Vermont travel chief talks up onset of leaf-peeping season
State is marketing beauty of 251 towns
Vermont businesses are gearing up for the leaflookers, the state’s tourism chief told Boston Herald Radio.
“We had a warm summer, and a warm September, so the foliage is coming in nice and slow which I think makes for a nice foliage season,” said Wendy Knight, Vermont’s commissioner of tourism. “So in the Northeast Kingdom we’re really beginning to see some peak. The rest of the state, we’re beginning to see some really beautiful golds and yellows and ambers.
“You see the foliage coming in earlier in the higher elevations,” Knight said. “So we’re starting to see that. But I think what I’m finding is even in the southern part of the state, we’re seeing some really beautiful color, and they’re coming in really muted in a way, and we’ll start to see the vibrant color come through as we start having colder days and colder nights.”
Options include the Green Mountain Railroad that departs Chester, Vt., for a two-hour round-trip tour that passes sites drivers can’t access, among them a trestle bridge with views of Ludlow and the Okemo Mountain Ski resort.
“There are a lot of arts festivals,” Knight added. “In Stowe there’s a foliage arts festival. Weston has a craft show. We have film festivals going on in Manchester. There’s a women’s film festival in Burlington. There’s Octoberfest going on, of course. There’s a lot of craft beer.”
She also encouraged peepers to range beyond the bigger cities and towns.
“That’s something that we have made a point of in our new marketing campaign,” she said. “It’s called 251 and we’re going to be focusing on all of the 251 towns in Vermont, to get people introduced to the different towns that exist that aren’t as well-known as Stowe and Burlington, but that have lovely downtowns, and they might have a craft brewery, or they have a farmers market.”