vast coast line, there's a reason to visit every New England state in every season. If you're planning a visit soon, start here for the sights to see in each state:

Vermont: The Green Mountain State

By David Lyon and Patricia Harris

Vermont is New England's vertical state, where things are always looking up -- unless you're staring down a black diamond ski run at Killington or Stowe. Lacking the saltwater coast of the rest of the region, Vermont compensates with its knobby spine of the Green Mountains and the nation's first -- and some would argue best -- long-distance hiking path, the Long Trail.

The moment you drive across the border you'll notice that Vermonters cruise around in four-wheel-drive vehicles with ski racks in winter and bike racks in summer. They just toss the snowboards (Vermont more or less invented the sport) into the hatchback. From Mount Snow in the south to outrageous Jay Peak in the Northeast Kingdom, there's a ski, board, or bike trail with your name on it.

Two artists have captured the enduring rustic soul of Vermont. The "primitive" paintings of Grandma Moses recount a farm-life idyll of the state's southwest corner. See many of them at the Bennington Museum.

A little farther north in the artistic and intellectual capital of Middlebury, artist Woody Jackson has established the black and white Holstein cow as the icon of the state. Jackson's bovines emblazon the pints of premium ice cream produced by the Green Mountain moguls of mix-ins, Ben & Jerry, at their Waterbury factory. Also thank the cows for some of America's best cheeses, which you can taste at the factories in Cabot or Healdville or Grafton -- or in any of the state's equally iconic country stores. (Catch the "original" in Weston.)

The signature taste of Vermont, though, is sweet. Even if you miss the spring maple syrup festivals, be sure to order a tall stack of pancakes at any of the state's great diners and breakfast cafes. Your syrup should come in a generous pitcher.

Few states feed you as well as Vermont, thanks partly to the training programs of the New England Culinary Institute. Visit NECI's restaurants in Montpelier and Essex Junction. When the aroma of pot-au-feu lures you into a village bistro, remember that the chef probably trained in Montpelier. And he or she likely uses locally grown produce, meat and dairy products -- look for the Vermont Fresh logo.

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).

Loons call across the lakes at night, from the piney shores of Newfound Lake to broad Lake Winnipesaukee. This body of water is as big as its name, with the razzmatazz summer fun of Weirs Beach on one end and the gracious restraint of Wolfeboro on the other. When winter grips the waters, dog sleds and snowmobiles replace canoes and speedboats. Life is to be lived, or as the state motto says, "Live free or die."

New Hampshire has more fresh water than salt, but the seacoast, while short, is decidedly sweet. The marsh-backed sandy shores of Hampton Beach edge into the stony cliffs and pocket beaches of Rye en route to Portsmouth.

When this port town at the mouth of the Piscataqua was young, sailors called it Strawbery Banke for the profusion of fruit on its shores. The nickname sticks to this day to a fine museum that shows how people lived here over the last three centuries. That's not to say that Strawbery Banke ignores the 21st century -- its Dunaway Restaurant quickly made a name for itself in Portsmouth's already competitive dining scene.

Fine farmhouse fare makes up the spread at the Shaker Table in Canterbury Shaker Village, one of two New Hampshire communities of this mystic sect. The other sprawls in Enfield, almost within hailing distance of the Connecticut River, the handsome Dartmouth College campus in Hanover, and the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, where yet another Granite State art colony flourished.

With astonishing mountain vistas, rolling pastures, and primal northern forests, New Hampshire is a state of grandeur. But grandeur doesn't preclude intimacy. Waitresses at the breakfast cafes always seem to call you "hon," the aroma of warm cookies wafts from little B&Bs in the afternoons, and you'll surely get an earful of local gossip at the village church's Saturday night bean supper.

Maine: The Pine Tree State

By David Lyon and Patricia Harris

Maine has more. Whatever you're looking for in New England, Maine has more coastline, more moose, more lobsters, more forest, more islands, more deer, more trout, more lakes and streams. Nearly as large as the rest of New England put together, Maine is so big by regional standards that mapmakers have to change their scale to fit the northern and eastern tips onto a page. Even the best navigators en route to Calais or Madawaska are likely to ask, "Are we there yet?"

Who cares? Getting there is half the fun.

Maine's southern coast is its sandiest, with long swimming strands in otherwise art-obsessed Ogunquit and delightfully honky-tonk Old Orchard Beach. North of Portland, rocky headlands far outnumber bathing beaches, and long peninsulas dangle off the coast like bunches of grapes. Follow a twisting turnoff to its logical conclusion, and you're almost certain to find a lobster pound and a lighthouse. If it's the Georgetown peninsula, you'll discover one of the longest and least crowded swimming beaches on the coast at Reid State Park and arguably the state's most picturesque lobster landing at Five Islands.

