Northeast: Sampling Vermont

on location: northeast ❖

randy mink

Sampling

Vermont

Crowd-pleasing

attractions satisfy the appetites and curiosity of groups State of Vermont/Dennis Curran

touring the state’s cozy villages and rural hamlets Flaming fall foliage dapples the postcard-perfect Vermont countryside.

or travelers seeking simple pleasures and hometown comforts, Vermont is as inviting as a stack of warm fluffy pancakes drenched in maple syrup, the “real” stuff found in every gift shop and general store in the Green

Mountain State. Pure maple is the only kind I buy and always brings back sweet memories of this delicious slice of New England.

With tour operators from around the country, I recently sampled a smorgasbord of attractions on a whirlwind fam sponsored by Vermont Tourism Network.

Our favorite stops were food stores that double as tourist attractions. Groups like nothing better than eating and shopping, so such places as Vermont Country Store, Cold Hollow Cider Mill, Ben & Jerry’s, Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks and Cabot Creamery are smart choices for Harvest-season visitors to Billings Farm & Museum examine a display of apple varieties. itinerary planners. Many stores

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offer abundant free samples in hopes of selling their Vermont-made goodies to the nibblers and noshers who come through their doors. Most have demonstrations, videos, tours or exhibits that show how the foods are made.

Filling up on free cheese, crackers, cookies and candy, however, means that overzealous grazers may not be hungry at meal times, so tour members should be advised to pace themselves.

Famous for cows, red barns, white church steeples and glorious fall foliage, Vermont has the image of being oldfashioned and out of the mainstream, a rural backwater with quaint villages and Main Street charm. That’s fine with me. I bought a Vermont T-shirt that says “What happens here, stays here.

But nothing ever really happens.”

LeisureGroupTravel.com

Pancakes with Dakin Farm maple syrup taste as good as they look.

Yet the growth in niche farming enterprises and artisan products has put Vermont on the cutting edge of culinary trends. And the state is at the forefront of social thought, green technology and civilized living in general. Roadside billboards have been banned since 1969.

In Burlington, Vermont’s largest city (pop. 39,000), our group made a beeline to the Lake Champlain Chocolates factory store. We had just eaten breakfast, but that didn’t stop us from sampling the freshly made, all-natural, preservative-free truffles produced for more than two decades and sold nationwide by this artisan chocolatier. Flavors range from the signature maple crunch and evergreen mint to the more unusual molé, lemon ginger and raspberry pink peppercorn. Tour members can watch the gourmet confections made before their eyes, view the “from bean to chocolate to you” video and save on factory seconds. The company also has a store at Church Street Marketplace, a lively pedestrian mall in downtown Burlington.

Four cruise operators in Burlington offer excursions on Lake Champlain, LeisureGroupTravel.com

Shelburne Museum

the nation’s sixth largest lake (after the five Great Lakes). The Spirit of Ethan Allen III, the largest tour boat, has sightseeing, lunch and dinner cruises.

Groups with culinary interests may want to consider cooking classes at The Essex, Vermont’s Culinary Resort & Spa. Formerly known as The Inn at Essex, the Burlington-area resort hosts classes in partnership with the New England Culinary Institute.

South of Burlington is an attraction that merits a half day. Shelburne Museum, spread across 45 bucolic acres, houses an eclectic collection of Americana in 39 exhibition buildings, many of them historic structures transplanted from other locations. Perhaps most impressive is the 220-foot luxury steamboat Ticonderoga, which once plied Lake Champlain. It was moved here in the 1950s on a specially built railroad track.

Just the thought of visiting Dakin Farm, the name of a store in Ferrisburgh, makes me drool. They’re famous for hams and bacon smoked over smoldering corn cobs and cured with a touch of maple syrup. Besides sampling the meats, cheeses, mustards and syrups, visitors can see workers glazing the hams, tour the smokehouse and syrup cannery, and try “sugar-on-snow,” a mixture of maple syrup and crunchy snow. Don’t leave without posing outside by a larger-than-life jug of Dakin Farm maple syrup.

Our group also satisfied its sweet tooth while learning about the syrupmaking process at New England Maple Museum in Pittsford, which has the largest collection of maple sugaring artifacts anywhere, and Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks in Montpelier, the capital of Vermont.

The Waterbury area in Central Vermont makes a good base of operations

Shelburne Museum displays this 1871 Lake Champlain lighthouse.

for visits to destination stores that offer tours and generous tastings. At Cold Hollow Cider Mill, New England’s

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largest producer of apple cider, groups can see the cider press in operation during the fall production season. The store gets 300,000 visitors a year and as many as 25 buses a day. It’s hard to leave Cold Hollow without getting a cider donut for the road.

Just down Waterbury-Stowe Road (Route 100, the most traveled stretch of road in the state) is Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory, one of Vermont’s signature attractions. Looking through a window onto the factory floor, we saw them making Brownie Chocolate Chunk and Cinnamon Bun. After the 30-minute tour, which explains how childhood friends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield turned a $5 correspondence course in ice cream making into a global phenomenon, guests sample the flavor of the day.

Cabot Creamery, which claims to make the “World’s Best Cheddar,� has an annex store on Route 100 between Cold Hollow and Ben & Jerry’s.

