From New Hampshire we headed west to Burlington, the most populous city in Vermont, the Green Mountain State. Fun fact, the Greens are amongst the oldest mountains on Planet Earth and used to be taller than the Himalayas millions of years ago.
Burlington is on Lake Champlain – the largest fresh water lake in the US after the Great Lakes. We have to admit we didn’t know anything about Lake Champlain, so we are really glad we got a chance to visit it. The lake stretches approximately 120 miles north to south and averages about 12 miles in width – and it is nearly 400 feet deep! It runs along the border of the states of Vermont and New York, and extends into Quebec in Canada. It is nestled between the Green Mountains of Vermont to the east and the Adirondack Mountains of New York to the west – delivering great views whichever way you look.
We explored several miles of the shoreline on a rail to trail that ran north from downtown Burlington and into the lake on a long causeway with the lake on both sides. It was pretty cold and very windy, but a really cool experience!
The next day we visited the downtown pedestrian street and the Lake Champlain Chocolates store, where I got the best Mocha ever and we stocked up on lots of chocolate bars. The chocolate was really good! Sophie’s favorite was the Hazelnut Five Star Bar (she rated it ten out of five stars). We found the houses in the city pretty cute as well.
We headed south out of Burlington and had great views of Lake Champlain and the mountains as we drove. We stopped at a cute roadside farm called Daikin Farms and stocked up on maple syrup, preserves, maple ham and some other goodies. Then, just down the road we stumbled across an old covered bridge and farm house that had been converted into a Vermont Flannel store. I got a nice flannel shirt there.
The Vermont countryside was beautiful and bucolic with lots of farms, lakes, hills and mountains. We enjoyed our brief time passing through and would love to come back one day to do more exploring.
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