Lobster is king at the annual Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland, the working harbor that's the gateway to the legendary lobstering and sailing waters of Penobscot Bay. The lights, bells, buoys and mementos of the Maine Lighthouse Museum recall a bygone era -- while the Louise Nevelson, Andrew Wyeth, and Winslow Homer masterpieces at the Farnsworth Art Museum capture Maine at its most artistic. If you've a hankering to go before the mast, Rockland is also home to the lion's share of the coastal windjammer fleet.

Down in nearby Port Clyde, you can ship out on a simple ferry for a day-long idyll on Monhegan Island, where new vistas magically appear, even though some great painter or another has depicted every rock and flower.

Mainers have been seafarers for centuries -- a glorious history recounted at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath and the even more evocative Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport. (At one time, 10 percent of America's deep-water captains hailed from this little maritime village.)

Turn the coastal corner at Bucksport to enter authentic Downeast Maine, so named for the prevailing winds. This is the country of wild blueberries (best in muffins or pancakes), spruce-tufted islands, and the sylvan and seaside lures of Acadia National Park. The lighthouses are strung like Christmas tree bulbs along the coast, ending with the red-and-white striped tower of West Quoddy Head in Lubec, the easternmost point of the U.S.

Chances are that you can pick up any gear you need for exploring Maine at L.L. Bean (and if you like outlet shopping, you may never leave Freeport). Keep in mind that there's more to Maine than the coast. A flyrod could be your best friend on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, a shortie wetsuit might be invaluable for whitewater rafting in the Kennebec River Gorge, and you can never have enough dehydrated rations when you climb Mount Katahdin, Maine's mile-high peak. Binoculars let you keep from spooking the moose around Moosehead Lake as you watch them browse in the shallows or swim across the lake's broad bays.

The downhill swirl is delirious at Sugarloaf and Sunday River, whether on skis or a board in the winter, or a mountain bike in the summer. The contrasts are almost unfathomable. Maine's wilderness is wilder than it was when Henry David Thoreau visited 150 years ago, yet back down on the coast, Portland is both metropolitan and cosmopolitan, a city that honors its maritime past yet dwells in an exciting present of theaters and orchestras, museums and galleries, clubs and fine dining.

Maine just has more.

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).

Loons call across the lakes at night, from the piney shores of Newfound Lake to broad Lake Winnipesaukee. This body of water is as big as its name, with the razzmatazz summer fun of Weirs Beach on one end and the gracious restraint of Wolfeboro on the other. When winter grips the waters, dog sleds and snowmobiles replace canoes and speedboats. Life is to be lived, or as the state motto says, "Live free or die."

New Hampshire has more fresh water than salt, but the seacoast, while short, is decidedly sweet. The marsh-backed sandy shores of Hampton Beach edge into the stony cliffs and pocket beaches of Rye en route to Portsmouth.

When this port town at the mouth of the Piscataqua was young, sailors called it Strawbery Banke for the profusion of fruit on its shores. The nickname sticks to this day to a fine museum that shows how people lived here over the last three centuries. That's not to say that Strawbery Banke ignores the 21st century -- its Dunaway Restaurant quickly made a name for itself in Portsmouth's already competitive dining scene.

Fine farmhouse fare makes up the spread at the Shaker Table in Canterbury Shaker Village, one of two New Hampshire communities of this mystic sect. The other sprawls in Enfield, almost within hailing distance of the Connecticut River, the handsome Dartmouth College campus in Hanover, and the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, where yet another Granite State art colony flourished.

With astonishing mountain vistas, rolling pastures, and primal northern forests, New Hampshire is a state of grandeur. But grandeur doesn't preclude intimacy. Waitresses at the breakfast cafes always seem to call you "hon," the aroma of warm cookies wafts from little B&Bs in the afternoons, and you'll surely get an earful of local gossip at the village church's Saturday night bean supper.

Massachusetts: The Bay State

By David Lyon and Patricia Harris

Massachusetts may have forgotten more history than most states can remember, but there's more to the Bay State than 10th grade U.S. history books suggest. Forty miles of high dunes and Atlantic surf form the Cape Cod National Seashore, the ultimate playground for sunning, swimming, surfing, collecting seashells, surf-casting for bluefish, or just taking a break as the sun sets over Cape Cod Bay. Out on Cape Cod's tip, Provincetown jangles through the season as a carnival of art galleries, ice cream cones, and tanning oil. Wellfleet's briny bluepoint oysters are reason enough to visit.

