Best New England Fall Foliage Travel Destinations Resource

Article and photo (2008 photo of Big Apple Farm, Wrentham, Mass.) by Eric H.

If you're overwhelmed on where to start when traveling the six New England states during the fall foliage season, we have a resource to make autumn trip planning easier. The VisitingNewEngland.com "Best New England Fall Foliage Travel Destinations, Vacations and Scenic Drives" offers tips on places we have been to and regard as scenic, fun and relevant autumn New England fall travel spots.

We cover a wide variety of New England fall foliage season information, including our favorite vacation destinations and hotel getaways, dining spots tailor-made for autumn, best leaf peeping spots, driving tours, hikes, day trips, apple picking and apple cider recommendations.

Realizing that you might have a limited amount of time to travel -- like, perhaps, a weekend -- we feel that our "New England Fall Travel Guide" acts as sort of a "greatest hits" of New England fall foliage season travel. Of course, New England offers so much to do in the autumn that we'll constantly update this section, as we experience more great spots in the fall.

To access the article, click on the link above.

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The Long and "Wining" Road in Connecticut

One of our Twitter followers, http://twitter.com/RuthieB2, just gave us a great autumn tip, stating the "Connecticut Wine Trail is a fantastic trip for a cool fall day."

The Connecticut Wine Trail takes visitors through 20 vineyards in some of Connecticut's most picturesque towns. This eastern and western Connecticut excursion offers award-winning wines. All wineries are members of the Connecticut Vineyard and Winery Association.

The wineries include:
Bishop's Orchards Winery and Farm Market, Guilford
Chamard Vineyards, Clinton
DiGrazia Vineyards, Brookfield
Gouveia Vineyards, Wallingford
Haight-Brown Vineyards. Litchfield
Heritage Trail Vineyards, Lisbon
Hopkins Vineyard, New Preston
Jerram Winery, New Hartford
Jonathan Edwards Winery, North Stonington
Jones Winery, Shelton
Land of Nod Winery, East Canaan
Maugle Sierra Vineyards, Ledyard
McLaughlin Vineyards, Sandy Hook
Miranda Vineyard, Goshen
Priam Vineyards, Colchester
Rosedale Farms & Vineyard, Simsbury
Sharpe Hill Vineyard, Pomfret
Stonington Vineyards, Stonington
Sunset Meadow Vineyards, Goshen
White Silo Winery, Sherman

For more information on to create your own wine tour, we recommend visiting the Connecticut Wine Trail Web Site.

Editor's note: If you have any fall tips, please email us at The Weekly New England Travel and Vacation Gazette. To access our New England travel tips and updates on Twitter, visit our New England Info page.

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Phantom Farms Fall Fun!

Article by Eric H.

We've posted before on Phantom Farms in Cumberland, R.I., and will do so periodically in the future. The reason: like everything else we write here, Phantom Farms is a New England destination we love to visit and recommend (without any vested interest, of course). Why write about anything else? That way, we pass along straight-from-the-heart travel recommendations along to you!

Phantom Farms is a quintessential New England year-round farm stand that is best visited in the fall, in our opinion. With its apple picking, freshly-squeezed apple cider, pumpkins, and cornstalks, Phantom Farms, for many, seems synonymous with autumn fun in the northern Rhode Island, Blackstone Valley region. Add pies, pastries, jams and jellies, more native produce, a garden center and a beautiful rural location and Phantom Farms is truly a "one-stop" shopping roadside farm destination.

Fall events make Phantom Farms even that much more fun. For the rest of this month and October, Phantom Farms will be featuring events like an antique tractor and truck show, live music, "story time," a Jack-O-Lantern illumination and pumpkin harvest festival, car show, chili cook-off, and "family farm day." For specific dates and times for the events, please click on the flyer in this posting! We'll be there a few times, and hope to see you!



Phantom Farms
2920 Diamond Hill Rd.
Cumberland, RI
Tel.: (401) 333-2240
Fax: (401) 334-479

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Apple Picking and Beyond at Belkin Lookout Farm Makes for a Fruitful Day

Article by Eric H.

If you're looking for an apple picking experience that goes beyond just picking apples, then Belkin Lookout Farm in Natick, Mass., is the place to "pick."

In the same town that brings you the densely-populated commercial stretch of Route 9 with just about every store imaginable -- and a seemingly continuous traffic jam -- Belkin Lookout Farm resides on 180 acres of beautiful farm land in a truly quiet rural section of South Natick. Belkin Farm is also one of the oldest continuously working farms in the country, having some form of farming operation since the mid-1600s! It's simply a beautiful fall New England destination, and a true oasis from growing suburbia. You'll feel like you're hundreds of miles away from the shopping mall and center craziness of Natick and neighboring Framingham -- also a bastion of shopping frenzy on Route 9.

Not that Belkin Lookout Farm doesn't become overcrowded itself, given its high level of entertaining things to do on a nice New England September day, like today. This "Metrowest" outdoor, family fun destination, a half hour from Boston, features not only fields and fields of apple picking, but also train rides to your fruit picking spot, a terrific farm market and garden center, a petting zoo, hay pyramid, caterpillar rides, a burlap maze, moon bounce, a farmed-themed children's play area and, on the weekend, live childrens' entertainment, face painting, a barbecue snack bar and pony and camel rides (additional charge).

This weekend (Sept. 19 and 20th), the Belkin Lookout Farm fall celebration continues with a magic show and a contest with the chance to win Red Sox tickets, according to the Belkin Lookout Farm Web Site. At this writing, Gala and Mac apples are ready to pick as well as Asian pears, yellow peaches, nectarines and plums. For updates, directions, hours and any possible changes in schedule, we recommend calling the Belkin Lookout Farm hotline at (508) 653-0653.

We also recommend checking out the "Hey, everyone, let's go apple picking" article on Belkin Farm at VisitingNewEngland.com for additional perspectives on this landmark New England farm.

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The Flume Brings New Hampshire Fall Attractions to New Heights

Editor's note: Welcome to the debut of our series on the best New England fall season attractions, destinations and places to shop, dine and stay. Today we feature a famous New England attraction, the Flume in the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire...


Article and photo by Eric H.
The Flume, in Franconia Notch State Park, N.H., offers a natural greatest hits package of everything that's good about New Hampshire scenery.

The natural chasm with its wide gravel paths and boardwalks takes you through covered bridges, beautiful waterfalls and an 800-ft long gorge with a slightly scary 90-ft drop, affording amazing scenes of scenic pools glacial boulders and mountain views. Visitors can enjoy the Flume in two different ways -- walking through the gorge or taking on the moderate challenge of walking the two-mile loop (with inclines and what seems like a lot of stairs).

The visitor center is impressive, also, with an information center, gift shop, cafeteria and auditorium featuring videos of the notch.

Fall time clearly allows for the best Flume experience when peak fall foliage (usually early to mid-October) lends a wonderland of often spectacular colors virtually everywhere you look. Because the Franconia State Park region traditionally lends some of the most striking foliage in New England, the Flume always ranks a "notch" above the pack for leaf peeping fans.

For a visual of the Flume, check out this video from flumegorge.com:



The Flume
Exit 34A Off Route 93
Franconia Notch State Park, N.H.
Tel. (603) 823-5661

Additional editor's note: Please call the New Hampshire fall foliage hot line at 1-800-258-3608 for forecasts and updates on regional colors. To make reservations at local hotels, we recommend browsing the VisitingNewengland.com Franconia lodging page

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