Vermont Route 100 North

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Waterbury

   Waterbury is a brick-and-clapboard village on the Winooski River, tucked into the valley where Vermont Route 100 meets the interstate, and it is the sort of place where you slow down on instinct. Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest summit at 4,393 feet, is a short way north behind Stowe, and the Green Mountains close in on both sides here with steep, wooded flanks that go copper and scarlet in the first weeks of October.

   Read the complete Waterbury write-up.

2. 2. Stowe

   Stowe sits in a bowl of the Green Mountains, with the long ridge of Mount Mansfield rising behind it, and its white church steeple is perhaps the most photographed in Vermont. Mansfield, at 4,393 feet the highest point in the state, has a profile that resembles a human face, with a forehead, nose, lips and chin along the ridgeline, and the summit is reached by a toll road in summer and by ski lifts in winter. The town has about four thousand residents, a lively main street of shops and restaurants, and a long tradition of skiing that goes back to the 1930s.

   Read the complete Stowe write-up.

3. 3. Morrisville

4. 4. Newport

   Newport lies at the southern tip of Lake Memphremagog, a long, narrow lake that stretches north into Quebec, and it is the largest town in what Vermonters call the Northeast Kingdom. That name was coined in 1949 by Senator George Aiken, who said that the region was so beautiful it deserved to be called a kingdom, and it stuck. The area is the wildest and least developed part of Vermont, with few people, lots of forest and a sense of being at the edge of things.

   Read the complete Newport write-up.