North of Boston, on the other Massachusetts Cape -- Cape Ann -- artists have painted Gloucester's fishing harbor and the towering granite headlands of Rockport for nearly two centuries. Yet this cape may be most famous for the fried clam, invented by Chubby Woodman in Essex on July 3, 1916, and still served there by his descendants.

It seems unfair that a state so blessed with coastline should be bracketed on the west by the gently rolling hills of the Berkshires, an epicenter of summer arts. Spread a gourmet picnic on the lawn as the musicians warm up for a Tanglewood concert or catch modern dance on a mountaintop at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. All year round, the former mill buildings of North Adams almost vibrate with the charged contemporary art of Mass MoCA, while Stockbridge still looks just as Norman Rockwell painted it.

Theodor Geisel -- aka Dr. Seuss -- drew his inspiration from Springfield. A bronze menagerie of his imagination, from the Cat in the Hat to Horton the Elephant, populates the grounds shared by a collection of quirky art and history museums, the Quadrangle.

In the fertile Connecticut River valley, farm stands delineate the seasons with spring's asparagus, summer's juicy strawberries and sweet corn, and autumn's bright pumpkins. Orchards in the surrounding hills bear such heirloom apples as the pie-baker's Roxbury Russet or the sweet-eating King David. If all else fails, order a slice of apple pie a la mode in one of the classic Worcester diners still dishing chow in their birthplace city.

With its world-class museums and symphony orchestra, Boston has long cast itself as the Hub of New England, if not the universe. From April into September (and if all goes well, October), that distinction belongs to Fenway Park, from which the spokes of the Red Sox Nation emanate to unite New England in a single crusade against Steinbrenner's Evil Empire. There are other sports in Massachusetts, as the Patriots' Super Bowl cups in Foxboro and the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield attest.

And, of course, there is history.

Boats still seek whales off the Massachusetts coast, though now they're full of sightseers instead of the whalers who once trod the cobbled streets of Nantucket and New Bedford, where their enterprise is recalled in museums and a national park. On Nantucket's sister island of Martha's Vineyard, Edgartown is a small ocean of sea captains' homes clad in white clapboards and black shutters.

The far-ranging sailors of Salem brought the riches and curios of the world back home. See their treasures at the Peabody Essex Museum before you indulge in Salem's spooky attractions that trade on an enduring obsession with the witchcraft trials of 1692. The spirit of beat poet and novelist Jack Kerouac still seems to haunt his native Lowell, where a national park in the old textile mills relates the transformation of America from farming to industry.

An earlier transformation -- from colony to nation -- began in Lexington and Concord, where fed-up Colonials and frustrated Redcoats came to blows and set off the American Revolution. Their story continues along the red-lined path of Boston's Freedom Trail embedded now in the glass and steel high-rise modern city, the region's largest.

Even when the Sons of Liberty tossed British tea in the harbor, Massachusetts was already old. Just a few miles south of Boston, you can peer down upon Plymouth Rock and imagine Massachusetts as the Pilgrims first saw it and visit Plimoth Plantation for a total immersion experience in 17th-century colonial and Wampanoag life. So much of Massachusetts leads us back in time and tradition and then forward to today's best travel destinations.

Rhode Island: The Ocean State

By David Lyon and Patricia Harris

Whoever planned the boundaries of Rhode Island must have had the weekend getaway in mind. This very small state (drive 30 miles in any direction and you're in Massachusetts or Connecticut) is divided by a very large bay, which means more than 100 public beaches along more than 400 miles of coastline. Little wonder it's called the Ocean State.

The two-mile rainbow of concrete and steel (aka the Newport Bridge) has a true pot of gold on its eastern end: Newport Harbor shelters some of the swiftest and most expensive boats in the water. Book a harbor tour on a retired America's Cup contender and you may never get your land legs back again. Too bad, because you might miss touring the Gilded Age mansions of Bellevue Avenue or ambling the Cliff Walk behind them for spectacular views across Rhode Island Sound.

Just below the Cliff Walk, surfers in wet suits catch the high curls on Easton's Beach. But probably the best swimming strands line the coast of South County between the Connecticut border and the deep-sea fishing port of Galilee. (Nearby Point Judith is the easiest jump-off ferry to get to Rhode Island's real island: Block Island.) The endless sands of Misquamicut, complete with amusement rides and taffy booths, slide into the Victorian charm of Watch Hill, where the Flying Horses, New England's oldest carousel, still whirls.

