Posted on 04/15/2022 5:27:49 PM PDT by Mean Daddy
My wife and I are planning on flying into DC to see our son in Arlington and then taking a rental car and driving up towards Maine for a fall foliage trip. Looking for ideas on where to stay, what to visit etc. We have no desire to go into the large cities like New York, Boston etc. unless it's to go through. Also interested in what to avoid.
We're in our late 50's and my wife will want to stop and shop, see historical, natural sites etc. We also want to have places setup to stay vs. waiting until the last moment. Any suggestions on routes as we want to take our time and not in a hurry to get anywhere. Our plan is to stay close to the ocean on the way up and western edge of New England on the way back to Arlington, Virginia. Planning on staying maybe a week.
Any insights and experiences are appreciated.
Rural western NY State’s sugar maples are stunning in the fall.
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Letchworth State Park. Breakfast at the Glen Iris Inn.
What do you call a large group of Karens?
A home owners association.
Silly? But true, yes?
For places to stay in Vermont, there are a number of motels along Rte. 7 in South Burlington and Shelburne, Vt.
Good places to eat in the area include Mr. Up’s and Fire & Ice in Middlebury, Vt.
What’s that got to do with traveling through a state? Mass is safer than most places. And where the leaf peepers go…the only criminals are running hard cider on the back roads.
Absolutely! Letchworth and Glen Iris. Then stop by Mary Jemison’s cabin. Our family homestead is just about 30 miles south of there.
Bump for later.
Part of the scheduling is it starts earlier up north. So if you time it right you can slowly drive south as the season change creeps south.
See the Marine Corps Museum by Quantico.
We did not find Colonial Williamsburg to be worth the time/money.
Northwestern VA Luray Caverns, also has a cool antique cars museum.
Sturbridge Village and Plymouth, MA. Maybe Cape Cod? Mark Twain house in Hartford, CT?
I lived in the DC area for over 20 years.
I’m not the greatest expert in leaf viewing, but Skyline Drive asking the Blue Ridge is famous for leaf viewers and is near the DC area.
I don’t know the last time you visited your son but a couple of things for a general-purpose visit to the area:
1) Tolls. There are toll roads everywhere that depend on camera tolling (no toll booths) and variable tolling depending on the time of day and volume of traffic. Rental car companies will sometimes have an EZ-Pass installed on the car and will charge you a huge surcharge on top of the toll. Famous for outrageous tolls are I-66 from Dulles to Arlington and I-395 from Springfield to Arlington.
2) Speeding cameras. Certain localities in the DC area are famous for cameras. Be careful.
3) Hotel pricing. Hotels in the immediate DC area are outrageous but are a lot more affordable immediately outside of the area. That’s primarily because of how the government calculates per diem rates. The point being that in some cases you can go just a few miles away and save a massive amount
4) Local sales taxes in Virginia. Each county / independent city in Virginia has their own sales taxes that can be applied to different things. Arlington County has some of the highest prices due to local taxes. From my experience, Fairfax County has noticably cheaper prices because tax is not so high.
5) Speaking of which, if you want to buy booze, Costco in Washington DC sells booze at Costco prices. Virginia Costcos (to include the one in Crystal City) only sell beer/wine. There are a couple of decent Class VI stores at Ft Belvoir, but otherwise beer/wine are run by Virginia ABC so pricing and selection is not as good as elsewhere.
6) If you like Turkish food (kebabs), Atilla’s on Columbia Pike has pretty respectable food (and nice people running the place too). I recommend their Iskendir Kebab. Not as good as in Turkey, but fully edible. For Thai food, Bangkok 54 is pretty good. Again, nowhere near as good as here in Thailand, but fully edible. The Thai market next door has a little shop where you can get Beef Noodle Soup (Thai version of Pho). Very authentic as 90% of the people that eat in the market restaurant are Thais and not whites...
