Best of Vermont

Green Mountains, a long lake, and villages that earn the reputation. Eight places across Vermont, from the state's highest ridge and a cliff-walled lake in the Northeast Kingdom to a museum holding a steamboat that was hauled two miles overland.

8 places · Vermont

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🌊 Lakes & rivers

Lake Willoughby

Westmore, VT · Northeast Kingdom, Vermont

Lake Willoughby runs five miles through Westmore, a glacial trench barely a mile wide with Mount Pisgah on one side and Mount Hor on the other. The water drops more than 300 feet, deep enough to stay cold into July. That squeeze between two cliff walls is the Willoughby Gap, a National Natural Landmark since 1967, and the reason people keep reaching for Norway to describe it. The free public beach at the north end is the easy version: park, walk in, swim. Port-a-lets, no lifeguard. The south end holds the trailhead for Mount Pisgah's south trail, roughly four miles round trip, with Pulpit Rock about a mile up on a ledge hundreds of feet directly above the water. Services are thin, so stock up at the Willoughby Lake Store on Route 5A, open early and closing by evening. Foliage peaks in late September, ahead of most of Vermont, and the lots fill by mid morning.

🎡 Attractions

Shelburne Museum

Shelburne, VT · Champlain Valley, Vermont

Electra Havemeyer Webb spent decades collecting American things nobody else took seriously, then in 1947 spread them across 45 acres in Shelburne. The result reads less like a museum than a village she assembled: 39 exhibition buildings, 25 of them historic structures hauled in, holding some 150,000 objects. The 220 foot Lake Champlain steamboat Ticonderoga sits two miles from the water, dragged overland across swamp, fields and a rail line over 62 days in the winter of 1955. Nearby stand an 1871 lighthouse from Colchester Reef and an 1845 covered bridge. The Webb galleries hold Monet, Degas and Manet, billed as the only Impressionists on public view in Vermont, alongside 500 quilts and 1,400 decoys. Go in season: the full campus runs daily 10 to 5, May 9 through October 25 in 2026, adults $27.50 at the gate and $25 online. Winter shrinks to two galleries, Wednesday through Sunday. Parking is free and fills first on foliage weekends.

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Granville Gulf and Moss Glen Falls

Granville, VT · Green Mountains, Vermont

VT 100 drops into a narrow forested cleft here, and for six miles the highway, the brook, and the mountain walls share one floor. That is Granville Gulf, 1,171 acres the state has held since 1928. Moss Glen Falls spills off the ledge beside the road, visible through the windshield before you find the pull off. A wooden bridge and a short gravel path run about a tenth of a mile to a railed platform at the base, level the whole way and built as an accessible route. Look right on the walk in for Little Moss Glen Falls, a thin ribbon that runs hard in spring. No fee, no gate, no ticket. The gravel pull off has no marked spaces and spills onto the shoulder at foliage peak, late September into mid October. VT 100 is plowed year round, but the bridge and boardwalk can close when ice builds up, so check before a winter trip.

⛰️ Mountains

Camel's Hump

Huntington, VT · Green Mountains, Vermont

Camel's Hump is the profile Vermonters recognize from a moving car, the double hump that ended up on the state quarter. At 4,083 feet it ties Mount Ellen for third-highest in the state, and nothing has been built on top: no lifts, no auto road, no summit tower. The usual climb is the Burrows Trail out of Huntington, 4.8 miles round trip and roughly 2,300 feet of gain, steady work rather than technical until the last pitch of open rock. The final stretch crosses about ten acres of true alpine tundra, arctic plants holding on since the ice age, which is why a Green Mountain Club caretaker spends summer days up there asking hikers to step only on stone. No fee, no gate. Trails close for mud season each spring, roughly early April until the weekend before Memorial Day, and the lot at the end of Camel's Hump Road fills early on foliage Saturdays.

⛰️ Mountains

Mount Equinox

Manchester, VT · Taconic Range, Southern Vermont

Equinox Mountain tops out at 3,848 feet, the high point of the Taconic Range and one of the few Vermont summits you can reach without hiking. Skyline Drive, a private paved toll road opened in 1947, climbs about 3,200 feet in 5.2 miles from Historic Route 7A, switchbacking through hardwoods into stunted spruce at grades that average over 11 percent. Use low gear coming down. The mountain and the road belong to the Carthusian monks of the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration, the only Carthusian monastery in North America, visible from the drive but closed to visitors. At the top, the Saint Bruno Scenic Viewing Center frames the Green Mountains, the Adirondacks and, on clear days, Mount Greylock. Plan around the calendar: the road runs Memorial Day weekend through October 31, closed November into spring, and October foliage traffic backs up at the toll house early.