Groups can see how cheddar is made on the factory tour in Cabot.

The 1875 train station in Waterbury is home to the visitor center of Green Mountain Coffee. Through exhibits and videos, groups can view the coffeemaking process from “tree to cup.� Coffee samplings for groups ($2 per person) include a roasting demonstration and packet of coffee.

In the idyllic town of Woodstock is Billings Farm & Museum, a model dairy farm that dates back to 1871.

Groups can see the Jersey cows, view the afternoon milking operation, tour the 1890 farmhouse and have ice cream.

The first-rate attraction operates in partnership with the Marsh-BillingsRockefeller National Historical Park, where mansion and garden tours are available.

Vermont is all about nostalgia, so the Orton family’s Vermont Country Store LeisureGroupTravel.com

in Weston enchanted me and other Baby Boomers in our group. In addition to sampling jellies, cookies and sausage, we found many reminders of our childhood. The store (“Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find”) sells everything from Lamb Chop puppets and Bosco chocolate syrup to gumballfilled hula hoops and Fizzies flavored tablets (awful-tasting stuff I used to plop into a glass of water for an instant soft drink). Other discoveries include flutophones, bike horns (the kind you squeeze) and long-forgotten brands of cosmetics, soaps and shampoos.

In addition to visiting scenic, historical and retail attractions, groups can get a glimpse at little Vermont’s industrial might. In a former marble mill in Proctor, just north of Rutland, the Vermont Marble Museum offers a 12-minute movie and more than 100 exhibits that shed light on the marble industry. The Hall of Presidents features marble busts of U.S. presidents. Visitors also see carvers at work, chipping and sanding away. The quarry itself, still being mined, is a short walk or bus ride away. Items in the gift shop range from cheese trays and rolling pins to chess sets and burial urns.

Barre, near Monteplier, is the “Granite Capital of the World.” Groups at Rock of Ages can tour the factory, visit the quarry and sandblast their own souvenir at North America’s largest maker of cemetery markers.

Granite and marble seem to symbolize the bedrock values and solid Yankee traditions of Vermont, a cozy place that charms visitors with its sense of community and Norman Rockwell simplicity. Change comes slowly to Vermont, and that’s a good thing. LGT

PLAN IT! Vermont Tourism Network: 802-863-1122, vermonttourismnetwork.travel Vermont Department of Tourism: 800-837-6668, vermontvacation.com LeisureGroupTravel.com

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on our radar: northeast ❖ MARYLAND The National Aquarium in Baltimore, one of Maryland’s most popular group travel attractions, recently updated its dolphin show and introduced a jellies exhibit. Our Ocean Planet: The New Dolphin Show explores dolphins’ intelligence, agility and power through new dynamic behaviors such as underwater flips and favorites like vertical spins. The aquarium’s sixth dolphin show is the first to have a strong global message about protecting the environment and the connections between humans and animals. Jellies Invasions: Oceans Out of Balance examines these translucent creatures and the impact ocean health has on their success. The exhibit features as many as nine different species and shows how they are changing the balance of the earth’s aquatic ecosystems. (aqua.org)

MASSACHUSETTS The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), is undergoing a building project that, when completed in late 2010, will have increased its space by 28 percent.

For the first time since the museum’s founding in 1870, the art of North, Central, and South America will be presented together in its own space, the American Wing. The MFA has approximately 15,500 objects in its American collection and approximately 5,000 of them, or 30 percent, will be on view when the new wing opens. This is more than double the number of works previously on view. The American Wing’s four levels of galleries will be arranged chronologically: prehistoric Native American and pre-Columbian collections on the first level, the Colonial period on the second level, the 19th century on the third level, and 20th cen-

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LGT/09

For a free Group Tour Planner, call 1-800-922-6478 or visit www.hotsprings.org.

tury works in all media on the top level.

Completed components of the building project include the renovation of the Huntington Avenue entrance on the Avenue of the Arts, opened in April 2009, and the opening in June 2008 of both the State Street Corporation Fenway Entrance and the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Visitor Center. (617-267-9300, mfa.org) NEW YORK Lincoln Center plans to open its new visitors center, The Atrium at Lincoln Center, on Nov. 12. Located adjacent to the performing arts center, the new space, designed as an urban arts oasis, provides increased access to the iconic campus and a vibrant neighborhood gathering place. And for the first time in Lincoln Center’s history, the box office will offer day-of discount tickets to performances across the campus.

The visitors center is part of an overall $1.2-billion development project to modernize and open up the 16-acre campus and a key element in Lincoln Center’s 50th anniversary year.

The Atrium at Lincoln Center will feature free performances on Thursday nights (from dance and jazz to classical and opera), informal dining, lush 21-foot-high vertical gardens, a floorto-ceiling fountain and dynamic media wall with visitor and performance information. The visitors center is also a new departure point for tours of the campus. In addition to the Atrium’s new amenities, resident organizations like the New York City Ballet, New York City Opera, Jazz at Lincoln Center and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts offer exciting seasons with new commissions and special opportunities and discounts for groups during the anniversary celebration. (lincolncenter.org) LeisureGroupTravel.com