Hope the above helps
Bar Harbor Maine across route 2 to NH. Stop at the Town and Country resort in Gorham, NH for a night. See Mt. Washington and then cut south to 302 or go back to 2 and continue across to VT. Take a side trip to Lyndonville, Me just off of 91 in VT. Stop at the Miss Lyndonville diner and have some pie.
Continue on 2 to 89 and pickup route 100 south. Follow 100 south to Wilmington and stop there for at least one night. Eat at Dot’s for breakfast. It’s an old time New England diner in a quaint mountain town with lots of touristy things to do.
From Wilmington, turn east and follow route 9 to New Hampshire. In Keene, NH, pickup route 101 East through the Monadnock region and over Temple mountain toward Manchester.
If you stay on 101 it goes all the way to Portsmouth, NH. Without question, the Olde Ferry Landing is the place to stop for the giant scallops or lobster and dine on the river by the tugboats.
Personally, I recommend Portland, Maine Old Port for a stop if you like rustic old cities. For oldsters, DiMillos on the Water restaurant (floating) is excellent. Street and Company have the best upscale Italian seafood in the northeast. Rosies Restaurant and Pub is a must visit for burgers, beer and locals. Gritty McDuffs brews their own beer.
If you are a biker, stop at Bentley’s on Route 1 in Arundel. If not, continue to Portland.
Depending upon the dates, the best leaves will be on route 2 in northern New Hampshire, route 100 in Vermont and in the Monadnock region, specifically around Dublin and Peterborough, NH. Later in the month, the Berkshires in Mass are good.
Downtown Portsmouth, NH and the Old Port area of Portland, Maine are the best small cities to visit. If you head farther west, Burlington, Vermont is interesting.
I lived in various areas of New Hampshire for 55 years and they all have their good points. I’m in far SW Florida now because I hate shoveling snow and I like to ride my convertible and motorcycles year round.
Have fun.
when we did our honey moon trip so many yrs ago, we went up the coast and then to Bar Harbor...from there we went up to northern Maine near Greeley and then up to Quebec....
from Quebec, down into New Hampshire and then thru to Vermont and visited Stowe and ate at the restaurant run at that time by the family in the Sound of Music....
I live in the west and I enjoy the west, but upstate NY and New England are wonderful slow paced areas with lots to see....
Think that you have a ton of good options. Avoiding NYC and heading up the NYS Thruway 87 towards Albany (avoid Albany) at Troy I’d cut over Rte 2 or Rte 7 towards Vermont. Brattleboro Vt or Keene NH would be good place to stop off. Make time to hit Walpole NH (Watkins Inn, town is frozen in the early 1800’s . Then work your way up to Portland Maine. I’d look to stay up in Bath. Spectacular.
White mountains Kancamagus highway. Don’t do it on a Saturday or Sunday during peak season.
I grew up just outside of Plymouth, Mass and had grandparents living in the Berkshires of Mass. I now live in Maine.
What I would do is as follows:
Stay away from New York City. There is never a way to know if there will be nasty traffic or not. Plus a little to the West and the sites in Pennsylvania and New York are a lot better.
I would try to stay in Pennsylvania, New York hotels will likely be more expensive.
From New York try to head towards Pittsfield, Mass. It is not a great destination, but will lead you to Route 7 up into Vermont. It is a great drive and one used for leaf peepers. In Vermont you will arrive in Bennington which is a fun “artsy” town to look around.
After Bennington, set your Navigation to Bethel, Maine. You should be taken through some great small and rural towns through Vermont and New Hampshire. Plenty of small towns to visit and a really pretty drive. You will probably drive right through White Mountain national forest.
Bethel Maine is not far over the border into Maine and is known for Sugarloaf Ski Resort and sits in the middle of a great place to look at fall foliage.
Much depends on the time of year, but this route should provide a really easygoing and pleasant bit of sightseeing.
If you get near Adams, Mass I can really strongly suggest a lunch at Angelina’s subs. Remember to ask for the Dust! In Bethel try something Laos from Le Mu.