Not that all of Rhode Island is a playground. Slater Mill, now Pawtucket's living history museum, was one of the first places where pilfered British technology gave birth to the American textile industry. A ponderous water wheel drives creaking machinery with leather belts and pulleys, and you can almost hear the farm children being called from the fields to tend the spinning jennys and mechanical looms.

Stop at the sign of the lemon for Rhody's taste of summer, Cranston-spawned Del's Frozen Lemonade. Look in any grocery store for coffee milk, or visit a dairy bar for a coffee cabinet (that's a milkshake with ice cream in it). Jonny cakes usually turn up on the menus of diners and breakfast cafes -- just make sure they use white cornmeal milled in Usquepaugh. On a driblet of a peninsula that's almost Long Island, Sakonnet Vineyards in Little Compton exploits its microclimate to make crisp white table wines.

Sakonnet's signature Vidal Blanc is a standard on the wine lists of Providence bistros. With top-notch culinary school Johnson & Wales minting more chefs every year, Rhode Island's capital city has a capital restaurant scene. Still, you might just prefer Federal Hill's Italian-American eatfest, otherwise known as Atwells Avenue, where caffes and salumerias and trattorias and bakeries stand puffy cheek by jovial jowl.

Walk it off on the East Side by traipsing down Benefit Street's so-called Mile of History, where the John Brown House is a virtual chronicle of Providence's society folk through the ages, and the Rhode Island School of Design has a surprising art museum that spans the globe. RISD's famous sense of style pervades the city -- what other community would celebrate the rivers that snake through it by setting them ablaze and throwing a party? (It's called WaterFire.)

Connecticut: The Nutmeg State

By David Lyon and Patricia Harris

All rivers run to the sea, but few do it with such force and majesty as the Connecticut as it bisects its namesake state. No less a connoisseur of great rivers than Mark Twain chose to live out his days not far from its industrious banks. To follow the river is to trace Connecticut from the heart-of-New-England uplands where the Yankee peddler was born to the lush marshlands of Long Island Sound so beloved by the American Impressionists. (Be sure to cross the river on the Chester-Hadlyme ferry, in service since 1769.)

Along Connecticut's sheltered coast, miles of sandy beach yearn toward the horizon, while deep harbors hold the submarine forces (and museum) of Groton and the salty maritime history museum of Mystic Seaport. Southward, Connecticut cozies up to New York, and somewhere en route you'll cross the Chowder Line, where properly creamy New England clam chowder suddenly gives way to bowls of tomato-stricken Manhattan clam chowder. Still, it's easy to forgive this culinary lapse when the folks of coastal Fairfield County break out their local oysters.

Despite the Gotham-hugging tendencies of communities on the commuter rail, upcountry Connecticut is as solidly New England as Currier & Ives depicted it. The Litchfield Hills and southern Berkshires thunder with springtime waterfalls, explode with the June blooms of mountain laurel, and glow scarlet and yellow when frost cracks the palette of autumn color.

History calls you to bear witness. Stand on the green in Litchfield and cast your eye toward a flurry of steeples and a broad crossroads where Beecher family preachers fought against slavery even before Harriet Beecher Stowe penned "Uncle Tom's Cabin." (To get the whole story, visit her home next door to Mark Twain's in Hartford.)

Connecticut is often ahead of the curve. Hartford boasts the nation's first public art museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum, while New Haven (Yale's art museums are no slouches either) can claim America's first hamburger, still lovingly served at Louis' Lunch. Coney Island types might contest Lake Compounce's claim as America's first amusement park (the Bristol, CT, park is more than 160 years old), but you won't care as you scream your appreciation on the 180-foot plunge of the Sky Coaster.

The three-ring circus was born here, and the master of bunkum himself, Phineas T. Barnum, even served as the serious and capable mayor of Bridgeport. The Barnum Museum, open since 1893, chronicles both the city and the colorful career of its namesake. Even P.T. would be awed by the spectacles of Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, where glittering fantasy casino complexes have sprouted in the tribal-owned wilderness. You don't need to be a gambler to check in and catch some concerts.

Live theater fans have a choice of several top-flight professional companies, such as Yale Rep and Long Wharf in New Haven and the Hartford Stage Company. But to stay ahead of the pack, be sure to get tickets to the historic Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, where you just might catch the next big musical in development before it goes to Broadway.