3 Weeks In Vermont – What Should We Do?

Shae and I are halfway through our six weeks in Kentucky which means it’s time to plan out our next state – Vermont.

Seeing as we spent a week there last year and it’s a (somewhat) smaller state, we’re only planning on spending three weeks there (our average for each state on the road trip is five weeks).

We’re due to get there towards the end of May which means we’ll be in Vermont during the 40th Annual Quechee Hot Air Balloon Craft and Music Festival, so we’ll hopefully be able to catch some of that.

Where We’ll Stay

Seeing as we’ll only be in Vermont for three weeks, we’ll probably stay in three or four different places. Shae and I loved our week in Montpelier last year – so much so that we both included it in our lists of our 10 favorite cities we visited in 2018.

We probably won’t stay there again this year though. There are so many other fun things to do in Vermont, we want to concentrate on those this time around rather than revisiting all the same places in Montpelier, despite loving it so much there. Accommodation in Montpelier is also a little more expensive than in other parts of the state, so our budget will play a part in where we stay.

We’ve already received numerous suggestions of things to do in Vermont, so I pinned all those on Google Maps last night. Looking at where those pins are located, it’s looking like we’ll probably stay in Burlington, Waterbury or Stowe, somewhere between Rutland and Hartford and possibly somewhere else for a few days.

The map below shows all those pins and I’ve circled the areas where we’re thinking of staying. As you can see, we should be within a two hour drive of pretty much all those activities. Waterbury and Stowe are also not far from Montpelier, so it’d only be a short drive if we wanted to visit for the day. We’re visiting Connecticut after Vermont which is to the south which means we could swing by a couple of the pinned items at the bottom of the state on our way.

Our Initial List Of Things To Do In Vermont

Here’s a list of all the suggestions we’ve already received for Vermont. We probably won’t have the time (or budget) to do them all and there are some other things we haven’t specifically listed yet, such as hiking in the mountains as that’ll partly depend on where we end up staying. We like having a long list of suggestions though to make sure we don’t miss anything that we’d truly love.

• Ben & Jerry’s Factory (we already did this last year, but we might head back there for a quick visit)
• Bragg Farm Sugar House & Gift Shop
• Smugglers’ Notch Distillery
• von Trapp Bierhall & Brewery
• The Alchemist in Stowe (another brewery)
• Shelburne Museum
• Northeast Kingdom (this refers to towns in the northeast part of the state)
• Lake Willoughby
• Waterfront Park in Burlington
• Church Street in Burlington
• A cruise on Lake Champlain
• The Cupboard Deli in Jeffersonville
• Quechee Gorge
• 40th Annual Quechee Hot Air Balloon Craft and Music Festival
• Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park
• Woodstock
• Simon Pearce (does glassblowing & more)
• Billings Farm & Museum
• Lake Dunmore
• Mount Equinox Skyline Drive
• The Vermont Country Store
• Brookfield Floating Bridge
• Vermont Maple Museum
• Dog Mountain, Home Of Stephen Huneck Gallery (a chapel for people whose dogs have passed away)

Your Suggestions

Those are all the suggestions we’ve received so far, but we’d love to receive your suggestions too if there are any can’t-miss activities, restaurants, hiking, etc. that you know of in Vermont. That could end up influencing where we end up staying, so we wanted to get your ideas before booking any hotels or Airbnbs.

If there’s anything we should add to our list, please let us know in the comments below 🙂