My wife and I have travelled all over Southern New England. We treated my Mom & Dad to their 50th wedding anniversary at the Christmas Farm Inn in Jackson, NH (in the White Mountains) and loved it. I asked my wife to marry me in Center Lovell, Maine. We took our kids to the Tyler Place in Northern Vermont a few times and they loved it. We really enjoyed our Revolutionary War and Colonial historical visits to Sturbridge Village, the Old North Church, Lexington and Concord, Paul Revere’s House and many other historic locations. My wife and I especially enjoyed Acadia National Park in Maine (get the popovers at Jordan Pond House). The Cabot Creamery around Waterbury Center, VT was great — fantastic cheese!
If you like industrial history, you will like the American Precision Museum in Windsor, VT on the Connecticut, River. You will really understand how and why New England was the major manufacturing center of the young USA.
Be sure to get some cozy inn rooms with a fireplace for the chilly nights, too!
As another poster wrote, start up north and leisurely move south following the foliage. Be as flexible as you can because foliage dates vary widely, but you generally can’t go wrong with the first week of October.
The fire devastation was severe. Later, new trees were planted and after some years the forest became lush again. That particular area has quite a bit of pink granite which is only found in a very few sites on Earth.
The natural trees are Evergreens, but the new trees which were cultivated were deciduous. From high up, the different shades of green can easily be discerned. This is the case during very late Spring and early Summer. There are shades of very dark green and much lighter greens. This not at once apparent if there were no Guide to explain just what the view is really showing.
As Summer progresses, the distinctions are said to become more evident. By the time of Fall, the changing leaves are described as being truly magnificent. In Bar Harbor at peak Autumn, Cruise Ships come in, fully loaded. The end of the Season is said to be unique and once in a lifetime viewing worthy.
The thing is, that Arborists have determined that the Deciduous trees cannot thrive in the soil there because of the preponderance of Granite. The roots of the trees simply cannot grab hold there. In the next century those trees shall all be gone, unable to sustain themselves via reproduction. The forest of the region shall once again be completely dominated by the Evergreens.
I have not been there myself in the Fall, but I can say that Bar Harbor is one of my favorite ‘touristy places’ ever. I tend to dislike Tourist areas very much.
The story of the area is fascinating. Accadia National Park is distinct in a number of ways. Virtually all of the land was once privately owned. It was not confiscated by the Federal Government ( a violation of the Constitution, BTW.) Wealthy donors simply gave the land to the Government in order to insure that it would be protected and maintained into perpetuity.
The National Parks Act coincides with the birth of Accadia, nee’ Lafayette National Park. The story of the name change is of interest. Bar Harbor Town is literally on the edge, or perhaps even a part of the Park.
Artists were attracted to that park long ago, and some of the works are positively amazing. Do a search on ‘Rockefeller's Teeth’ for a curious insight into the construction of the ‘Cadillac Road.’
Everything about Bar Harbor is to me amazing.
Stay away from Irish Bars advertising Lobster Rolls. I can tell you where to go. If you like climbing, bring your rock climbing gear. You will not regret visiting that place.
About fifteen years ago my wife and I took our first trip to Maine. We looked up all the lighthouses along the coast of Maine and started at one of the southernmost and worked our way north to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. We went at the end of the season and everything (summer stuff and seasonal restaurants) was closing or soon would be. It had been wet and colder the week before but the week we were there it had warmed back up.
We planned out own route and researched the lighthouses etc that we stopped to see. Went to the LL Bean flagship store and other shops and boy did we have fall color on the drive. We went a mountain top overlook park above Camden and really enjoyed our exploration.
Don’t know if we could duplicate it again — picking the right week is tricky. But it is a beautiful and photogenic coastline. We found the people glad to see late season patrons.
I guess you ought to make reservations now. But I feel like you are messing with our heads, making us think about October when it’s actually April out there.
grew up in the Binghamton area....I understand Sharkeys is for sale.....
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